I’d already spent a bright-dark, hot-cold summer’s day walking the environs of Thursbitch, photographing its closed-mouthed, claustrophobic chapel (where, according to local lore, they married ‘the odd’) and feeling the hard, marbly eyes of its Genus Loci fixed upon my every move, before I read Alan Garner’s unsettling novel of the same name. The area was formerly known as Jankyncros. It’s untidy, it’s uncanny, and Thursbitch is the uncanniest place of all.
The stone walls become wobbly, the barbed wire sags, the sheep sashay casually before the speeding BMWs. This is the line where the Old Gods take over, and you can’t say you weren’t warned. There’s a boundary you cross as the hills start to rise: police warnings, road warnings, large flashing snow warnings this is the high tide mark of the modern world. You approach the high places entirely on their terms. But I also know when I’m pitted against something bigger than myself the moorland eats strays, it grows heather through their eye sockets, it mineralises their story into granite. It will find its way through your Gortex clothing, fiddle with your compass and ditch your four wheel drive. I don’t want you to think I’m a lowlander who’s simply overwhelmed by the wind thrashed, sheep-shat, trackless heights of the Derbyshire moors I lived on ‘the tops’ for many years, several of them on my own, and loved the silence and solitude and spectacular snowfalls. Wells and springs, sacred hills, haunted houses, black dogs and standing stones I’ve gathered them all, written them down, captured their image and remembered them to make them live again, but Thursbitch doesn’t need me it is already alive. I have made that journey only three times in all the years I have lived here, which isn’t especially odd, until you compare the miles of walking, the hundreds of photographs taken, and the lifelong investment of time I have put into exploring the local folklore of the landscape I call home. It’s a short car journey from my home to Thursbitch.
Thursbitch: from the Old English Pyrs – demon and baech – valley. And on the other side “THE PRINT OF A WOMANS SHOE WAS FOUND BY HIS SIDE WERE HE LAY DEAD”. “HERE JOHN TURNER WAS CAST AWAY IN A HEAVY SNOW STORM IN THE NIGHT IN OR ABOUT THE YEAR 1755”.
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