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Download Tales from the Emporium for FREE Tales from the Emporium The life and times of the Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway and Sal T. Marsh's Emporium Bob Trubshaw Welcome to more tales from an imaginary heritage railway in the top left-hand corner of Norfolk with rolling stock inspired by Rowland Emett’s cartoons of the 1940s and 50s. Truth to tell the author doesn’t get overly excited by locomotives or station buildings, although wagons and carriages occasionally arouse curiosity. His real interest is in the bigger picture of railways: why they were created, how they dealt with the local terrain, what influence they had on local farming, industry and settlements, and so forth. And that extends to 'heritage' railways: how they acquire funding, how they promote themselves as places of interest, and how they interact with other tourist attractions in the vicinity. The Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway employs a General Manager (who does not like being called ‘The General’), a formidable Property Manager (who does like to be referred to as ‘The PM’), a witticism-infested Operations Manager who socialises each week with the neophobic Workshop Manager, and a Gift Shop Manager (deemed ‘nice but useless’). The railway staff interact with the somewhat overbearing curator of the nearby Arts Centre and two young sisters who create and sell pots at the Wonky Pot Emporium – when not chatting to customers or learning about some arcane aspects of Daoism. Paranormal vigils in the ruins of a twelfth century castle, the creation of a heritage museum focused on the former sand mining in the area, sightings of inexplicable big cats – or are they phantom black dogs? – in the fields nearby, and the preparations for a Viking festival all unknowingly converge on the dodgy dealings of the proprietor of the local canoe hire facility (named after a one-time local lass called Pocahontas). An exciting evening awaits all the protagonists... Tales from the Emporium The life and times of the Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway and Sal T. Marsh's Emporium Bob Trubshaw Heart of Albion Tales from the Emporium The life and times of the Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway and Sal T. Marsh's Emporium Bob Trubshaw Text and previously unpublished photographs © Bob Trubshaw 2021 minor corrections April and September 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Heart of Albion, except for brief passages quoted in reviews. Any resemblance of the characters in this work of fiction to real people, alive or otherwise, is entirely erroneous. Published as a downloadable PDF only by: Heart of Albion 8 Hedgefield Road, Barrowby, Grantham, NG32 1TA Visit our website: www.hoap.co.uk To Ian Thanks for way too much aiding and abetting to get away with being an innocent bystander The Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway is in the top left-hand corner of Norfolk, running from Eaton St Torpid via Lavender Halt to Whittlecreek, with a branch off to St Torpid's Bay. A spur of track, now functioning as carriage sidings, is on the route towards Brindlecliffe. In the future the Whittlecreek and Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway may extend south from Eaton St Torpid to Dodd's Hill Staithes, Canidringham (pronounced locally 'Canidrum' or 'Conundrum') and Friars Ambling Halt (where a sand mining museum is planned, complete with a short two-foot gauge mineral line). Sadly modern developments mean the line could not be reinstated as far south as Bishop's Snoring, nor Brindlecliffe to the north. Contents Tales from the Emporium: I Early one morning 1 Tales from the workshop: I A hydrostatic drive on each of the wheels 13 Sandy Cove Sand Co. 22 The Vigil 32 Tales from the Longship: I Kvetsalcoadjlsaga 43 Tales from the Bar I: The Uncanny 64 Devil Dykes 77 What the Romans did for Norfolk 89 Tales from the Emporium: II Quickly becoming local lore 98 The spy who invented witchcraft 106 Tales from the Bar: II Tiger Woods and the club house 111 Tales from the Butts: I 121 Tales from the Butts: II Eyes in the dark 133 Tales from the Butts: III The Grand Denouement 139 Tales from the Bar: III The After Party 150 Tales from the Emporium III: The curtain call 155 Sources and acknowledgements 161 Some of the pots made by Eddie Curtis, inspired by a stretch of coast at Seaham known as 'The Blast'. Tales from the Emporium: I Early one morning It was still too early for customers to be about. Sal and Sara were taking the stock off the displays, one shelf at a time, and dusting. It was so much part of the weekly routine of running the Wonky Pots Emporium that it took little conscious attention. So they were chatting. Sara’s skills as a potter were now almost as good as her older sister, and she was full of enthusiasm about exploring different clays, pigments and other additives. Sal thought to herself that she was just as enthusiastic a few years ago when she was still setting up her studio and shop in the two adjoining grounded coaches. It seemed longer than five years, but much else had happened during that time. Sara had just discovered an online video about Eddie Curtis’s pots inspired by the dramatic coal mining waste on Seaham beach on the coast between the Tyne and Tees estuaries. Eddie had conjured up quite chunky pots with impressive textures and colours – some carved out of blocks of clay rather than thrown or slab-built. Sara was asking Sal how much difference it might make that Eddie used a decidedly old-fangled oil-fired kiln. Sal said it was hard to say but as the oil-fired kiln would be a reduction kiln, just like their wood-fired arrangement, then the only real difference would be the absence of wood ash. But, if necessary, pots could be fired inside saggars to keep the ash off the pots. 1 Tales from the Emporium Above left: A close-up of part of The Blast at Seaham (Eddie Curtis). Below left: 'Brindlecliff' (www.nationaltrail.co.uk) The two potters were mulling over whether there were any parallels between Seaham’s unique beach and nearby Brindlecliffe beach. As the name of the town suggested, the beach was under a cliff which had strata of both red and white rocks. The sea steadily weathered the cliff so the beach pebbles were a mix of both colours, combined with black flinty nodules and the inevitable seashells. While Sara was well aware that seashells would degrade at firing temperatures, she’d seen plenty of pots where moulds had been taken from shells and used to shape pressed clay. Sal said adding vermiculite to the clay would give a pearlescent effect as the mica survives the heat in the kiln. Sara and Sal then debated just how much white earthenware clay – which would melt and vitrify at stoneware temperatures – could be added without causing problems. Sara wondered if adding black pigment would emulate sea-worn glossy grey-black flint nodules. 2 Early One Morning ‘One way to find out,’ responded Sal. ‘Give it a go with a few teabowls or such like before we’re ready to do the next firing.’ ‘I suppose it’s no coincidence that the pebbles on the beach are mostly in the three primordial colours,’ remarked Sara. She was well aware that Sal based most of her designs around red, white and black as these pigments, along with sandy ochre, were the first to be used by humans when doing cave paintings all those millennia ago. Black came from soot or charcoal, but the others came from white chalk and different types of iron-rich rocks. And, given that pots are made from clays which are also terracotta, buff or white then this colour scheme was almost integral to making pots. Sal was always disappointed that firing to higher temperatures to produce stoneware meant that she could not use terracotta clays, as these were only suitable for firing up to earthenware temperatures. But she had discovered some pigments which produced a similar shade of red with stoneware. ‘I wonder if the three primordial colours available to potters and early artists influenced why medieval alchemists made red, white and black the basis of the symbolism of the Great Work,’ Sara remarked to Sal. ‘Well, in many ways making pots is itself rather like alchemy – certainly to anyone not used to the techniques of refining raw materials and successfully firing,’ responded Sal. ‘Plenty of academics have noted that smelting metals from ore would seem like “alchemy” to anyone not trained to do so, though so far as I’m aware the same parallel has not been made for pottery.’ ‘I wonder if Chinese alchemy has red, white and black as key colours in the symbolism?’ Sara continued, without acknowledging her sister’s tangential remark. ‘They are more likely to have five colours, as that is such an important number in Chinese culture,’ Sal replied. ‘I’m suspect Lao Weng would know, even though he claims to have little interest in Chinese alchemy.’ Just as Sal was getting her Emporium under way Lao Weng had taken over the hitherto rather ruinous tide mill on the north bank of the 3 Tales from the Emporium Creake River and greatly helped with the restoration. He was a self- taught Daoist who, in his retirement, ran rather successful retreats he called ‘Secret and Sublime’.
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