Words in bombazine and crepe

 

Words in bombazine and crepe...

Words on the Street

final collections

In bombazine and crepe,

Public attention she’d crave

So magazines she courted

And with photographers flirted….

(Vol 1, p11)

We asked the questions 

 

What words might tell 

The tale of a town?

What rhymes might wreck reputations

And wake a tourist’s frown?

 

 

We scattered images over tabletops: 100 years of Spring Gardens’ shops, café, hotels and more.

We scribbled, talked, laughed, composed more carefully and generally dived into the richness of a single street. That in itself is intriguing: following the changing patterns of shopfronts, street furniture and the buildings themselves. And the wonders of shop window displays from the Ladybird Book fortnight (1960s) to knitting displays, sweet shop temptations….

 

As workshop artists we loved it all and were delighted when our visitors responded with as much enthusiasm. Enthusiasm that went in direction we wouldn’t have expected – words from the pigeons who’ve seen it all, thoughts about geese passing high overhead, a reflective monologue over a flat white, Greek Mythology (go on, find the Medusa story in Volume 3 and then go and find Medusa’s daughter among the carved faces on our buildings)…

As we reach the end of the Words on the Street project from the Buxton Our Street initiative, we'd like to share the richness (and craziness) of the work that we've received. We ended up with so much material that we can’t just post it here but you can download the work through the link, here:

Words on the Street poems and stories

There are three files. They are not particularly big files or really that long, just hugely varied!

You will find:

• Volume 1: contributions we received by email and our own practice pieces, sued to give participants ideas
• Volume 2: work from our friends at Borderland Voices: the BV regular writing group took Buxton’s Spring Gardens and the thought of a town’s “High Street” as a theme for their writing for a couple of sessions.
• Volume 3: Buxton Community School: here is an explosion of poems and stories from year 7 students at Buxton Community School.

Through the Words on the Street project we have been hugely helped by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Borderland Voices, and Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust. Our thanks go to these friends and to all the authors, poets, storytellers and troublemakers who have contributed to the project!
 

SPRING GARDENS

Should we plant

Pear trees and pink

Roses

In tubs and beds

Neatly along the

Gardens?

 

Gathering apples and 

Red, ripe raspberries might

Delight

Everyone, inviting them to

Nibble greedily

(Vol 1, p11)

 

Words on the Street

 

Words on the Street

a celebration of Spring Gardens
The Pump Room, The Crescent, Buxton SK17 6BQ

public event Sunday 19th February 2023

11am - 3pm

story and poem exhibition also open on Saturday 18th

strange stories, gruesome anecdotes, ridiculous rhymes, poignant poems and the changing faces of shop windows all wrapped around 100 years of photographs,

What words will tell the story of a street? What words would raise a shopping smile, or provoke a cafe frown? What pictures get us talking? Join us for a walk through time in the comfort of the Pump Room in Buxton. With photographs from more than a hundred years of shops and shoppers on Buxton’s Spring Gardens, we’re inviting people to stop, chat, maybe pick up a cuppa and talk a bit more, write a poem or add their own words to our growing collective poem…There will be beautiful poems to read and ridiculous limericks to laugh over; or maybe don’t say anything at all and simply enjoy pictures of bathchairs on Terrace Road and Ladybird Book displays in WH Smiths and a legacy of ice cream parlours and sweet shops on the Gardens

 

Saturday 18th: exhibition of stories and poems on display in Pump Room (lots of pieces from Buxton Community School) - still there for excitement, alarm and despair on the Sunday, 11am - 4pm

Sunday 19th

Drop in during the day, the event is free (you have to buy your own drinks!) 

Times: 11am – 3.00pm

Materials provided

The Pump Room: The Crescent, Buxton, SK17 6BQ

A Buxton Our Street event, hosted by the Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust and organised by Creeping Toad

 

A street through time

Spring Gardens scenes

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

Deadline: 31^st January 2023

Send as word doc to: creepingtoad@btinternet.com

The main project outline can be found, here

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?

 

The first contributions for this project are coming in and we’ll publish a few in the next day or so….

Just now, here are some more images (first gallery, here) of Spring Gardens over the years to whet your whistles, tempt your fate, dangle some bait (add a cliche of your choice)….why not pause, look, think, take a wander and pen to paper or finger to keyboard or voice to note….where we have names and dates they will be in the photo caption

WH Smith window 1967	WH Smith window 1963	JH Greenwood
John Mark & Co	MacFisheries 1941	Millers Modern Bar 1938
Greenlees Shoe Shop, 1931	Gymnasium, 1912	Hardwick Hotel window, 1930
	Millers Cafe, 1960	Shufflebotham's, 1960
	the Picture House at night

Why not take a wander along the 21st century Spring Gardens. Find these shops or their replacements or the spaces where they aren't any more....

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!