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Many a Moon, the final book in my Mapleby Memories trilogy came about because of a thirteenth century mill.
On holiday a number of years ago, I took an early morning woodland walk and discovered it. Roofless, its water wheel missing, and only a muddy ditch where there would have once been a fast flowing river, it sat close to the edge if a golf course. Surrounded by trees and ferns it was both forlorn and intriguing, and when the holiday ended the image of the mill stayed with me. So did the village where I stayed, and, over several years, the first two books Mapleby books were written. Remembering Rose and Loving Ellen.
Although I always intended to write about the mill, I knew it would require a lot of research as there was nobody in the area who knew anything about it. I only had one piece of information, gleaned from a blue plaque. It stated that in 1250 it had been a working grain mill but, beyond that, nothing, and nobody knew who had put up the plaque!!
A story was waiting, but because it was the third book in the series, I had to tie it in with the characters in the previous two books. As Mapleby was already a village with a time warp this worked out just fine, however, and I really enjoyed introducing my earlier characters to their new friends.
Why am I telling you this? Well I've just been back to the place where I created Mapleby after a gap of seven years. I didn't expect to meet my characters (although wouldn't that have been great) but I did expect the old mill to be the same. What a disappointment! It is now so completely overgrown that the blue plaque is hidden, and it is easy to walk past it without even seeing it. The river is back though. Not fast, and nowhere near as wide and fast flowing as it must once have been, but it was back! And the woodland was glorious. Full of wild garlic, bluebells and fresh green leaves.
Always intrigued by the past and by how quickly nature, people, construction and development obliterate the smaller moments of history, I felt sad that something that had once ground the corn for the inhabitants of a busy port, was now a hidden mound of crumbling stone in the middle of a wood. Then I remembered that the port had dwindled too, into what was now a small tourist village, and I accepted that times move on. And after so many centuries there is no known history to gainsay my story and my characters, so I will continue to believe in both the modern day ones who live in my village, and the thirteenth century ones who used the mill.
Then, just before the holiday was over, I fell into a wonderful moment of serendipity. Anyone who has read Many a Moon will also know that several monks and a monastery, long since gone, also featured largely in the book. A monastery that I knew once existed but whose history has also been obliterated by the shadows of time. So imagine my delight and surprise when I discovered this.
Since I last visited, someone had built a grotto using the one remaining piece of the monastery wall. There was nothing explaining it other than it was in memory of the monks who had once worked there. It was a lovely place and for one brief moment, Mapleby, my imagined monks and all my imaginary villagers seemed very real.
