shewhomust | The Hart and the Pool (Reply)

The name Hartlepool gives me a sort of double vision: on the one hand, there are all the Arthurian associations of the white hart which leads the knights to a pool in the forest, beside which a damsel sits in a tent... And one suggested derivation of the name does indeed involve harts and pools; on the other hand, there is British West Hartlepool, a comedy prefix which plays up the expectation that the words "British West" must prefix some remote and exotic location ("Indies", say) by following it with the drabbest of domestic towns - Hartlepool, small, northern, industrial (or now, post-industrial)*. Hartlepool has a reputation throughout the north east as the place where they hanged a monkey as a spy, and Hartlepool takes a perverse pride in its reputation. The claim made by one of the noticeboards dotted about the old town, indicating points of interest, that "Hartlepudlians are known throughout the world as 'monkey-hangers'" (my italics) is probably an exaggeration, but it is consistent with my "on the one hand, on the other hand" feeling about the place.

A day out in Hartlepool - you can laugh, but we had our reasons: the plan was, a walk by the sea, tick a few squares off the Use Your Paths challenge, explore the Headland - did nothing to dispel this feeling.

There is a National Nature Reserve at Teesmouth, an area of dunes and marsh on the north bank of the Seaton-on-Tees Channel, an an area of mudflats and sands on the south bank of the Channel. It is sandwiched between a landfill site and a chemical works, while the name "Seal Sands" refers both to the nuclear power station and the sands which support the only breeding colony of common seals on the north-east coast. The saltmarsh was loud with geese and lapwings struggling against a blustery wind, and as we looped inland we were buzzed by swallows. The path took us over grassy banks and along a hawthorn hedge whose buds were just bursting into bloom, round a housing estate and along the railway, and deposited us by Seaton Carew's extraordinary art deco bus station, and we walked back along the front to the car.

We drove up to the Headland, knowing only that it is the old part of the town, and has some interesting buildings, and after a sequence of pleasant sea-front terraces saw, more or less at the same time a parking space, this great derelict barn of a building on the recreation ground, and the lighthouse beyond it. Walking down to the lighthouse and beyond it to the battery put us on the historic trail, and what we had expected to be an hour's diversion turned into a walk which we abandoned unfinished nearly three hours later - and that without going into St Hilda's church, which was closed. The first soldier killed on British soil during the Great War was killed in Hartlepool, it seems. Why were so many houses in one small area painted black? What was the red brick building with the tower? How had so many amazing buildings managed to reach such a state of dereliction without actually being demolished? That, presumably, is the benefit of not being a smart location: no-one is interested in going to the expense of removing old buildings to make way for new ones - a state of grace which appears to be ending, becasuse everywhere we looked there was scaffolding and bright new paint.