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Kay George
Thanks to a Millennium Project, parts of Eddisbury Hill and the Old Pale have been returned to the forest, and are now free to wander on.
Pale Heights
Big skies,
Images from holidays past.
Views all around - Liverpool’s cathedrals, Jodrell Bank,
Jubilee Tower on Moel Famau close to Offa’s Dyke.
Our house nestles at the foot of Eddisbury Hill,
Given over for many years to farming.
Earliest known inhabitants were people of the Iron Age,
Centred on the hillfort, the ramparts still visible.
Romans destroyed the fort - too close to their road
Which skirts the hill’s southern slopes.
The tenth century saw Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians,
Holding the line against the Danes in the north.
Another century or two and Normans hunted in Delamere,
Later the Forester’s Chamber was cut into its flank.
Then the hill was taken for farming, creating the Old Pale,
Now host to telecommunication masts and ravens.
The twenty-first century dawned, but not for us
Houses, factories or supermarkets.
No more ploughing, some cattle and sheep where needed,
A mosaic of habitats open to us all.
Wildflower meadows, ponds and marshes, buzzards, goldfinches,
Trees, - and a big sky.
Eddisbury Hill
Here I am again
sitting on the bench
dedicated to the memory of Charlie Green
(died aged fifty-three),
looking down on Delamere forest
and the blue glass of Blakemere moss,
behind us three masts
barnacled with transmitter dishes
whose gusts of radio wind
disturb not one blade of grass
on this spring day.
My dogs scamper round
and gobble rabbit droppings,
while I crunch a Cox’s pippin
and stare out east beyond the moss
to where the planes
fly down the radio road to Ringway,
and a few miles further south
to Jodrell Bank’s white dish,
taller than St. Paul’s,
listening for echoes of the past
on this spring day.
We’ve been here many times,
to the top of Eddisbury hill,
me sitting on this bench,
the dogs scampering round.
Each year someone lays a wreath
in remembrance of Charlie Green,
who once sat here like me,
gazing across the Cheshire plain,
and on a clear day could see
the cathedrals of Liverpool to the west,
and the Mersey sloping out to sea
on a spring day.
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