Clock Face

Our alarm clock sounded. I climbed out of bed and padded to the window to open the curtains. Our room overlooked a simple court yard. A solitary car was parked; my sleepy eyes caught sight of tall trees, which were starting to bud in the early spring. I had no idea what the day would bring; our main constraint was the need to return the hire car to Manchester. Although I roughly knew where we were heading, I didn’t know anything about the part of the country that we were going to explore.

Vaguely conscious, we found our way to the hotel dining area for breakfast. We were met by Martin, who we assumed was the proprietor, and Mary, who seemed a lot calmer than she was when we arrived the previous day. It was a very pleasant dining room. Like the rest of the hotel interior, it had been painted bright white. We sat by some French doors with a view of a garden. One other resident sat in the corner of the dining room, intently playing with his mobile phone.

“Where did you get to?” asked Mary, as Martin looked on.

“We had a guided tour of Batley” I replied. Mary appeared confused. “A friend picked us up and drove us around” I paused for a moment. “It took about ten minutes”. Mary started to laugh. We told her about our walk, the visit to The Cellar Bar, a walk in the park, and a visit to the Bagshaw Museum. We changed Mary’s perceptions of Batley: there were things to do.

With our orders placed, we got chatting to Martin, who was a friendly chap in his early fifties. He asked us where we were from.

“What part of London?” he asked. Martin has a brother who lived in Kensington. He told us that he used to look after the Queen’s horses. Martin and Liz, the sweet shop owner in Adlington had both surprised me. I expecting northerners to be suspicious of us fancy London types, anticipating a degree of apathy and distain, but I was beginning to feel that this was more a reflection of a personal prejudice than a reality.  Liz and Martin had spent time and had a connection with our capital; they had memories and stories to share; this reflected in their interest and friendliness.

Mary’s breakfast was good: it was simple and no nonsense. Plus, we were given a choice; we were not subjected to ‘the black pudding challenge’, as we had been in Adlington.

The next time we encountered Martin, he was sat behind the reception desk. As he checked us out and shuffled papers around, he explained that the hotel was a lot quieter than usual. On Sundays a part of the hotel became a school; a popular mathematics teacher hired the hotel facilities, running an ‘exam preparation hot house’, helping students to get through their GCSE exams.

“He’s really popular, but he’s very strict; he’s one of the old school teachers, you know? Parents come from miles around; as far as Leeds. They pay a couple of thousand pounds per pupil.” I started to wonder about the parents of these children, imagining expensive cars pulling up to the Healy House Hotel entrance, leaving their half asleep children who were grumpy because they would rather be watching television or playing video games. “He works the students really hard so they get great results; he’s really respected”.

Sarah took her credit card statement and put it in her bag. I misheard something Martin had said; he started to make a joke about it.

“I asked my wife the other day whether she needed any ‘hosiery’. She said, ‘what?’ She had never heard of it! She didn’t know what hosiery was! So, I told her: you know, tights! She had never heard of hosiery! Can you believe that?”

“How long have you been married?”

“Twenty years” A cleaner who had been pushing a vacuum cleaner through the reception area started to laugh. Martin shook his head. “You know what, some people have real trouble saying the word ‘fire extinguisher’” The Healy House Hotel seemed like a fun place to work.

We put our bags in the car, and set off: we needed to find a path back to the M62. We would head towards Manchester and continue onwards, following the signs to Liverpool. We were going to St Helens. We traversed a map that Sarah had printed out and soon got lost amongst the Yorkshire streets and houses, but I didn’t mind; it was a pleasant lost. Despite being a little chilly, the streets had a friendly and cosy feel, amplified by the soft tone of the Yorkshire stone.

As we drove, the streets changed from being empty and quiet, to busy and full. We picked our way through streets and navigated around roundabouts and onto the motorway. Despite being early, and a Sunday morning, it was unexpectedly busy. I switched on the windscreen wipers, and then increased their pace: we were reacquainting ourselves with the Manchester rain. As we climbed into the Pennines, the sky darkened as the clouds became closer. The character of the rain had changed: it had become heavy and dense. Traffic slowed, but remained constant.

“How are you driving in the rain?”

I didn’t mind driving in the rain; it’s all about being sensible. As I drove, I had a memory: I remember driving through a rainstorm between Sheffield and Manchester. I was driving on the A57, which is known as Snake Pass. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a cracked distributor cap. As I drove, rain lashed down onto the front of the car and into the bonnet. Part way across the Pennines, the rain unsettled the electrics of my car, causing it to a stop. I didn’t tell Sarah any of this; I didn’t want to worry her.

We counted down the junctions until we reached the M60 and the outskirts of Manchester. We continued to count again when we continued along the M62, heading towards Merseyside and the coast. As we approached the junction that we wanted, the rain had softened; it was less aggressive, but still persistent.

Our destination was a village called Clock Face, which is situated between Widnes and St Helens; towns I had never visited and knew nothing about. The whole area represented a gap in my geographic understanding of England. The names Bold Heath, Prescot, Huton and Newton-le-Willows meant nothing to me. I had no family connections, and no reason to visit any of them. I did, however, know someone who lived in Widnes, but she wasn’t able to meet; she was laid up in bed with a nasty cold.

We turned off the motorway, navigated a roundabout, and accelerated down unfamiliar country lanes, our windscreen wipers running constantly. I remember passing fields, rural houses and bungalows, wondering what there was to do in this area.

“This is it; this is Clock Face” I said, as we saw some signs. I couldn’t help but feel that I would have been happier if we were visiting Clock House, which is a short cycle ride away from where I live in South East London. I slowed down. Low clouds had returned. Tightly packed red brick terrace houses sat next to the road. I caught a glimpse of the Clock Face labour club; a post office, a crèche, and then a pub; the pub that bears the name of the area: ‘The Clock Face’.

We pulled into the car park and put on our jackets, and walked over to the pub. It had started to pour down with rain; car tyres hissed as they drove past. I pushed the door. I then pulled the door. It was locked. I tried another door. The pub was closed. I wasn’t happy. I hadn’t dressed for rain, and I was starting to get wet. I needed a coffee.

We got back into the car and continued along down the road, and into another area called Lea. I saw another pub that was just off a large roundabout; it looked big and cars in the car park suggested that it was open. It too was locked. Clock Face and Lea seemed to be closed for business.

Sarah had done a bit of research; a family friend (who lived close to Adlington, but a different one to the one that we visited) had told her about something called Dream; public art work that was situated very close to Clock Face. The only thing to do around Clock Face was to visit the “Dream”.

We got back into the car and started to drive back in the direction of Clock Face. As I returned to the roundabout, I saw a sign to “Dream”, our new destination. A few roundabouts later, we were at the official “Dream” parking space. It appeared we were not the only visitors; there was another couple who had also parked up, and who were armed with umbrellas.

The Dream is a twenty metre high sculpture, made of concrete, of a girl’s head. It sits within the grounds of Sutton Manor Colliery, which closed in 1991. In 2004 work began to create a wild life park and Dream was commissioned as a part of a ‘big art’ project with the intention of it becoming the park’s centre piece. Clear signposts directed us across a road and into the park and onto a footpath that took us on an undulating route past a copse of young trees. There was absolutely no sign of an industrial past, just greenery, tree and mud. The rain had turned into a cloying light mist which defeated our single umbrella.

Around a corner and up an incline, we caught our first sight of Dream. It was a striking object; its size was super human, but also relatable in the way that another big sculpture, The Angel of The North isn’t. The girl’s head had been vertically elongated, making it difficult to appreciate its proportions, creating a sense of disorientation. It stood on a formal plinth, which we stepped on and then walked across. What was once bright white concrete, mixed with marble, nearly ten years of rain had streaked the head with grey tears, emphasising the components of its construction.

I later read on the Dream website that the artist wrote: “the girl’s eyes are closed, looking inward. This is in part my homage to the miners and their dream of light when underground”. There was also a reference to the hopes of members of the local community, and the reference to their post-industrial aspirations.

I looked around. Sarah and I were the only visitors; the other couple had disappeared. We had found Clock Face, and had seen the Dream.

“Shall we go?” I asked.

Sarah’s boots were leaking. Our umbrella was broken. I wasn’t wearing a waterproof jacket, and my glasses were spotted with drizzle. I was starting to become hungry and grumpy, but I also felt something else: I had a sense of place anxiety; I felt unnerved, not just by Dream, but also by Clock Face. Perhaps this feeling came from knowing how quiet the village was, or perhaps it was just because of the rain, the dullness of the early spring light and the need to constantly accept the unfamiliar.

There was another dimension: an awareness that something had once happened in Sutton Manor, and now there was nothing; just the occasional dog walker and day tripper. I later read that Clock Face was once a colliery too. Silence now existed where once there was the constant crashing of machinery; sounds that I would never know and never hear; a sense of history passing, of a difficult-to-imagine industrial past that was, in itself, difficult to live through.

Back in the car, I had a look at the map, tried to memorise some road numbers and then set off towards Manchester. Before we found the motorway, I took a wrong turn and I found myself amidst a set of red brick terrace houses; homes for colliers. The streets were empty of people; cars sitting on sides of roads were the only sign of life.

There was another landmark; a pub called The Smithy Manor. It was derelict and forgotten; a desperate looking building guarded by high fences. I assumed it was a pub or a social club that had once had a close link with the former colliery; a physical representation of both economic and social change. My feeling of ‘place anxiety’, as I called it had returned, moments before I accelerated out of Sutton Manor, through a set of unfamiliar roundabouts, and onto the M62.