Walking down a street

 

WORD ON THE STREET

Resident? Visitor? Tourist, troubador or ghost, we’re looking for poems, snippets and short stories that celebrate ( or haunt, or disturb) Buxton’s Spring Gardens

Deadline: 31^st January 2023

Send as word doc to: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

Main project information on this blog, here

This post is to share images of Spring Gardens…..old photos a painting and generally though-provoking scenes…where we have dates, they’ll be dated

These images are here to intrigue, provoke, and hopefully inspire! If you live in Buxton, try standing in the same place as the photo and reflect on the changes you can see, feel, imagine....this is a rather random selection. We'll post more streamlined selections over the next few weeks

1820, view along Spring Gardens - Sheffield turnpike road	Grove Hotel and bottom of Terrace Road	Lawson's Vaults, No 2 Spring Gardens
Miller's Cafe, Spring Gardens, 1928	Milton's Head pub	corner of Spring Gardens and Terrace Road
looking towards the Crescent and the Slopes, including Winster Place and Royal Hotel	a parade in the rain	Shakespeare Hotel

All teeth and claws

 The Lost Cats of Derbyshire
a new project, public events and a wonderful procession

cave lion skull in Buxton Museum

Once upon a time, big cats roamed the hills round Buxton. Scimitar-toothed cats* (Victory Quarry, Dove Holes) were here when humans wandered into the Peaks about 30,000 years ago, while cave lions lingered until about 12,000 years ago, (Hindlow Cave, near Earl Sterndale). Lynx loitered longer than anyone realised and might have been prowling Scottish forests into this millennium. Then there are our domestic moggies now, offering affection and purrs and sometimes causing chaos among our small birds and mammals

And, of course, at the moment, we have Mysterious Big Cats being reported like shadowy ghosts from across the county!

 

We’re celebrating cats! Especially the Lost Cats of our hills, cats who knew this land in different climates, with warmer– or colder – days and using their stories to look at the world around us as it changes again

 

cave lion reconstruction

As part of the Our Street programme with Buxton’s Heritage Action Zone, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery are bringing these lost cats back to the town. We’ll look at the animals that used to live here, reflecting on their lives as climates changed and wondering what they might make of our modern world and how our cats will respond to current climate changes. Connecting with the Art Fund’s The Wild Escape initiative, this project will use museum collections (we have amazing fossils and bones in Buxton Museum) to inspire people to reach out from those Museums and explore the world around us in new ways

 

Homotherium reconstruction

A partnership between the Museum, and Our Street, Lost Cats will draw together other local groups as well. Buxton Civic Association, the Babbling Vagabonds, Stone and Water and ourselves here at Creeping Toad are all involved. There will be a programme of events encouraging public participation. As the project develops further, there might be art exhibitions, origami cat workshops and a mysterious cat trail along Spring Gardens with the Our Street Youth Board. 

 

Events will be posted on the Museum, Creeping Toad and Stone and Water blogs and through the social media of all the partners (links below)

 

Getting started

drawing a tiger's eye

Big Cats: Big Pictures: our first event on Thursday January 5^th at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery….details to follow. This will be a free event, inviting people to look at the Collection’s fossils and bones, handle models, sketch, draw, colour and while we can’t do lifesize pictures of scimitar-toothed cats, we can probably manage a picture as big as a cave lion’s face….

 

Look out for:

• Another event on Thursday 23^rd February
• d-i-y guide to making your own Big Cat Puppet to join the procession
• more events in March and April
• workshops for local schools

 

All this activity, will build up to a procession, the Carnival of the Cats on Earth Day, Saturday 22^nd April 2023. A parade of big cats, small cats, cat-masked children, ancient ghost cat puppets will prowl along Spring Gardens and into Pavilion Gardens.There in the gardens, we’ll invite people to bring along their own snacks for a Kitty-cat Picnic (what would you bring for such a picnic? Mouse-shaped cakes? Sabre-tooth baguettes? Crunchy cat claws?). 

 

From museum displays, through the shopping streets of our town and into the Gardens that grow in the heart of Buxton, we’ll bring lost cats, forgotten cats, modern cats and maybe even future felines and have a celebration of the wildlife of Derbyshire.

 

*Our cats are Homotherium: their teeth aren't as big as those of "sabre-tooth" cats so they are usually labelled scimitars!

Images: 

• photos are from Buxton Museum and Art Gallery's collection
• "Tiger's eye" and "scribbled lion" are by Gordon MacLellan
• Cave lion and Homotherium reconstructions are from online sources with thanks and apologies to the artists responsible

 

 

 

Spring Garden's stories

 A WORD ON THE STREET 

we're looking for new poems about Buxton's Spring Gardens
Resident? Visitor? Tourist, troubadour or ghost, we’re looking for poems, snippets and short stories that celebrate ( or haunt, or disturb) Buxton’s Spring Gardens

Shakespeare Hotel

Deadline: 31^st January 2023

Work needs to be your own (or submitted with original author's credit and permission!)

Length: please keep it short: no more than 500 words/ Ownership remains yours....if further publication of work arising from this project looks likely, we'll come back to you for formal agreements

Send as word doc to: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

 

Miller's Cafe and Tea Room

To take a walk along Spring Gardens in Buxton is to wander through a slice of the town’s history. The Grove Hotel at one end is said to have been named in memory of a sacred grove from the town’s Roman and pre-Roman history. Metal arcades hail from the heyday of  visitors “taking the waters” (baths can still be seen (but not taken) in the Cavendish Arcade and the Pump Room). The Springs Arcade is more recent, as are many of the shops, but they still hold secrets, hide secrets, and sit squarely beside or on top of relics of other times. 

Memories linger. The Shakespeare Garage is the last legacy of the Shakespeare Hotel and the Shakespeare Theatre. Tucked away courtyards speak of other street patterns.

Everything changes. The Picture House that became the Spa Cinema has gone but the NatWest corner that once sported an ice cream parlour and an intriguing flight of steps is now going to change again.

 

What matters to you when you walk along the Gardens: a shopping list, a café, this shop or that shop, a friend you’re going to meet, a pigeon sitting on an awning watching you?

 

Milton's Head Pub?

As part of the Our Street project within the Buxton Heritage Action Zone, “Word on the Street” is collecting poems. What might inspire you to scribble a sketch with words? To tell us a tale of shopping? To slide through time to earlier days? To turn a shopping list into rhythm and rhyme? We are mostly looking for poems (or short prose pieces) around spring Gardens but if you wanted to write about Buxton as a whole or other aspects pf the town, please do! All of this work will feed into a drop-in day for the public on February 19^th 2023 at The Pump Room (times will follow) where some of the work received will feature in a small exhibition. Work will also appear in a series of posts here for you to read, laugh at and share with all your friends, relatives and the neighbours who really annoy you….Sorry, no prizes but our thanks, no reward but public delight (hopefully) in your words

 

Where might you start?

• New shops, old shops
• Go shopping through time – look at the photos!
• Or people-watching through time
• hidden places: the River Wye runs in culverts under The Springs
• lost places: Shakespeare Theatre for one
• Charity shopping
• Café life (so many tables in the Gardens, so many places to stop and chat – both now and 100 years ago)
• Wells: the Children’s Well at the western end is the most recent addition to our town’s collection of wells
• Individual shops and spaces: an assignation in Hargreave’s Tea Rooms (now, or maybe 100 years ago?)
• Music, celebration, an older route for the carnival….
• Winter in Buxton…..(there's a lovely post by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery about winters here....)

CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR A GROWING GALLERY OF HISTORIC IMAGES FROM SPRING GARDENS

 

The Picture House

Writing ideas? Need a thought to get you started?

Take a word, add another, add a feeling, season and spice and see what comes next

 

Inspiration: there are some historic images of Spring Gardens here, more will follow

 

Stuck for what to write? Try: 

• an acrostic: take the name of a shop perhaps and let the letters of that become the first letters of the lines of a poem
• a haiku: three lines, 5 syllables, 7 syllables then 5 again: ideally there are two observations (lines 1 and 2) then your own response (line 3)…the syllables aren’t fixed…think as 2 observations, a breath and a reaction and improvise!
• Rhyme if you want to (street, feet, neat, door, more, sore, shop, drop, pop….lots of easy rhymes along the Gardens) but you don’t have to!
• Take a set of phrases about Spring Gardens and try jumbling them up and create a journey of images along the Gardens
• limerick if you need to! usually lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme with 8 or 9 syllables, while 3 and 4 rhyme and have 5 or 6 syllables...

 

OUR STREET

‘Our Street’ will bring Buxton people together. Through a series of events and activities, we’ll support local artists and organisations to connect communities with Spring Gardens and its surrounding streets. We’ll celebrate the heritage of the area, have fun and create lasting memories for participants and audiences, locals and visitors, young and old.

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

many thanks to Buxton Museum and Art Gallery and Derbyshire County Council for supplying these (and more) wonderful images of an older version of Spring Gardens

Spring Gardens looking towards the Crescent

Lawson's Vaults, No. 2 Spring Gardens

corner of Spring Gardens and Terrace Road: look at the level of the road!