Satan takes a holiday pt. IV: Dunwich – Hells Bells!
Friday, May 28th, 2010As a bookish 15 year-old, an oblique reference in an article about HR Giger led me to pick up a secondhand copy of HP Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear.
I was instantly hooked… I loved Lovecraft’s stories of how a chance discovery of an ancient book might open doorways to unimagined worlds, and his tales of Dunwich, and Innsmouth – ancient towns where things had gone badly wrong for the inhabitants. Dunwich was the focus of the Dunwich Horror and played a smaller role in many of his other weird tales.
It was therefore with some trepidation that I pulled off the main road towards the sign saying ‘Dunwich – 4 miles’ and sped down a single track road so narrow, the trees either side touched branches overhead.
Dunwich, on the Suffolk coastline, was Lovecraft’s inspiration for his fictional town, which he set in Massachusetts.
The Suffolk Dunwich had been a prosperous and important port town on the Suffolk coastline until 1286, when a huge sea surge undermined the cliffs upon which it was built. Most of the town was swept into the sea, taking (by some accounts) eight ancient churches with it. It has been said that during storms, the bells of the lost spires can still be heard ringing under the water.
Although Lovecraft’s poem The Bells specifically refers to Innsmouth, it was surely inspired by the myths of Dunwich…
Year after year I heard that faint, far ringing
Of deep-toned bells on the black midnight wind;
Bells of no steeple I could ever find.
The poem ends…
They tolled – but from the sunless tides that pour
Through sunken valleys on the sea’s dead floor.
The visitor can now walk along the bottom of the cliffs, looking up at the remaining village at the top, but sadly I didn’t hear the ‘Mad Clappers’ tolling.
One of the few remaining indications of the the town’s splendour before it was taken by the sea, are the ruins of the abbey. Lovecraft, who described the 18th century buildings of New England as ‘impossibly old’ would have been impressed.
Driving 200 miles due west will take you to Birmingham, ancient city of the midlands. While there doesn’t at first sight seem to be much to attract the seeker of the unusual as you drive past seemingly endless council estates… a visit to the town centre will not disappoint. One of the first exhibits to the greet the visitor the city’s central art gallery and museum is Epstein’s giant bronze of Lucifer…
This is a truly striking piece of work and I am going to have to find out more about it.
A five minute drive from the centre of town (or 15 minutes by foot) is the disappointing jewellery quarter. Marketed by the city as an area for artisan jewellers, it is in fact a district full of wholesale sellers of bargain-basement jewellery that you can find anywhere.
However, the district has two Victorian gothic cemeteries. These, like Portsmouth’s once-fabulous Kingston Cemetery had been desecrated by the local authority, resentful of the cost of upkeep and greedy for more places to sell for burial plots.
Gravestones had either been uprooted or flattened. Mercifully sanity has prevailed, with local groups forming to preserve and restore the cemeteries to something approximating their former glory.
An oasis of peace and quiet in the bustle of Birmingham. Definitely worth a detour on a sunny Spring day.
