New Year, new blog

A frosty start to my New Year's resolution to keep track of my patch. Up the White Lane with Maisie to Woodthorpe where snags of sheep fleece on the fences are laced with rime. The snapping cold sits sharp in my chest. Whitened pines at the top are like the ornaments on Christmas cakes. Everything has become faery and the air is so still, almost palpable. Bass hum of the traffic on Baslow Road, distant cronk of ravens.

Then along Fanshawegate Lane to the Hall where I hoped to meet the owners to ask about its history, but no such luck. I recently discovered that George Adams, the socialist sandalmaker and erstwhile friend of Edward Carpenter was living here in 1901 and drew it for the republished journal of Lady Anne Fanshawe. Lady Anne was the stimulus for the recent Channel 4 drama about the Civil War - The Devil's Whore.

On Boxing Day, I found another of the houses Adams lived in with his wife Lucy after he fell out with Carpenter - Adamfield on Fox Lane. I'm rapidly becoming an expert (bore?) on the obscurer reaches of North Derbyshire socialist history....