The Tresham dovecote

This year, for our family holiday, we'd planned to go to Spain but the pandemic put paid to that so I spent my fortnight off work at home, doing plenty of writing and going out for walking expeditions with the family.

Dude and the dovecote

One day, I had to go to Corby Diagnostic for a blood-test and Dude came along to keep me company.  As payback for him, we went on a Pokemon hunt around the town and nearby Geddington and then, on the way home, he found a Pokemon gym in the middle of nowhere.  Careful navigation got us to the very small village of Newton and further investigation led us to the Newton Field Centre, set into a church quite - oddly enough - some way from the houses.  I suggested to Dude there might be a spooky reason for this and we riffed some ideas for horror stories before wandering up the public footpath.

Off to the left was a dovecote, the source of the Pokemon gym and a building I didn't even realise was there.  Intrigued, we tramped across the field, found a very small door and - not quite knowing what to expect - went inside.  It was apparently built with space for 3,600 broods and it was a peculiar sensation, looking up and up and seeing all these holes around the wide open central space. 

"The dovecote was built c.1580 from roughly dressed course stone with very little mortar.  Its size is most unusual - fifty-three feet nine, by twenty-three feet seven, with the height to the eaves twenty feet and to the roof-ridge about thirty-five.  Now, more than four centuries later, it, the church and fishponds are all that remain of the Tresham family mansion, a place where it is said the Gunpowder Plot meetings were held."
information from the VADs J L Carr page

Dude through the small doorway

I'm lucky enough to live in an area rich in history - especially that of the Tresham family, who designed Rothwell's old Market Square building and the wonderful Triangular Lodge, as well as being prime conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot - and finding places like this really fires up the creative part of my brain.  This location will absolutely feature in my writing at some point, both the interior and the exterior and a friend pointed out there are footpaths that can get you from Kettering to the dovecote and back, so I'll be heading there again for more research and photographs.

Google maps screengrab shows the distance of the church from the houses and how big the Tresham estate must have been.

If you have a dovecote near you, I'd definitely go and check it out - who knows, it might inspire some stories for you too!

The Real Life Mill

In 2011, Greyhart Press published my novelette The Mill as a stand-alone title.  It was originally published in the acclaimed Pendragon Press anthology We Fade To Grey in 2008, edited by Gary McMahon (who, in asking for it, succeeded in pulling me out of a writers block that had consumed me for two years).  A story about grief, guilt and coughing ghosts, Mark Morris in his introduction called it "one of the most moving pieces of writing I have read in a long time".

Almost everything about The Mill has a touch of autobiography, not least the key location and The Folly, as we called it, can be found at the end of Shotwell Mill Lane in Rothwell,  From above (thanks Google), it looks like a very small wooded area but within it are the ruins of the old mill.  When I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, we often played down there (war games worked particularly well, with the old cellars and walls) and it wouldn't be unusual, during the summer holidays, to head down with your mates and discover four or five other groups of kids there.

The River Ise separates Rothwell and Desborough and The Folly is shown in the centre of the photograph

In 2012 (you can see the post here), I explored the site with Dude and found it extremely overgrown and difficult to navigate - it obviously wasn't used as a playground any more.

Dude, in 2012, standing in front of the right hand cellar

During the lockdown period, two things happened.  My wife and I, trying to find long walks in a relatively small town, followed an old footpath map and discovered several places I didn't even know existed, one of which led us to walk back by The Folly.  It was a lovely day, no-one was about and so I took the chance to grab a few photographs.

The same cellar Dude is standing in front of in the other photo - so those trees have sprouted well in the past 8 years...

Further around from the cellars, I wonder what the grave-shaped opening is for?

If you've read the story, I hope you found the Mill itself to be quite a scary place.  I've never been to the real location in the dark but, with its well out of the way location and the whispering trees, I can imagine it's quite eerie.  When I was researching the idea, in an attempt to lend as much truth to the descriptions as I could, I looked everywhere to try and find a photograph of the original mill.  I failed and so made the whole thing up (or, I suppose, did what a writer is supposed to do).  Then, quite by chance, my mum spotted a picture (she remembers the building before it was demolished) someone had posted on a Rothwell Facebook page.

This originally appeared in the Kettering Evening Telegraph in December 1939 and, to my delight, Shotwell Mill looks as creepy as I've always hoped it would.  What do you think?

Kettering Evening Telegraph, 22nd December 1939

Sometimes, it appears, real-life can be even more creepy than a horror story...

You can find more details about The Mill here

Goodbye Ohio (another piece of history goes...)

When I was growing up, in the 70s and 80s, most towns had a cinema and multiplexes hadn’t yet invaded (the first one I knew of was The Point, in Milton Keynes, which I didn’t visit until the mid-80s).  Although I went to the cinema in Corby (my Dad took me to see my first James Bond double-bill there, as I wrote about here) and latterly Bentleys in Burton Latimer, my first port of call was The Savoy in Kettering, where I saw “Star Wars” amongst many, many others.  Owned by EMI from the 70s, it was relaunched - after a short closure - as the independent Ohio cinema in 1986.  This coincided with me and my friends learning to drive so we made plenty of visits there through to the end of the 80s and most films released in that period were watched in the glamorously named Studio 1 or Studio 2, sitting on seats that had seen better days and trying to ignore the large holes in the ceiling.  Yes it was a fleapit, yes it was a bare bones operation but I loved it - the projectionist was also the man who took your money (and occasionally served you for sweets and drinks too) - and when I started going out with Alison, we’d often go there for a double-bill (£3 each for both films) on a Saturday night.

The main entrance, 2005

Two angles on Russell Street, 2005

The cinema finally closed in 1997 when an Odeon Multiplex opened up on the outskirts of town, though the Sixfields Multiplex in Northampton had surely taken away a lot of custom - yes, they were more expensive but they were also new.  I thought they were soulless too but I’m maybe sometimes just a nostalgic fool.

The cinema remained empty and most of the glass in the windows was smashed, which I always found really sad whenever I walked by and more was vandalized over the years.  When someone dug out a hole in the wood panel covering the doors, I had a peek inside and the floor was strewn with litter and rubble.

In December 2000, I began writing my novel “In The Rain With The Dead” and needed a location for my baddie, a demon called Magellan, to hide out in, that was derelict and where he wouldn’t be disturbed.  It didn’t take long for me to think of the Ohio (the book is set in my fictional town of Gaffney) and so I used it - lock, stock and barrel - in the novel.  It first appears in the flashback section - ostensibly set in the 90s, but actually written as the 80s:

Bentleys Cinema, on Russell Street, had once been an Odeon and was built with art deco grandeur. Now, however, the ground floor had been converted into a bingo hall and the cinema was crammed into what had once been the upper tiers. It was lovingly called the ‘flea pit’ by its patrons, who were invariably teenagers and couples in their early twenties, that didn’t mind sitting in a cold auditorium, with a sound system that was around long before Dolby and seats that occasionally didn’t work.

Later, when Magellan moves in, I wrote (in early 2001) about what had been there and imagined what several years of dereliction had done to the place:

     Back then, the ticket booth was at the top of the stairs, the drinks fridge and popcorn machine next to it. At the end of the counter was an open area, with doors leading to the toilets and projection booth. In the open area were some easy chairs, a pool table and a tabletop version of Space Invaders. Above the chairs, windows looked out onto Russell Street.
     Now, with the smashed windows letting in the grey evening light, he surveyed the decaying, desolate foyer, far removed from its original splendour. The ticket booth and popcorn maker were covered with a sheet that had probably once been white but which was now a dusky brown and riddled with holes. The drinks fridge seemed to have been attacked with a bat, pieces lying over the counter top and across the floor. Half the chairs were gone, those remaining had had their cushions ripped out, stuffing and springs trailing onto the floor like silvery intestines. The pool table and Space Invaders machine had gone. The heavy drapes that had been sucked through the window were stained and mouldy.

I took some photographs of the exterior in 2005, when Christopher Teague at Pendragon Press published the book and it was a sorry sight.  Even though houses encroached it and weeds (and trees) sprouted from the walls, even as it looked sadder every year, it stood proud.  Last week, my friend Jon & I walked down Russell Street and I saw, to my great dismay, that the demolition had started.  It might have been a long time coming, but very soon Kettering is going to lose a building that so much of its youth enjoyed (for whatever reasons) and which features so prominently in their memories.

The demolition has started, 4th June 2014

Sadly, I can't find any images of the cinema when it was operational but several urban explorations have taken place since it closed and the results photographed and reported on here, here, here and here.  Apart from the inevitable decay that you'd expect, the site has also seen the handiwork of vandals and graffiti artists and seeing that lovely old place treated so shabbily is unpleasant.  This is Studio 2 (entry to the left of the picture).

photograph by 'infamous explorer', all rights reserved

So long, Ohio Cinema, I’m glad I knew you when you were operational, I’m so pleased that I was able to pay homage to you and whenever I talk about Gaffney, rest assured the cinema is ALWAYS on Russell Street.

Real-life locations - "The Mill"

Something I like to utilise a lot in my fiction is a sense of place - I believe that if you can make the location as realistic as possible, you can do pretty much whatever else you want and still keep the reader onside. To that end, most places in my stories are based extensively on real life.

Take “The Mill”, as an example (because I have photographs to illustrate this point - my mother didn’t raise a complete idiot). It’s all set in Gaffney, but the locations used are spread over Rothwell and Kettering, from the bereavement group meeting house (the Melton Road Community Centre, where my first writers group met), the café (on Newland Street) and Saskia’s house (my friend Pauline’s house) - all in Kettering, with Rothwell represented by The Mill itself (and if you take a walk down Shotwell Mill Lane, to the north of the town, there you will find the remains as described in the story). I don’t know what the mill was used for originally, or when it closed down, but it was long gone when I was kid, back in the late 70s/early 80s and we used to play war down there.

We went out for a walk on Sunday afternoon and followed some footpaths and ended up there. The last time I’d been down, a couple of years before I wrote the story, it was all overgrown and virtually impossible to get into. It’s still overgrown in parts now, but much more accessible so I took some pictures of the cellars as they are today. The memory I wrote from had no trees growing through the cellar floors, or grass to the brick edgings, which is why they don’t appear in “The Mill”.

So here they are, with Dude in place to give a sense of scale.

Matthew, standing on the "walkway" between the middle and right cellar.

Matthew, standing in front of the right cellar. The cellar on the far left was virtually impossible to reach.

Some mechanics of writing (or, location is the key)

As a writer, I am very keen on the idea of place - I want the reader to know exactly where they are, I want them to be able to see the location in their head, I want them to feel what it’s like to stand there. I think I’m pretty good at it and it’s something that gets mentioned quite a bit in reviews so I’ll be honest here and say that a lot of it is a cheat - I use real places, wherever possible.

Now, with my guilty secret exposed, here is the key location from my latest story “What We Do Sometimes, Without Thinking”, which was published in the NewCon press anthology “Shoes, Ships & Cadavers”.

The story takes place in Kettering (where I didn’t grow up) and centres around a bridge, at the end of the Headlands. That bridge does exist, as does the graffiti I mention in the story (which sets up the last act of the piece).

This is the first appearance of the bridge in the story:

The bridge was ahead, with signs warning me about cars, since the road led directly to the golf course. There was nothing on the road now. I rested my racer against the abutment and walked onto the bridge, which looked old but well kept. It was made with dark blue brick, as solid as you like, and the walls on either side were metal plates, with rivets half the size of my hand. At the far end of the bridge, on the west abutment, was a splash of graffiti – ‘Look Behind You!’ Directly across from it were a ravaged looking tree and some bushes. I leaned against the west wall, looking at the rails and waited.

And here is the bridge itself. These photographs were taken on 30th October 2010 (Dude & I were train-chasing) and the graffiti, which I first noticed almost 15 years ago, is still clearly visible.

Looking onto the bridge from The Headlands. If you go over the bridge and down the hill, that's where the golf course is.

Matthew, leaning on the outer wall, waiting for a train

The graffiti.

Wahey

I've done it! The first draft of my as-yet-untitled short story is now completed - over 8,200 words in three days (thank you, Alison & Dude, for giving me the time)! 2nd draft starts tomorrow, then to the pre-readers and hopefully to Ian by the end of the week (or weekend, more than likely).

Heidi Klum (see the video post entry from earlier) seems chuffed for me too!

Below is a picture of the bridge at the end of the Headlands, which I've used as key location in the story.

Architecture strikes again!

We went to Leicester on Saturday and used the old Silver Arcade to cut through from the market to Dominoes toy shop. The Arcade, Victorian terraced with glass bricks on the metal walkways, is now pretty much dormant - all of the upper tiers are closed off, with shops only occupying the ground floor area. I remember when Black Cat Books were in there, top floor, far corner - it was a cracking shop, full of old books and toys and other treasures, which fitted perfectly with the architecture around it. BC Books moved out a long while ago (and have now shut down, sadly, but still have an online service) and the shops dwindled until there were virtually none left. Apparently, the people who own the Arcade are planning to do it up and attract new shops, but we’ll see.

Anyway, as we walked through and I looked up and the sun caught the skylights and the glass bricks and Dude said “Wow”, it suddenly occurred to me that this could be the location for a set piece in my new novella. I don’t know how yet (though I do know at least one thing that will happen), but it feels good that things are starting to fall into place (as architecture, you see, inspires a lot of things in my writing).

And this is a picture I took, looking back towards the market.