Sutton Scarsdale Hall Print

From my "Bus Trips" field study log written Sunday 29 September - so, I'm aware that I need to find something for this project beyond the mining heritage, but the problem is that it is the mining people that talk to me. Yesterday I got off the bus at Heath, and having previously seen a sign for a footpath to Sutton Scarsdale - I'd checked out Google Maps before setting off - I thought I'd prefer to take that rather than wait for another bus or walk along the road. I should have known that the footpath would fizzle out after five minutes - I soon twigged that all I had to go by was to look for Ramblers Association posts, styes and tiny button signs with arrows as I struck out in my new walking boots across newly sprouting fields, the paths having been long plowed over. So a 1 mile walk took about an hour, though I rather enjoyed startling possibly a hundred grouse (after been startled by them first), many fat pheasants, watching three big buzzards circling above - one quite low over a stand of trees proving how big they were, and picking blackberries along a rare bit of actual (though overgrown) footpath - being well beyond any roads I figured they were safe to eat. Actually that was one of the things I was very conscious of - the noise from the M1 motorway was immense, something I'd been very aware of on previous visits to this valley - there's no escape from it. HS2 will add to that noise tremendously, like having jet fighters swoop low along the valley every few minutes. Living right in the centre of Nottingham, with it's traffic, sirens, police helicopters and masses of students, is far quieter. Walking through the outskirts of Sutton Scarsdale from the fields was a bit of an eye opener - the houses and cars showed that there is an obscene amount of money here; and I couldn't help but mentally contrast that with the next door housing estates of Holmewood. Holmewood is not really a village or town - it's a housing estate for low wage workers and non-workers - the generational residue of the enforced collapse of the mining industry, with a couple of noisy industrial estates, a few closing or struggling shops, nearby scrubland and young trees as "country parks" grown on slagheaps to walk their dogs, and bits of cheap new shiny "Barratt Box" housing developments for the retail managers of Chesterfield's shopping chains. Well, alright, there is more to it - but that's the core. I finally got to Scarsdale Hall, which had a few visitors, an odd couple (is there a revival of the "New Romantics"?) periodically shouting at their child, and began to set up my easel at the spot I'd fancied, to be challenged by "that looks serious - what are you up to here then?" Perhaps in his late seventies, with an old Jack Russell that I gradually realised knew him only too well, our conversation began about the "bastards" that had plowed up the footpaths (he was in the Ramblers in the 50's and 60's) then moved to the vast amount of coal still under our feet (he was a mining engineer and "loved that job!") and how he had to think hard - he closed his eyes - about how to address his tasks because the seam was only a yard thick or less (feet first or not - there was no space to change), the amazing machinery he worked with and trips to Canada and Poznan in Poland to demonstrate it at industrial fairs (the power being turned off at mid day) - and the BMW's he'd come across on the West German Autobahn's to get there. Interestingly, he offered a bit of - to me - mining heresy in describing the Yorkshire miners as people who would not change, "too dogmatic", he said the industry had to change - but that he still hated Thatcher for closing it all down, pointing out a wind farm in the distance as a bitter joke: not working when there's too much wind or no wind. Through the import of Polish coal (no, he said it came from Columbia "the propaganda still works!") we got onto the Polish immigrants of now and the Italians in his day - "all chatting and arms waving on the bus at five in the morning while we smoked our Woodbines" and agreed that they were happy because here was better than where they'd come from - the management would go to southern Italy to recruit miners, and he liked them. He was a fair minded man, a little interested in that I was using an iPad rather than paints, though he quizzed me on the capitals of the halls pillars ("I can't remember that!" I exclaimed) I very much enjoyed talking to him, but after at least half an hour without having done any work at all I got to the point where I told him I'd have to make a start and he ambled off with his dog. I'd spotted that there was one bus back to Heath on Saturdays at 4:18pm so I made sure I got it. It took about five minutes. This "field study" project was commissioned by First Art with funding by Arts Council England.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:12 W x 9 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:17.25 W x 14.25 H x 1.2 D in

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