Ghosts of Industry: Christow, England

The countryside in and around the village of Christow, in the southwest of England, is as bucolic as all get out. The hillsides are covered in trees and sheep-filled meadows. The houses are beautiful old stone structures, and, in some cases, they have thatched roofs that seem to have been around since medieval times.

Much of the country around there is part of Dartmoor National Park, and there are awesome moors nearby where heather-covered hills undulate far into the distance.

You drive along one-lane roads where the hedges stand like soft green walls, and, in places, the leaves brush both sides of your car as you pass through. And when a car or tractor comes from the opposite direction, watch out! You may have to back up 20 yards to find a place in the road that's wide enough to accommodate two vehicles.

While walking, or between infrequent encounters with autos, you might see a fox trotting along the road or hear people talking on the other side of a hedge--but never see them.

Former Bennah Mine headquarters.

Yet this delightful pastoral scenery hides a surprising past. From the early 1800s until the 1950s, this was a bustling mining region. They mined silver, lead, copper and other metals in pit mines powered in the early days with steam turbines.

That charming old farm house was once a mine headquarters. The tumble-down stone wall was the remnants of a powerhouse. Those handsome stone chimneys once took away the smoke of burning coal.

Former powerhouse and chimney.

The only pub in Christow, the Artichoke Inn, has been operating since at least 1165--and most probably longer. Nathan, the manager, told us it had been a recruiting site during the Crusades. He also told us it was haunted by the ghost of an old woman. She passed by while he was sitting at the bar one night. The sight of her made the hair on his arms stand on end.

There were some wonderful old photos on the walls of the Inn.

 

Some of the mine shafts went down 500 feet. The miners blasted the rock faces with an explosive jelly, gelignite, which was made by dissolving cotton in nitroglycerine and mixing it with wood pulp and saltpeter. After blasting, they dug out chunks of ore with picks and shovels.

I found a local oral history book in the house where we stayed. They used horses on the farms until the mid 1930s, when tractors came in. There was no electricity in the village until 1949. One of the oldsters, Len Bushen, said: "The valley used to be very productive. There were the mines, two quarries, and the concrete works--and now there's nothing. Taken over by big firms and then shut down."

This has been the pattern all over the world during the past 150 years. Locally owned businesses are sold to large corporations based elsewhere--which maximize profits and have little regard for the local people or environment. Then bad stuff ensues.

We had a drink in the Artichoke Inn.

My nephew James told me that mine operators in Mexico brought in miners from Devon. The miners took with them a local dish, the Devon Pasty. which is made by folding meat and vegetables in a pastry dough and baking it. The pasties were practical for taking down into the mines. In Mexico, he said, the Devon Pasty evolved into the empanada. This story is echoed by others, but I read elsewhere that empanadas came to central and south America from Galicia, in northwestern Spain. So, who knows?

I want to leave you with a couple of bucolic photographs:

Moonrise over the hedge.

Poet Mary Oliver said that the spirits of the dead rest in the tops of trees. I would add: hedges. Our patriarch, Bob Hamm, who died in February, was watching over us in Christow.