Showing posts with label River Thames. Show all posts
Showing posts with label River Thames. Show all posts

Saturday 18 May 2019

Down by the Lost River Effra

Kennington's Gorgeous Bats

It's been a glorious week in London, just as late spring 'should' be. By contrast, there are ghastly things looming large in the world, and a fair percentage rock up in my courtroom. The  lunch break is my sanity check, and I  head to Kennington Park bearing salad box and writer's notebook. Stress  falls away - thank the Lord for riotous flower beds, sculpted lawns and centuries-old London Plane trees.

The Sculpted Lawns and Ancient Trees
Photo by Jennifer Pittam

Kennington Park  was common land for hundreds of years. It's first recorded officially in the 1600s. There were village settlements, semi-wild forest and the River Effra, a proud Celtic tributary of the River Thames. The first Queen Elizabeth sailed her barge down the River Effra to Sir Walter Raleigh's Brixton home, but now, like both of them, the River Effra's six feet under the ground.

The Lost River Effra

I wonder whether Sarah Elston walked on the banks of the River Effra. Sarah was the last poor woman to be burned at the stake, in England.  She had murdered her husband and they consigned her to the flames, here in my beautiful park, charged with witchcraft and treason. History does not record what the husband had done to provoke her, but whatever it was, they wouldn't have burned him for it, of that we can be sure.

Sarah Elston's Memorial Garden
Photo by Jennifer Pittam

I'm lucky to live in the 21st century - albeit in a country where I won't be pilloried or burned at the stake, where my body is my own and my choice of religion likewise. I work on my novel, drafting a few plot points before I have to return to the world of witnesses, legal bundles and oath statements.  Very often I'm joined by a chittering squirrel or, in late afternoon, a family of bats who circle me with eery accuracy and total silence before returning to their roost. Perhaps they too are haunted by London's Lost River Effra.

When the wind blows
The quiet things speak
Some whisper, some clang 
Some squeak.

When the wind goes - 
suddenly
then,
the quiet things 
are quiet again.

Lilian Moore 1909 - 2004



Jennifer Pittam has been published in: Aquarist & Pondkeeper, Astrology Monthly, Cosmopolitan,  Ether Books, People's Friend, Prediction Magazine, Romany Routes, The Lady. 

Competitions won: Coast to Coast Short Story Competition, 2nd Prize; Writers' Village Flash Fiction Competition, 1st Prize.