A century ago, there was never the prospect of a summer holiday at the beach for the poor of an inland county. But some found themselves a substitute. Over tea and biscuits at his Luton home, the late eminent botanist, social historian and Fabian Dr John Dony once told me that on sunny days the town’s hat workers and their families flocked to a riverside meadow up the road. The grownups were nicknamed after the manufacturing process of Luton’s biggest industry, so Leagrave Marsh was duly called the “Blockers’ Seaside”.
Twenty miles to the north, a spot under a weir on the River Ivel known locally as “the trap” became this year’s lockdown seaside. Adults lounged on the gently sloping grass bank, and their little children ran about, some leaning at the river’s edge with gaudy rockpooling nets in hand. Water roared over the weir close by, as if in imitation of the sea. In those weeks when the sun shone forever and most people stayed at home, it seemed the trap had become a release, a pop-up attraction, an adventure playground.
At about the time when Lutonians were playing with mudcastles further south, this place lived up to its name. Though no photographs or drawings survive, in all probability fishermen slung up a contraption here that looked like a multistorey stack of lobster pots. This was one of the river’s many eel traps and it proved a profitable industry – eels sold for a shilling a pound. However, the Ivel’s 20th-century weirs may have sped these fish towards extinction by blocking their migration.
On mornings after the tide of people go out, I clear a strandline of plastic bottles, drinks cans, sweet and crisp wrappers. Once, a light object on bare ground caught my eye and I picked up the clay stem of a smoker’s pipe, swollen where it had broken at the base of the bowl. Perhaps it had snapped in the fingers of an eel trapper? I began to combine litter picking with beachcombing, the next time fossicking under a hedge to find the mouthpiece of another pipe, decorated shards of broken cups and plates, and a shiny 5p piece. A pound of eels, please!
