I’m in my secret place. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. You can’t see it from the road. You can’t see it from the old warehouse building where I work. It’s tucked around the corner, behind a line of dilapidated outhouses on the site of a Victorian textile mill. I come down here most lunchtimes.
It’s a bit treacherous, picking your way across the yard, random debris from a builder’s yard underfoot and the wreckage of last year’s flood still lying around, now softened with beige thistledown. Plenty of snags to get caught on too – brambles loaded with plump blackberries, and clumps of the aptly named bristly oxtongue in among the Viking-horned spires of teasel.
There’s a scaffolding pole at waist height to stop you falling into the river, and a stone ledge just the right height to sit on. The Fox Brothers factory grew up around the river – a tributary of the Tone – and has been here since 1796. The company flourished through the Victorian era, and by the early 20th century it employed over 5,000 people: one of the largest woollen mills in Europe. The river was used to power the machinery as well as to wash and dye the cloth.
Today is one of those Goldilocks days – not too hot, not too cold, 24 degrees, blue sky, fluffy clouds, cool breeze. The river unfurls like goods being shown off by a sari vendor – just look at the detail, madam: an emerald patch of water crowfoot, its surface sparkling with demoiselles, the pink floral border embroidered with Himalayan balsam and purple loosestrife. A thread of turquoise silk zips past: kingfisher.
Teasels tower over me like late-night revellers, their mauve skirts in tatters. In the derelict factory opposite, you can still see the old rolling machine, its massive iron roller lined with long-dead teasel seedheads that were used to “tease” out the nap of the cloth. The metal is rusted, but these natural pincushions are still sharp enough to draw blood.
Lunchtime over, I head back to work to resume needle-felting acoustic sound absorbers out of woollen felt, along with my fellow cloud-makers. The ghosts of old mill workers might recognise – even approve of – the craft that still carries on among the bones of their old factory, teasels and all.
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