chain coral Chorus
This is the fourth and final commissioned pom and blog post for the Chain Coral Chorus. In this, celebrated poet, Roy McFarlane explores the history - geological, communal, familial and personal - of Black Country Geosite, Sedgely Beacon. Fires of Sedgley Beacon This is the hill they made us run up in the moulding of our youth. Hills moulded through pre-historic times, once festooned with lagoons, where trilobites crawled as fast as my weary legs could carry me. McFarlane, you’re lagging behind the P.E. Teacher shouted. This place marked by coral seas and icy wasteland. Ground of claypits and limestone beneath bracken and grass; the minerals for an industrial revolution, this Tartan hell, chained Titians blackened with labour. The labour that brought my father to these shores to Bilston Steel Works, seen from the Beacon Tower – where fires were once lit for the warning of the Spanish Armada – Big Lizzie they called her standing tall, burning its own fires, bleeding molten gold, coughing her dark breath into the skies as long as there was labour but the Tories came and Thatcher closed her down. Our fathers laid off and mothers mourned, finding ways to make spam and payes; bully beef and rice last long enough for another day. Yet, we still burned in the brightness of our youth on late summer evenings, sliding down the bunk on metal trays, after bonking off school for a snog or a bonk. Young lovers who knew nothing of the blues of milkwort, as we burned with passion moulding into each other whilst carline thistle pressed between the leaves of our bodies. The hill was on fire as if from the heavens, some days an upper room of tongues; patois, Punjabi and yam, yam converting us all to the Black Country. From Twitter @rmcfarlane63: Beginning my trek up Sedgley Beacon, trying to re-imagine my cross-country run from Parkfields School 45 years ago. When Rob Francis asked me to get involved in the GeositesPoetics of the Black Country, he asked me to pick a location out of so many amazing places. For me, it was either Tipton Canal where I took morning walks or Sedgley Beacon which brought back so many memories from my youth. Sedgley Beacon has dominated the landscape of my story-telling and poetry. So, on Tuesday 23rd March 2021 I returned back to my old stomping ground, to relive the infamous cross-country run. As you can see nothing has changed, the closed off gate brought back all those memories. It’s a chilled spring morning, the sun giving false pretences of warmth. On the other side of the Wolverhampton Road opposite the entrance of Parkfields School (now a converted Pupil Referral Unit Building) was always the sight of snowdrops, their heads slightly bent but creating a pattern of blues, purples and white. Beautiful semi-detached homes on this main busy road with mini-drives. And it begins, the incline taking you to the top and levelling off. Brand new houses siting in the dip at the foot of the hill, before the road continued it steady incline. In this location not many black people could afford these new detached houses at the foot of the hill except for our best friend whose father owned a nightclub, the only night club in Bilston for black people. And I’m now a young 12-year-old, I’m running past the petrol station and there it is, right before my very eyes Sedgley Beacon like the film The Hill where Sean Connery and other military miscreants climbed a man-made hill, carrying sacks of sand to pour at the top of the hill and roll back down again. I never knew who Sisyphus was back then but I knew his pain. This is the cruel part, you’ve got over the steepest climb and you’re still miles away from the tower, bwoy did I hate cross-country running or in my case crawling. Today the wind is blowing, a cold wind taking the little warmth out of the air, but you can see far and wide. I’m looking at my beloved Bilston where I grew up, found my first love when I was much older and brought her to Sedgley Beacon on numerous occasions as a day out, where we explored each other’s bodies. You can understand the idea of Beacons; the lighting of fires as a signal for wars or turmoil. Back to the 12-year-old in 1976, the year of the heatwave, I don’t think I was mad enough to climb this hill in that heat. The year is more profound with the ‘blackwash’ by one of the greatest cricket teams to ever be seen the West Indies Cricket Team, it’s probably the first time I saw my father so enamoured when watching the stately Clive Lloyd, the warrior Viv Richard or the whispering assassin Michael Holding like a cold wind that would come out of nowhere. Twitter: Never appreciated how far you could see, over there is St Leonard Church building in Bilston a beautiful white building and back in the 70s running up this hill, you’d see ‘Big Lizzy’ before Thatcher came into power and it was demolished. 'Elizabeth looks down and shed a tear ‘Big Lizzie’ realm that once flowed honey gold’ Blast Furnace Lament by Peter Hill. Everything that’s under the soil, the minerals that fed an Industrial Revolution, I’m now standing on brought my parents over to the Black Country. The famous Bilston Steel works blast furnace known as ‘Big Lizzy’. How many times did I walk past that edifice for shopping, meeting up with friends and picking up my father’s pay-packet to bring back to my mother who was so astute with spending and saving. A monument which was the beating heart of the community, I vaguely remember the strikes but looking back at newspaper reports you feel the heartaches the despair of a community fully dependent on the Big Lizzy flowing with honey gold. Twitter: My parents came from Trinity Ville, St Thomas Jamaica, my dad worked as a steelworker in Darlaston as a polisher, hoping to earn enough to return home they’re both buried at Beacon Hill Cemetery. You can see Beacon Hill Cemetery, crazy how my father came to England for a few years and is buried thousands of miles from the land of his birth. A father who never complained about his lot, worked hard, and made the Black Country his home and for the next generation to follow. My kids speak yam, yam as well as patois and express their Britishness as well as remembering their routes back to Jamaica. Imagine this hill with evidence of tropical marshlands and swamps as evolved and changed through so many periods over millions of years like George Benson said ‘everything must change, nothing stays the same,’ the Hill and the Black Country will continue to evolve taking on it’s many voices and many identities. Here’s the tower we had to touch, (and we had to turn back) I’m sure in the 70s it wasn’t closed off, I never went up there, and what’s the story behind the tower. I love the story of the tower, imagined to be the place where beacon warnings were lit for invasions. I don’t remember climbing up the tower, but there are so many stories of the tower being a place of adventure for young souls. The tower can be seen as far as the Bristol Channel on a clear day before they blocked off access to it. And this would be the best part, going downhill, running, tumbling, legs wobbly hallucinating the smell of mum's chicken, rice and peas...
This is Sedgley Beacon. This geosite of the Black Country part of the UNESCO Black Country GeoPark. This hill has been created over millions of years, shaped by natural process and by people like me who have left their impressions on the hill as well as being impressed by the hill that stands tall across the West Midlands. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2022
Categories |