Hello!

To introduce myself, here’s a tale of a place.
Several years ago, I became fascinated with Barton Moss, an area of land between Salford and Warrington. The M62 motorway to Liverpool crosses the moss; Stevenson built the railway across it, almost floating the sleepers on the unstable ground. It’s an eerie place, odd shacks and houses scattered around, but desolate. I did a bit of research about the place and uncovered a few interesting things. For instance, the Moss is a huge shallow dome: peat and rotten vegetable matter are barely constrained by a kind of meniscus. In the time of Henry VIII, the Moss burst, flooding everything in foetid water. Earlier than that, it appears the Romans burnt down a whole forest to stop the natives hiding there (that’s why it’s how it is today). There’s odd stories about the place: there’s a legend (probably invented by Harrison Ainsworth) that Guy Fawkes fled across Barton Moss trying to escape his pursuers – and funnily enough, in the early 1900s there was a firework factory there, which blew up, killing the owner. When the railway was opened, the local mayor was run over by the first train and killed. There’s more, too. For example, the murdered packman…