Ben Myers: Words from the North
Because I live in that great theme park of the imagination called Bronteland, I’m never too far away from an old ruined building. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring these ghost farms and fled-cottages in the four years since I moved back up north and one features in a scene in my forthcoming novel, Beastings.
This morning I hid from a rainstorm in this ramshackle building, located not far from Lumb Falls off the Haworth Old Road, up on the valley crest just below the moor’s edge. Cliff came too.
Some of these buildings still contain possessions of previous owners – I found a piano in one – but today’s farm contained nothing but sheep shit, rotten beams and the skeleton of an old iron fireplace.
