Witches, wizards and wonders

Wirksworth Wizarding Day 2024 

They gathered. Wizards, witches, young students, aged crones, occasional babies, the venerable and the unspeakable.... And I was there, spilling a hat full of stories...Wirksworth Wizarding Day was back!  This is always a lovely day and I miss most of the action....I heard about magical markets and the excitement of buying wands, about places to eat, a London Double-decker bus to get on....lizards, snakes and dragons to meet (I suspect that was before the actual moment when anticipation was running high). Someone had seen a Dementor. Someone else wrote a spell to turn people into zebras and was going to go and sit in the market place and try his spell. We reckoned if people didn't change on the outside they might change on the inside and find themselves sitting down to meals of grass....

 

And I was there telling stories: a day of non-stop tale-spinning, yarn-calling, and spell-shaking. Tales of mystery, malice and strangeness: a reminder that we live in a world full of wonders and enchantment even if we don’t see witches, wizards, and dragons as often as we might wish

 

In the aftermath, scraps of wizarding books were found on the floor, in corners, tucked for secrecy into recesses or hidden under chairs...We thought we should share them...

 

Wherever possible original spelling has been retained

 

 

 

WIZARDING DAY SPELLS

 

Fangtooth

FANGTOOTH by Sia

Do not even go neer to a Fangtooth or it will eat you bit by bit. first your feet then your legs and soon and soon. There are not that many left in the wild. there is one left but it is the most dangerous

 

SLYTHERIN

Sly, cunning and mysterious

Like snakes we are

You can't hide from us

Though you have a lightning scar

Harsh and mean we'll be

Even if you do fight back, or

Run, or fly away
In the end, you'll
Never win

 

Peter the grobllin

To turn into a black panther

Although this is written as a single recipe, it feels like 2 voices: try it with one person reading the yellow words and a helpful friend (who is rather worried!) reading the black!

 

Put black lizard tales

And poisoned frogs inside (a cauldron)

No-one has every survived

The potion won't be easy

Herbs and spices will not help (but stir anyway)

Eyes from a hungarian horntail (finish the brew)

Run for your life!

 

FROG SPELL

Get a caldron

and fill it with water

add 3 layers of brown paint

add stinking socks

add a newt's eye

boil for ages

Drink.

Start hopping.

 

A Summoning Spell

 

From deep ponds, I call you

from Rippling stream, I call you

Out of garden wall and flowerbed, i call you.

Great creatures of a damper world

Squat before me now!

 

As the moon rises and

Night draws in and the

Darkness fills the world

Touch my enemies with nightmares,

Once a night,

And every night,

Disturb their sleep with

Slime.

 

POTION OF TRANSFORMATION

This brews a lotion to rub on a wizard’s feet and turn him or her into something else.

No-one has ever watched this potion in action and been able to report back on what it does!

 

Take

 

1 long tail of a rat, and

2 handfuls of crushed snail shells, throw in

3 bones, well-chewed by a dog, and

4 egg cups of graveyard dust

5 whole chillis will make the brew strong and

6 cups of water will fill the cauldron but

7 matches are needed to light the flame

 

Brew the cauldron

Over a dried moss flame, and stir with an

Ivy-wood spoon and never, ever

Lick that spoon!

 

useful advice from a Witch's cupboard

Mice and

Umbrellas and

Green

Wellies will

Often

Result in disastrous

Toasted marshmallows

 

 

Wirksworth Wizarding Day is an annual event in October that transports the small town of Wirksworth in Derbyshire into a more magical realm

Find out more: https://www.wizardingday.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wizardingday/

With many thanks to Coach House Studios for giving us such a lovely space for stories and to all the eager ears (and associated bodies) who joined us for storytelling, who shaped spells, who laughed, groaned and 

were suitably (or unsuitably) excited by everything!

 

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)

 

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!