Transcript
I’ve just come from a friend in Skelton — another old man, like me. We talk more than we work now.
I’ve seen near seventy summers of this estate. The great barn went up when I was a child. I remember watching them lift the beams. Took months. Before it was scrub and low fields, not much there. My grandparents told of when the land was burned, left waste. Of folks living a winter in a hole in the ground – and worse still. All of this came after – my memory is only of the French being here at Newsam.
These knights? They’re fair enough landlords. They don’t take more than what’s owed, don’t start trouble, don’t abuse. I’ve heard of worse. Much worse. I’ve no complaint.
The villages — Halton, Skelton, Colton, Whitkirk, Osmandthorpe, others — they came back slowly. Fields back in use, families settled. The knights brought the manor together bit by bit. I’ve watched most of it happen. I don’t work the fields anymore. My knees won’t have it. But people still ask me things — which years the river floods, which fields tire first, the signs of a hard winter coming. I know the patterns.
The manor looks different from Skelton. You see how much higher Halton and the white church are. Young’uns often don’t know how far these lands go.
My wife – she knows plants. Remedies, poultices, what to pick and when. She’s helped a lot of people over the years — fevers, cuts, births. The priests don’t approve, but people come to her all the same.
Most of those our age are gone now. Fewer of us who remember what it was before. That’s why I’m visiting today — checking on another old man while there’s time.
Jon Eland 