By Sam Smith
Published: February 21, 2008
Updated: October 27, 2008 PrintEmail
Prologue
Part Two: The Place.
Most people have known of Bridgwater only as a nameless brown smell that they passed through on the motorway in the flatlands south of Bristol. That stink, that yellow stain up the nose, has not invited a closer look.
If, however, their job or their family left them with no alternative but to take the slip road off the motorway, then they found a town wholly misplaced. Pipe-wrapped factories, chemical stench of industry, smoke-trailing chimneys, burnt bricks, estates reeking of communal neglect.... the whole looking as if it belonged more to the grinding mills and flat-capped bigotry of the satanic North. Not there in Somerset's green and fitful levels, where the day's moods should have depended solely on the colour of the sky.
Given Bridgwater's age, its once having been a small thriving port, its having been witness to battles and to the treacherous machinations which have unmade kings, one would suppose that this miniature Middlesborough amidst Somerset's marshes would have been made historically scenic, like, say, once-mercantile Amsterdam. Bridgwater's quota of redundant water, though, the inaptly named River Parrett, allows for no comely reflections. This river is not some gentle meandering mirror for honeyed brickwork and weeping golden willow; rather the tidal Parrett lies dirtily along the bottom of the grey slimy trench that slices though the sprawling town. And all that grows atop those sides of steep ravined mud are a few pollution-resistant sedges.
Once — so exploitive have its inhabitants been — Bridgwater had a little industry, uniquely its own, in the making of 'Bath' bricks from the river slime that had been deposited under Town Bridge. People elsewhere in the country then used those bricks for cleaning their kitchen knives. The people elsewhere have since got wise. Inhabitants of Bridgwater, however, continue to singlemindedly exploit their own environment.
So used and abused has Bridgwater been in the past that there is little now to inspire civic pride. Its past municipal planners gave little thought to their creations. It being flat land they drew straight lines on flat paper, with the consequence that, going into and out of Bridgwater now, the roads are straight, the pavements are straight and the rows of brick terrace houses are straight. The only angles that are not exactly right angles are where the straight lines of the electric pylons intersect occasionally the straight lines of the streets. In the summer of 1990, along those straight flat roads, along those straight flat pavements, there was not one rounded shadow of one mature tree.
The train too goes straight through Bridgwater. Some trackside trees are visible from the train, but what one mostly sees of Bridgwater is a few small back gardens, yard upon dark yard of dusty warehouses, steaming chimneys squat and tall, a single green playing field and a strobing glimpse of a concrete works.
Imagination has never been much used in the construction of Bridgwater. Over the unremarkable river are three unremarkable bridges, joining one flat half of the town to its other flat half. One might semantically assume that the name of the whole town derived from any one of these three bridges. The name 'Bridgwater', however, is a corruption of 'Burgh of Walter', Borough of Sir Walter, Sir Walter being the mediocre Norman knight to whom this portion of English bog was given as booty after the conquest of 1066.
Not until 1180 was the first Bridgwater bridge built, and then it was by a Lord William Brewer. Although he didn't personally build the bridge, did not himself shovel mortar and hew rocks. Rather his pride and his vanity caused the bridge to be built, like it did the castle, neither of which is any longer there.
Thus began the working model of transience which is Bridgwater. Because, ever since within its boundaries, Bridgwater has been in a permanent state of reconstruction, some bits of it being knocked down and some bits of it being rebuilt. In the late '80s, early '90s, the town's new buildings were mostly the doll-like brick houses on the estates of mortgaged starter homes and lead-paned double-glazing. Sprawling supermarkets too, on the carpark sites of defunct factories, were in dark new brick, with varnished flower tubs and no windows. While the high new factories were in ribbed sheets of bright plastic colours. Toy men with hard plastic hats strode about in that legoland carrying sheets of white paper in their hot pink palms.
On one side of the river the parts of the town are called Eastover and Sydenham. This is the side where the largest council estate and most of the factories are. The other side is where the old docks are, and the clapperboard warehouses that are now so tastefully and profitably converted to flats; all of which will, one day they say, enclose a yachting marina.
The town's few quaint buildings are on this side of the river. Some of these buildings have been incorporated into a shopping complex, complete with glass lifts. These parts of the town are called Westover, Hemp, Durleigh and Newtown.
But, no matter what its parts are called, the whole of this town has always produced a stink so bad it kills flies. Even the old rustic market was famed for its smelly cheeses. Other past noxious culprits have included a cattlefood factory, a tannery, oil and cake mills; and cement, iron, brick, railway and gasworks. A place of fire, steam and tar, clang, grit and stink.
The bricks of old Bridgwater still look indelibly charred, blackly overbaked. While in 1990 the new Bridgwater was anonymously notorious for its brown westerly smell, for an airborne chemical cocktail caused principally by the manufacture of cellophane.
What with the wire factory, the mushroom farm, the jam factory, the munitions factory at Puriton, the nuclear power plants at nearby Hinkley, and the nuclear flask depot that backs onto the Sydenham housing estate, Bridgwater is no place for fastidious souls. Indeed this thoroughly industrialised town has relied for centuries on cheap human labour, most of which has been male and stupid.
To keep those males stupefied Bridgwater has more pubs per street than any other town in Somerset. To further compensate for the numbing tedium of repetitive labour, Bridgwater, like all poor places, has to lose itself, at least once a year, in an orgy of public noise and frantic glitter. This takes place every autumn with the carnival, the fair, and the squibbing.
Paul, Julie, Michael and Alice live on one of the straight, wide and wind-blasted roads of Sydenham's council estate.
True Stories
In August 1985 12 year old Jennifer Briley, of Crossacre, Webdon, hurt her hip when she was in collision with a car at the junction of Northfields and Durleigh Road. The car was driven by Margaret Siderfin of Over Stowey.
In April 1986 the bodies of four trussed dogs were found in the Bridgwater canal and docks. Each dog had a rope around its neck. All four dogs were thought to have been hanged.
In May 1989 £70 was taken from a coin machine at the carwash in Mount Street, Bridgwater. This was the 26th time the coin machine had been broken into in two years.
At 6:45am, on Tuesday 20th March 1990, a fire was seen in the corner of the Borden UK Ltd warehouse in Colley Lane, Bridgwater. The warehouse was subsequently destroyed by fire. During the fire Colley Lane was closed, factories nearby were evacuated, and householders downwind of the fire were warned to keep their doors and windows closed.
