Thursbitch

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From Shining Tor looking north along towards Cats Tor but Thursbitch is hidden, a valley in a valley

Thursbitch looking like any old fields ...

As well as John Turner and his family and community, the stones of the area star in the book.

Now even field boundary stones are weathered and seem venerable ... and it is hard to tell which stones mark the way

looking south from Saltersford, Thursbitch is another world

the gravestone of Richard and Sarah Turner at Jenkin Chapel

	The book begins with John Turner's final journey down this lane.
			Nearing home, according to this stone beside the lane, he was "cast away in a heavy snow storm in the night in or about the year 1755"
	The inscription on the back of the stone reads: "The print of a woman's shoe was found by his side in the snow where he lay dead".

			From Shining Tor looking southwest towards the Cheshire plain and other Garner places
	From Shining Tor looking north along towards Cats Tor but Thursbitch is hidden, a valley in a valley
			a cloud shadow rises from Thursbitch (magic without mushrooms)

	Thursbitch looking like any old fields ...
			and ruins
	towards Shining Tor

			looking back, Thursbitch almost hidden already
	As well as John Turner and his family and community, the stones of the area star in the book. Now even field boundary stones are weathered and seem venerable ... and it is hard to tell which stones mark the way
			Saltersford Hall - the Turner home
	looking south from Saltersford, Thursbitch is another world

			Jenkin Chapel (chapter 29 of Garner's book)
	the gravestone of Richard and Sarah Turner at Jenkin Chapel
			Another whole strand of the book takes place along the ridge from Pym Chair (just to the left here) along Cats Tor ... A storyline that touches the footprint in the snow

	and as if all this wasn't holiness enough, not so far away are the Nine Ladies
			the Green Chapel (I thought I'd post the shifting one here in a poor attempt to catch something of its otherworld character)
	and other elemental place-persons and river-persons. I must read the book and go back again again again


	Alan Garner spoke (twice) duing Oxford's Literary Festival in March 2010 - and Molly and I were there!!
			Alan Garner signed copies of The Owl Service for Molly to give to Helen and Sandie (with Griselda Garner watching on). And then we had a brief chat about Thursbitch - the book and the place.
	in the lobby, there was a display of some of Garner's hand written early drafts. And this version of the Owl Service image - "she wants to be flowers but you keep making her owls".
			and this, his version of Shapeshifter and Selena Place from The Weirdstone...

		Thursbitch		click to return home

				click to return to places


		My first long-distance hitch-hiking trip was from Wiltshire to Cheshire and Derbyshire to visit Alderley Edge and other locations in Alan Garner's Weirdstone books. More recently, while visiting Gordon the Toad in August 2009, I spent a happy afternoon in the landscape in and around Thursbitch - the location of Garner's book by that name. Another holy land.