Arthur Lodge and the Railway: 'Curious Times' : 1869

Arthur Lodge wrote not only one of the first novels about the Luddites, Sad Times but also a small volume of fictionalised reminiscences and dialect verse : 

Forty Years Ago: a Sketch of Yorkshire Life and Poems

By AL [Arthur Lodge]

Huddersfield, Jos Woodhead, Ramsden Street, 1869

ARTHUR LODGE'S HUDDERSFIELD

The branch line to Kirkburton (+ on the map above) ran south east from the Huddersfield-Leeds main line from Deighton.

The numbers refer to the photographs in the text. 

In this collection is a poem called 'Curious Times' about an old man returning to Kirkburton ,  abbreviated to 'Burton' in the text, and finding a new branch line has been built transforming the landscape he remembers.  Though the railways covered every part of Britain in the early years of the 19th century, it is rare to find a text that records the impact of the railway on an actual location.  The tone of the poem reflects the mixture of awe and reservation that must have characterised the reaction of locals to the imposition of an industrial transport network that reached places the canals did not.  Where the canals could be seen as artificial rivers, the railways seemed entirely unnatural, relying on the products of the industry they served.  Steam engines burnt the coal that their wagons carried to supply the furnaces of factories throughout the British Isles.  

   2   A bridge near Kirkheaton is glimpsed through ivy,                                                                         3    Bridge over Beldon Beck

         like a Mayan temple in the jungle.  

Lodge’s speaker comes straight down the Wakefield Road, now the A 629, and doesn’t notice these engineering marvels, not that he is in a mood to appreciate the marvels of Victorian engineering.   He starts to notice changes as he comes to Dalton Green. 

At Dalton Green I stood;

An’ a gret bank I saw stretched aet,

Reight on past ‘Coroyd Wood’     (18-20)

 4 Modern shopping units stand on the site of railways cutting and siding.

The ‘grete [great] bank’ can be seen on the right, reinforced by a 19th century wall.

Cold Royd Wood is beyond this site on the skyline.

  5 The depth of the bank is shown by the cottages nestled into the side.

Thinks I, I must have miss’d my way,

That spot looks vary queer;

It’s nout like what used to be,

When me an’ th’ wife lived here. (21-4)

The embankment  begins under Dalton Bank: 

 6 The height of the bank is shown by the house roof glimpsed beyond it.

Reight on past ‘Coroyd Wood’ (20)

7 Cold Royd Wood from above.  The railway line runs at its foot.  The skyline is dominated by Castle Hill.

There’s Toulson’s Miln stands where it did, (25)

        9  The name ‘Toulson’ survives in ‘Tolson’s Yard.                                                          10         Next to it is Bankside Mill 

                                                      Both are  on the Wakefield Road  but are closer to Huddersfield than Dalton.

Returning to Dalton Green, the narrator is reassured to note:

                                                                            An the’ Raend Wood’s there an’ o’; (21)

 11From a distance Round Wood looks intact and Dalton Green has some greenery.

    12  A photograph taken from Round Hill shows how closely         13  Round Wood Beck flows on beneath the A629 as if it was

  it is hemmed in by a mill to the south.  To the east of this picture                                      deep in the countryside.    

is the cut and embankment on the far side of Round Wood Beck.

He muses for a moment or two to ask this faux-naïve question:

But yon gret bank, what’s it there for,

   I sood much like to know’?  (27-8)

He is answered by the irruption of an engine

When, o’ at once, I yerd a din,

An’ bang an engine comes.

It, whizzing, pass’d me in a crack,

Wi’ mony a snort an’ puff,

       That seemed to say, “Come here, oud lad,    

An’ I’ll grind thee to snuff.”   (31-6)

The engine’s threat echoes that of an ogre in Jack the Giant Killer:

Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum

I smell the blood of an English man,

Be he living or be he dead,

I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

The super-human power of the railway and its indifference to human life is echoed by a ghost story attached to Huddersfield Station.   A porter called Jonah Marr fell onto the tracks at 1125.  He broke both his legs and died shortly afterwards.  Supposedly his laughter can heard at this time or, in other accounts, if a misfortune happens on the station.  Despite the precision of the time of Jonah’s accidents none of the sites that record the story give a date more precise that ‘the nineteenth century’ for the alleged event.   http://www.examiner.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/haunted-huddersfield-halloween-ghosts-ghouls-10314696

Charles Dickens' 1866 railway ghost story 'The Signal Man's Ghost' might be one of the inspirations behind the idea that the industrial age would create a new type of ghost. 

At this point the narrator takes a nostalgic diversion.  Instead going directly to Kirkburton by swinging south across Waterloo Bridge, a patriotic name that would have been imposed in the narrator’s youth, the poem moves north to Kirkheaton Church: ‘th’ oud churchyard’ (41).  This stands on the brow of the hill overlooking Dalton Green.

14 The church of St John The Baptist, Kirkheaton

Modern Kirkheaton grew rapidly behind the church to the north east.  Lodge’s narrator mentions the increasing population through the growth in size of the churchyard: ‘An’ th’ oud churchyard is double th’ size’ (41).  The reference is playful but it reminds readers that industrialisation not only increased the urban population and but also kept the mortality rate high.  Working on or around the dangerous, polluting Victorian machines was extremely dangerous, as the churchyard monument to the Armitage Mill disaster testifies;

14 The Armitage Mill memorial.  Also known as The Colne Bridge Mill, the factory suffered a disastrous fire on February 14th 1818 as a result of dangerous conditions.  17 of the child labour force were killed including three nine year girls.   The narrator does not mention this tragedy possibly because it could not be accommodated by the alternation of jocular and sentimental tones in the poem. 

Part of the expanded churchyard Lodge observed is now being taken over by nature:

14 A once-prestigious gravestone peers from the green.

The narrator makes another of his uneasy jokes about how if a cemetery obstructed a railway it would show no respect but would unearth the bones before Judgement Day:

It’s weel, I though, as I sat daen,

That th’ railway has miss’d thee;

        Or th’ bits o’ bones that’s liggin’ here,         

Awaiting th’ judgment day,

Them navvies, wi’ their picks an’ shools,

          Wod have cleared all away. (42-48) 

This actually happened in Halifax when In 1878 the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway wished to replace the graveyard of South Parade Methodist chapel with sidings.   After a dispute they were allowed to do this provided they bought the chapel as well.  http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/PhotoFrames/WRY/HalifaxSouthParadeWesleyanTWJpagemill.html.   

The graveyard was moved to Stony Royd Cemetery.   http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calderdalecompanion/c109_s.html

Finally the narrator reaches Kirkburton, possibly following the tracks and footpaths on the hills rather than dropping down to the main road.  He complains that trees have been supplanted by a station:

When I gat on to ‘Burton, then

A, dear me! what a fuss;

Th’ Plantation’s gen, boeth stick an’ stoen,

               ‘Tis naea a Terminus.    (57-60)

As the station displaced the Plantation, so suburbs have displaced the station.   The most substantial fragment of this station is the wall above a goods siding:

15 Mature trees have established themselves where trains once ran

The narrator jokes about how

Thought I, th’ next shift that ‘Burton makes,

‘Twill be a seaport taen.  (63-4)

However if the narrator is 70 in 1869 he will have memories of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal being opened in Huddersfield in 1811 to join with the Huddersfield Broad Canal of 1776.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_Broad_Canal

 These innovations did indeed make Huddersfield into a port.  

16 Huddersfield Broad Canal behind the university

The poem ends with a compliant familiar since the growth of large urban areas.  The narrator lets slip his name for the first time ‘Ben’ (68) but complains no one knows him: ‘fouk walk past an’ never speyk’ (67)  ‘Strangers do live on every side’ (69).     More importantly it complains of the aggression practised by rail companies in creating their routes:

These railway fouk they goea a-yed,

Noea stoppage do they see; (53-4)

This aggression is taken as a personal violation:

They pool daen spots a’t’s vary dear

To poor oud fouk like me. (55-6)

Here the poem foreshadows a modern realisation of how much personality is anchored to scenes and places and the psychological jolt caused by their destruction.   All that is left is a scene that is ‘dree’ [‘dreary’] (70 ), bereft of any life-sustaining memories.   The narrator is not going to protest, as many would do in the 21st century, but represents himself as defeated and waiting for death:

I’ll goea an’ find a spot for th’ grave,      

It’s time for me to dee. (71-2)

Presumably he’ll pick a spot far from where a railway might disturb his grave…

100 years after the poem the line was closed and the rails lifted.  http://www.lostrailwayswestyorkshire.co.uk/Kirkburton%20Branch.htm

Since then trees and bushes have taken over the line, restoring the peace the narrator craved:

17 Site of the rail lines near Kirkheaton

The noise and traffic have been pushed downhill onto the A629 into lorries, buses and cars that are now powered by internal combustion engines not horses…