POEM INSPIRED BY VALLEY

A POEM that I was inspired to write after returning to the amazing Valley: CHANGING TIMES I can see the effects of Industrialisation

Rows and rows of houses, built to accommodate mass urbanisation,

Lancashire was the cotton centre right from the start,

Putting Manchester on the map, it played a huge part,

People coughing and spluttering from the smoke and pollution,

It had to stop somewhere, so they brought in a solution.

The dark satanic chimneys, only a few exist,

And the once filled pubs where workers got [drunk]

The metal posts are the first of their kind, you know,

Before this we got our metal from Russia, deep in snow

Houses thrown up at the side of these rivers,

On marshy land, the thought sends me in shivers.

There was no education, only school at church,

Children as young as five, skipping school for a job search,

The rivers and streams which worked the waterwheels,

Now families splash and play and eat their ready meals,

Coal used to be king, it was a local resource,

But that’s before the coal mines closed of course

Some Belgian cloggers ended up working in a mill,

Somewhere in Bolton, just over the hill,

Barefoot children could now wear shoes,

But they were all the same, they didn’t know who’s was who’s,

They were modified to suit the Rossendale roads,

In fact, mass produced, there were loads and loads,

There’s a place in Rossendale called wares well,

It’s a place where traders used to sell,

The tram lines and tunnels that provided the trains,

Grown over, blocked up and smelling of drains,

The trains stopped coming when the motorway was built,

just as the economy was starting to wilt. Robert Anthony Owen via email