The Ned Wood Archive

The slogan that hovers between the headstone and her eyes

I went home for the weekend. Roundabout Easter, this would be. And bumped into Anna Mulcahy, home from university or work. Which was it? Was she living in Twickenham then? Can’t remember. Anyway, she suggested we go up to the Peaks. Wants to see some churches. She’s into religious icons. Images in churches. Like in that film about a month in the country with Natasha Richardson. Came out of her philosophy degree, I think. Sort of a hangover from some rebellion against her Catholic upbringing, maybe. Of course, I’d been back to Chee Dale a couple of times on my own, but before I did my mapping, we used to go up to Dovedale: me, Anna, and the rest of her crew.

Let me tell you a bit about what she was like, cos I don’t think you know her. She was a year or two younger than me. Our kid’s age. Went to the girl’s school. She looked a bit old fashioned – you know Joyce Grenfell in St Trinian’s sort of thing. But she was the sort of person who became the centre of attention whenever they entered a room. She had presence. That’s the only word for it. Well, it may not be the only word. I don’t know, I’m not that literate. Anna would tell you whether there’s another word. She knew all the long words. And used them. And she knew how to use her presence. She was full of ideas and would take control of every situation. Like organising parties at her place. Like deciding where we should all go. But she needed folk to go with her. Nessie would decide to go some place and go off with or without you. Anna would decide to go some place but only go if she could arrange to have a gang to go with her. She needed her acolytes.

This Easter weekend, she’s got a list of different places to go. I say yeah, I’ll go with her. I don’t mind having someone else set the agenda. I don’t know the Peak District that well yet. Obviously I know round Miller’s Dale cos I spent a whole summer up there. But there’s loads of places I haven’t been yet and I think, yep, let’s explore. So I drive and she navigates.

First she takes me to a church in one of the Ridwares. Pipe or Mavesyn or Hill or whatever. Can’t remember which. I know them from when our Dad used to visit a friend of his that worked on a farm there and took us. Not in the Peak District, I know, but on the way. Then we go through Ashbourne and take the Dovedale turning, but we drive on straight past Thorpe Cloud and down that wide open hillside with sheep and cattle all over the road and go past Dovedale itself and onto the next village. And another church. That’s what the whole day is, old churches here and there. She’s looking at things like the stained glass windows and the alters and the fonts and all that jazz. She even knows who made one of the windows. I look for angels in the church yards or up in the rafters, but there aren’t that many.

She does most of the talking. She controls the conversation, asking me stuff but then using whatever answer I give her to steer the discussion wherever she wants it to go. Did I say “discussion”? More like soliloquy sometimes. Or sermon. Partly what she thinks about herself and partly what she thinks about me. I can, occasionally, suggest a subject matter. Like when I say that I spend my time up in Scotland worrying about the differences between the Scottish and the English and I get the Anna Mulcahy monologue on identity. She’s not English, she tells me, despite having been born and brought up in Staffordshire and despite having lived all her life just round the corner from me. She’s not Irish, despite having a Dad who tells everyone how Irish he is. She tells me she’s Celtic Catholic, whatever that is. I never find out how that manifests itself in her personality (and I realise now that there’s no reason why it should). But I do think that it gives her access to the sort of catholic guilt stuff that was big in those days to use in her soliloquys. Not just James Joyce, but stuff like that Once a Catholic play that was really popular back then.

We go up near a place called Pilsbury Castle but we don’t stop. This is frontier country. The border between Viking Danelaw and Saxon Mercia was somewhere round here, but this castle was built by the Normans. Don’t know why. Maybe the locals needed looking after. We go past a massive 300 million year old coral reef sticking up out of the ground like a gigantic dragon’s back. We don’t stop. Anna’s in charge. She’s a bit bossy like that. She likes to tell us stories about how her Mom bosses her Dad, all to reinforce her aura of control. Like when he was late home for dinner one night and got served baked beans while everyone else had a roast. Like when he said something out of line and had his pudding, custard and all, tipped over him at the dining table. Like when all his certificates and awards get hung up on the wall in the downstairs toilet.

We have lunch at one of the old places I used to go to in Buxton. The town’s built out of the same sandstone as Edinburgh and we could easily be somewhere in Auld Reekie. All black sooty buildings. Wonderful. After lunch, we drive past my old haunts near Miller’s Dale. But we don’t stop. Like I say, I’m not in control here. But I’m not fussed. It would be a bit of a walk to Chee Dale either along the river, which’ll be overgrown and flooded and Anna doesn’t do mud, or through the abandoned tunnel which would also be out because Anna doesn’t do any of that spooky darkness with spiders stuff either. In any case, I like to keep those places up round Chee Dale special. I only go on my own so they can be my private meditation space.

So we go to Tideswell cathedral and Anna’s telling me the things I should know, but I’m getting churched out. However, I do get a kick out of the weird animals they put on the fonts in a couple of these places. One’s got a couple of lions or something eating these human heads. Another’s got some sort of dinosaur on it, like a Diplodocus or something. And there are a couple of old sandstone pillars with Saxon decorations on them that are interesting, but I’m starting to flag. I agree to one more place to visit, on the edge of the Peak District, on the way home. We end up in this small church yard with a few graves here and there and, in one corner, this massive stone pillar with old, old carvings on it.

We’re looking at it, trying to make out what the carvings represent when this old bloke ambles out of the church and starts chatting. He’s the caretaker or the guardian or whatever it is that they call the bloke that does all of the legwork for the church: cleans it out, sets up the stuff for the services – books and flowers and all that jazz, opens the door in the morning, locks it at night, that sort of stuff. As we chat, it’s obvious that he does so much more. He’s researched the history of the church, the village, the local Norman overlord, everything. He takes on the responsibility for safeguarding and caring for its treasures. And he just loves telling you about it. Luckily, he’s got this style that makes him interesting. So we follow him inside and he shows us a rather beautiful stained glass window with angels worshipping a lamb – Anna says that’s a representation of Jesus. I look closely at the angels, but don’t recognise any of them. (To be honest, I didn’t recognise the lamb, either.) Then there are a few pieces of Scandinavian wood with various patterns on them – we’re told these are the remains of a viking panel. I don’t see Pete’s name mentioned.

Then he shows us a few blocks of sandstone that he’s squirrelled away in a small closet behind the organ. He says that he’s rescued them from various farm walls around the village over the past twenty or thirty years. He claims that the stone pillar we were looking at before was part of a giant Anglo Saxon cross and that these stones sat on top of it.
There are two more angels and another image that looks remarkably familiar. Our church warden explains: the main carving on the pillar outside is of the crucifixion. Then there are two figures which represent the local Saxon big wigs from the time that the cross was commissioned. And, then there is what he calls the coronation scene. The stone is worn, but I recognise it now. It’s the scene in that picture from the book I found in Edinburgh. In the old bookshop. The king sitting on a stone and beneath the king something carved on the stone he’s sat on. And I have to admit, it looks more like a sword than anything else.

So now I’ve got a photo. I show Gav when I get back to Marchmont and when he gets back to Marchmont and he swears it is like his book from Teviot library. And to be honest, it is a bit like the picture he drew.

But that can easily be explained away. This sitting on a stone habit must be more widespread than just Scotland. Maybe everyone did it then. Like standing on a trig point to show that you’re the king. Like Nessie Fazackerly and Chopper Truman. And the sword? Maybe artistic licence? Maybe accident? Maybe that cross came first and was the actual inspiration for Mallory or TE White or whoever dreamed up the Sword-in-the-Stone Stone in the first place.

And I remember what Cat tells us: nations are defined by the stories they tell. So the Scottish love the story about the stone and love being the victims so love the story about the English having nicked it. And the English love being in control and love the story about having been the ones that stole it. So if it didn’t exist we would have had to have invented it. Both of us: the English and the Scottish.