This
is my favourite map of all time, and it shows clearly why I find these things
so interesting.
It
is a Bartholomew map, which states that it is by appointment to the late King George
V. This suggests that it was produced in the latter half of the 1930s, a most
fascinating period of time.
Part
of my love for it is that it maps out my favourite places to be…ones of memory
and aspiration. Monsal Dale, Derwent Valley, Hope Valley…I would be there every
day if I could.
But
my original fascination, the reason why I had it on my bedroom wall as a
teenager, is that it is a map of where I grew up. A place of great change. This
sheet of paper was my portal to the past; my own Narnia.
In
the late 1930s, the area where I was living had been part of Derbyshire, it had
been a place of coal mines, railways and the most polluted river in Britain
that would flood and cover those train tracks. But around the time when I was
born, Sheffield had stretched its boundary and embraced the area into the
suburbs. Huge council estates were thrown up, then private housing and then
finally a shopping centre. I witnessed
this, as we were one of the first families to move into the council
estate. I played on the buildings sites
and mourned the loss of my favourite dog walking field to the foundations of
the shopping centre. That country road that was dotted with benches and little
white bungalows now sits under a retail park. It was like a scene from one of
those old 1930s films that I liked watching. But my map kept it alive.
These railway lines were of particular fascination. One lives on, the Midland ‘old
road’ between Chesterfield and Sheffield.
But the others in this tangle have gone. I found out that one was once
the Great Central main line, and that express steam engines shot down it,
heading for Marylebone. This fuelled my imagination and I took my dog and
explored the old grey path of ballast. I
found all sorts down there in the 1980s when it had merely been abandoned – not tidied
up and turned into the Transpennine Trail.
When I began to organise Young Archaeologist Club trips, I took a group
along with me and we had a whale of a time exploring the site of an old signal
box.
The
city still encroaches into this place of contrasts, and sucks the
character from it. But I still have my map and my imagination. This is the only map that I will never
upcycle.
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