At the town's edge - a photo on Flickriver

At the town's edge

            As conventional "beauty spots" and places of resort were smothered one-by-one in the deadening embrace of the heritage and leisure industries, the spirits of poetry and romance fled and, for me at any rate, took refuge in places like this.  The imagination cannot frolic and play when surrounded by pay and display car parks, information centres and picnic areas.  Mine turned to the rim of the town where, in mysterious juxtaposition, suburb met country.
Here, on Wednesday 15th January 1975, waterlogged fields and a lonely cottage are divorced by the railway from the prosaic outskirts of Newport, Monmouthshire.  The metallic jangle of a loose-coupled goods train and the throb of its locomotive mingle with the ululation of hungry gulls, contending nearby for half a discarded pork pie.  A breeze from Lllanwern Steelworks permeates the air with something pleasantly sooty and sulphurous.  In this midwinter muslin light there is a pathetic beauty about such scenes which tugs at the heart ...well mine anyway.
In the foreground an Adventure Playground reminds us that, in our own time, things stand for their opposite.  These elaborately unofficial and impromptu-looking recreation grounds (their very appearance was part of the lie) represented an attempt to make children's ...sorry, kids'... play into something classifiable and amenable to regularisation according to the ideas of people with beards and degrees in Sociology.  It looks as though the palings of the fence have been scorched by incendiarist hooligans from Cwmbran.  They hadn't acted from principled motives, of course, but one feels a certain approval.
It is a comfort that, in the end, all things must pass ...even, one day, "heritage" and leisurology.  The Adventure Playground has long gone.  As far as I can see on Google Maps all the area to the left of the railway has been built up.  The pond remains, much clogged with vegetation and encircled by a path ...probably a "nature reserve".
   

Taken on: February 21, 2010

Tags:

Newport

Monmouthshire

Llanwern Steelworks

railway

outskirts

adventure playground

suburb

Somerton, Newport « less

Groups appears in: • Wales • Urban Decay more » • Smokestacks • Railscape • A Splendid Ugliness • Monochrome Britain (no colour splashes) « less

Stats: 3,236 views / 9 comments

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