The road through the woods
Nov. 15th, 2005 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustFor the first time in too long, we went for a walk on Sunday. The weather was bright and clear and mild, and we walked along the riverbanks, past Old Durham and Maiden Castle to the Rose Tree, where we had lunch - we could have picnicked, had we known beforehand how pleasant the day would be... Then we followed the Houghall Trail round and came home past the Botanic Gardens, the colleges and Neville's Cross.
There is a "lost village" in the woods near Houghall - technically, a DMV, because every abandoned settlement is a Deserted Medieval Village, even when, like Houghall Village, it grew up in the mid-nineteenth century (and was demolished in the mid-twentieth).
Houghall Village was built to serve the pit which was worked for only forty years (from 1840 to 1844). A hundred years later the three streets still standing were taken over by the National Coal Board - but in 1955 they too were pulled down. Now nothing remains but the concrete bases of the houses, a row of front doorsteps, a low circular enclosure which marks the pit shaft, and a scattering of bricks (many of them inscribed LOVE, being manufactured at the brick foundry of mine owner Joseph Love).
It seems strange that a village which was still standing in my lifetime should have gone leaving so little trace; I have walked through Roman remains which were easier to identify on the ground than these flimsy terraces.
There is a "lost village" in the woods near Houghall - technically, a DMV, because every abandoned settlement is a Deserted Medieval Village, even when, like Houghall Village, it grew up in the mid-nineteenth century (and was demolished in the mid-twentieth).
Houghall Village was built to serve the pit which was worked for only forty years (from 1840 to 1844). A hundred years later the three streets still standing were taken over by the National Coal Board - but in 1955 they too were pulled down. Now nothing remains but the concrete bases of the houses, a row of front doorsteps, a low circular enclosure which marks the pit shaft, and a scattering of bricks (many of them inscribed LOVE, being manufactured at the brick foundry of mine owner Joseph Love).
It seems strange that a village which was still standing in my lifetime should have gone leaving so little trace; I have walked through Roman remains which were easier to identify on the ground than these flimsy terraces.
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
