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Update from the excavation today! We found it the end.
We set off near the old mill site, thinking we were close, but nothing quite matched what my dad described. Some crumbling walls, but not the place where the "soot stones" were chucked down into the river. So we kept going, climbing through the woods, got feet soaked in bog water and we followed the little stream round hoping it’d lead us to something.
By the time we got near the road, I was ready to ring me dad for more clues as still no sign...
Then my mate clocked it, an old rusted industrial cart, half-drowned in a pool of stinking stagnant still water. Just above it, a proper steep banking sloping down. Looked like nothing at first, but then it hit us, this was it. This must be the spot.
We started digging and within seconds, there they were! black burnt rusted metal ball bearings, still solid after all these years. Fire-born and buried, just waiting for someone daft enough as us to come looking. We raked a fair few out and bagged them up, despite my dog being a right menace the whole time. 🤣 Then scrambled back out through the undergrowth, soaked, muddy, buzzing!
Climbing out, we saw a kids’ rope swing dangling off one of the trees. Folk still play there just like my dad did maybe 60 years ago! Past and present, swinging side by side.
Can’t wait to use these for me new art Harrowden piece I'm doing, pairing them up with the other relics I dug out from the old coal power station site. Two fire-specimens from two forgotten furnaces, coming together. Proper Harrowden stuff! The kind of material that remembers where it came from...
"The ground never forgets."
