First Impressions
Looking at the image, my first thought is how much history is recorded in this area. We have railway bridges, a cobbled road, and the canal just out of sight. The area is Castlefield, and gets its name from the “castle ruins”, strictly speaking a Roman fort. Nearby is The Dean’s Gate.
History has always held a fascination for me. I was never good at the dates and battles, but how people lived, how discoveries changed lives. Why things were done as they were, etc. That was right at my street.
Obsessing on the Past
The history of skills is my current obsession. How some skills and crafts have been passed down for millennia is intriguing. It’s easy to think that a skill is contemporary, or to not think about them at all. But the origins of sewing, weaving, etc. are hard to determine, because the items created were ephemeral and tended to decay fast. Wooden artefacts are better understood since they last longer, and stone is everywhere, if you know what to look for. It’s a humbling concept when you realise that history is literally under our feet, and, all the time, new excavations discover unknown things about the history of mankind.
Returning to the scene, I can easily imagine 2000 years of history right in front of me. There’s ironwork that shows a level of skill and scale that can only impress, cobbled roads that owe a lot to Roman engineering, forming an infrastructure that they began, but one which built on the existing paths and ways of the Britons before them. I see connection, a desire to travel, and to do so in as fast a way as possible. To create supply chains which transport goods as quickly and/or as cheaply as possible.
Six letter word - what does it mean?
Then there is communication, six letters, M O T L E Y, printed in white on an iron column supporting the main branch line above. A single word by an anonymous person. Why Motley? Is it the word, or an acronym for something else? What does it mean? Who wrote it, and why? It’s a puzzle, and one which poses so many questions. It does answer one, though: why the painting is called Motley Tower? I can think of Motley Crew. There’s a US band with that name but the spelling is off. There’s also a group of the same name who sing sea shanties. After that, I draw a blank.
Do you know what motley means?
