His Walk to School

A fiction piece woven with what seems to be genuine historical detail.

It was on the road which goes from Llanymynech to Llansantffraid.  This road of gentle bends and sloping distances was the way I went to the village school.  A road which had all length, each turning a hated landmark.  A road banked with brown, humming, telephones poles and thickets of thorn and ash; patches of vetch and bird’s foot trefoil and one whole field which was yellow with long-stalked cowslips.  And the road had wide verges in places; there the County Council workmen set their heaps of dirty chippings and their black and white tar barrels.  Once in a while … And although lengths of this road to the village were bright and clear, even at night when the moon was high, under this avenue it was always dark…

This road remains much the same even today, in this mid-century when my childhood seems dim and set far way in the magic of the nineteen-twenties.  People must change, but thirty years makes little difference to the prospect, its roads and its houses, its bridges and river reaches.  To the left of this road, just outside the village, is an ivy-covered water mill under which a mill race beats itself perpetually to foam and dances out loudly under the arches of the river bridge.

Near the bridge is a carpenter’s shop where coffins are made, and once down there was a gaunt little slaughterhouse which poured red blood from a small drain into the clean river.

By the mill is also a square house where the miller once lived.  I remember school days when this house suddenly was burned down in the night and stood late from bed and amazed at the waterfalls of melting lead.

A slow slope leads up to the village bridge and there is a tall pole with a solitary, moth-attracting light which the Parish Council upkeeps by a lighting rate.  A hedge of bramble edges the bank on one side, and on the other is a fence of wooden boards through the cracks of which the river water can be seen.  A smooth wall runs up to the bridge where in the summer youths sit; and courting couples are chaperoned in winter by this solitary light.

The bridge itself is narrow and two-arched and built of grey, gentle stone.  This is the link between two parishes; narrow and low-walled and with room for one car only.

If anyone has knowledge, memories, or family stories about these places we’d absolutely love to hear more. Your insight could help bring this curious little tale to life.