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Nikky Braithwaite, March 2004

Down at Quarry Bank Mill

Airplanes repeat circles overhead
Taxis race frantic to terminal 1 or 3
Peace reigns in the adjacent rural idyll
It’s quiet at the dark, satanic mill you see

Yet two hundred years ago we heard
Looms and mules creating their din
Men, women and children sweat and toil
Producing the cotton to spin

The water wheel keenly turning
Converting the river into clout
To power all the frenzied activity
That took place day in and day out

Apprentice children working hard
No escape from the twelve hour day
Cleaning and crawling beneath the looms
Punished if you tried to run away

Is this what Blake had seen and heard
In our green and pleasant land?
Where money and power forsake all others
To give the mill owner a winning hand

And now all is still and the birds sing
A far cry from those dark days
Yet, there is still so much more to learn
Of our past and our ancestors ways. 

Elizabeth Lloyd Mowll

This was a place I used to know very well from my childhood. Much of its charm has been preserved but modern life still invades the peace of these woods.

Saturday Morning, Styal Woods

Not a breath of air
brushed the trees;
beeches dripped,
polished holly shone darkly green.
Woodland floor and river banks
absorbed all sound
save the lap and trickle
of the snaking river below
and the clamour of a wren.
Mist clung to the ground,
curling round ferns,
balsam and lichened stones.
At any moment
a dinosaur could appear,
or pterodactyl
circle darkly against low cloud
above the oaks and redwoods.

Instead, we see in the distance
a crocodile of schoolchildren
on their way to the Mill
and the latest jumbo jet
coming in to land on Runway 2.