Sutton
Or, more fully, Sutton Lane
Ends, as the Ordnance Survey has it. Sutton lies less than two
miles south of Macclesfield town on the Rossendale Brook which
swells the Bollin before the parish boundary at Gurnett.
The 'lane ends' at Sutton:
Hollin Lane running through South/North and Walker Lane on the
right.
On the diagonally opposite
corner: Ivy Cottages.
On the corner in between
those two: the village green, dressed overall and with well-dressing
panels.
Crammed with iconic references,
the main panel's theme is 'Time, Space and the Universe'. Inside
the stylised clockwork's cog-wheel the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope
scans the heavens. The 'River of Time' flows up the RH edge from
Stonehenge to the Space Shuttle. The LH edge has a detail from
John Harrison's H4 chronometer, the accuracy of its timekeeping
enabling longitude to be fixed and ocean navigation made safer.
Dr Who's Tardis has temporary solidity in the top LH corner and
an hour-glass bisects the figures 2003.
A water-filled stone trough
does service as a temporary-well and as befits a rural community
in a dairy farming area old milking pails filled with flowers
stand between the panels.
This smaller panel, of a
'stained-glass-window' depicting Noah's Ark, was made to a design
by pupils of Hollinhey Primary School.
The other panel is self-explanatory.
The Millennium Commemorative
Plaque also celebrates Sutton's most illustrious son.
May the gods of copyright
forgive me, a scan of the cover of a collection of some of his
work. Sir Peter Scott, in the Foreword, claims him as 'the greatest
wildlife artist of the 20th Century'.
No blue enamel plaque here,
but tastefully incised local stone records the village pride ...
... on the gable end of
Tunnicliffe Cottage, Walker Lane.
The view back towards the
'lane ends'.
Off Hollins Lane, beside
the path along the streamside is another 'well-dressing', this
time at a site of an actual village well. No sign exists now of
the well. The collection of flowers, and floral arrangements in
this gloomy shady spot recalled to my morbid imagination the sort
of tributes that now routinely appear at accident sites. In reality,
the symbols depicted, of the Scouts and Girl Guides with the Shell
denoting the children's playgroup, are positive youthful ones.
Continued
in Part II
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