Next time you are walking through the back streets and alleyways in your local area, look carefully at what surrounds you. The streets are full of silent witnesses, stories of the recent and distant past. Walls tell stories.
Wherever old walls are left untouched, you can see the imprint of earlier generations. Here is a bricked-in arch, where a door used to be; there the ghost of an old window. Sometimes an advertisement for a long-gone product survives in traces of paint, high above the street. Often, whole buildings have disappeared, their phantom remaining in the outline of the gable end in the brickwork of the next house along. You can see all this, as you pass by.
When I was growing up, of course, the missing building was often the result of wartime bombing. I used to be fascinated by the sight of fireplaces and pretty wallpaper, the inside walls of rooms, private, domestic spaces, now horribly exposed to public gaze.
And as I have travelled, I have seen more of the history of conflict written onto the walls of buildings: shrapnel scars on the face of city halls; even bullet holes in the stonework of churches. These may not be formal memorials erected by grateful citizens, but they express the lament of wounded communities and shattered lives just as eloquently.
But most of these silent witnesses point to less dramatic events as populations shift and change through time. Old factories, warehouses and (sadly) chapels become ‘characterful’ apartments. Former banks and department stores now function as pubs or cafes. In rural areas, barns, mills and farm buildings are repurposed as much sought-after residences for those who can afford them.
The pictures on this page are all taken on the 10-minute walk from my flat (on the site of an old photographic studio) to the railway station. As I hurry past on the way to catch the train, I can feel the touch of past lives. I wonder who was so proud to own that little shop that he had enormous adverts for Bovril and cigarettes painted high above the street? Why was there a door and window there – who came in, who gazed out? Where has that building gone, the one that left its shadow on the adjoining wall?
I give thanks for the human warmth imprinted in stone and brick, lament the cold cruelty of conflict, and rage at the injustice and exploitation that many of those past inhabitants probably faced.
And, I pray for those who inhabit these streets now, a wonderfully diverse local community. Many, like their forebears, are struggling to survive against the grip of illness, the outrage of war, and shock after shock of rising prices. Behind these walls are people on the edge of homelessness and addiction, living in the hostels that line the street to the station. Small businesses – take-aways and convenience stores, from the Polski Sklep to the Bala Sweet and Tandoori Centre, come and go. The cinema is now the lively Mount Zion Church.
Jesus, Living Word made flesh,
You walked the streets and lanes where people lived.
You listened to their hopes and fears.
You loved and challenged, rebuked and healed.
Help us to be alert to the people among whom we live and walk,
so that through us, your love may be seen.
Amen
Janet Wootton