It was tempting fate, but I had to try. In recent years, whenever I looked in at the old pond at Cressbrook Mill, I’d see the electric arc of a kingfisher zipping along the water’s edge, like a blue slit in the air’s fabric. It was something to lift the heart, especially on days of trial and doubt. This time: nothing.
Never mind. There was no shortage of interest: a mandarin duck at the pond’s distant end and a pair of coots bustling along, white faces like Venetian masks, their proud look belying their gleeful abandon when at intervals they ducked under the water. Near my feet was a clump of marsh marigolds, vibrantly yellow and lusciously green. And beside that a sparkling clear torrent that sank from view into a tunnel heading for the old water-powered cotton mill on the other side of the road.
Cotton transformed this quiet corner of Derbyshire. There was no Cressbrook Mill before the 18th century; the name itself only came into being at this time. A local businessman called John Baker, a hosier from nearby Litton, took over the land when it was first enclosed, cleared undergrowth and planted watercress around the stream, peppermint and lavender beds, and, on the hillside above, fruit trees and filberts. The cress did well, and so a place once known as Grassbrook became Cressbrook. Then Baker sold out to Richard Arkwright and cotton took over. The handsome mill that stands here now was built in 1814.
Staring at the stream below, I became absorbed in the elegance of the tunnel’s stonework, pondering the hours it must have taken, and the sweat. The valley floor here is strewn with such features. You can think of them as fossils, the petrified remains of a lost epoch. Or else like the junk DNA in our genome, made for some other purpose entirely, and now either just along for the ride, or co-opted for fresh purposes, like the new hydroelectric scheme nearby.
The coots don’t care, nor do the marigolds. For them, the anxieties and aspirations of past generations are simply niches to exploit: nature, wherever and whenever it can, remaking the worlds we leave behind. And I take comfort in that.
