You Are Standing in History

When I travel, I often find myself getting swept up in the history of a place. I love to think about all the things that happened where I’m standing. Last year I got to go to Oslo, there’s evidence of human habitation on the shores of the Oslo fjord for 1000’s of years. Prehistoric people lived where I am walking, I thought while I was walking along sipping my coffee, Vikings lived here, Edvard Munch painted here, I am walking through history.

I got extra excited when I was visiting the parts of Oslo that I knew my Great Grandfather had visited in the 1930’s. I was filled with that lovely feeling, where you are so aware of the layers of time, and you think if you could just pull them back somehow, there wouldn’t be anything separating you from the people who occupied this space before.

You know where else has evidence of human habitation dating back to pre- history? Right here. Well, not here specifically, but this area, there are pre- historic stone carvings on Ilkley moor, there’s standing stones on the tops by Wadsworth Moor (or as I think of it on the way to Boundary Mills). When you live somewhere, you don’t wander round feeling totally awestruck thinking ‘I am walking through history’ you wander round thinking ‘I must remember to get dishwasher tablets when I’m in Morrison’s’.

It is easy to let the realities of our daily lives blind us to the fact that we are always walking through history. I am almost constantly occupying the same physical space my ancestors occupied, I just don’t think about it when I’m at home.

It’s daft really, because there isn’t a better place for me to think about it. If you go back in the right direction, parts of my family have been living in Keighley for 200 years. My Mum, who is better at keeping these kinds of things in her head than I am, is into family history. Recently she got herself an old map of the town, so she could plot where everyone lived and when. It’s wild how many people lived for generations on tiny, cramped streets that don’t exist anymore. I lose track of everything when my Mum tries to explain things to me, like who is related, and how many generations back we are, sometimes I can’t get my head around the idea that all these people who somehow turned into me, aren’t all related to each other, but they were occupying the same space at the same time. They probably knew each other.

When I was asked to write something to go in the Keighley Creative Gallery, I knew I had to write something about my family, and the weird layering of time in place, because on my Mum’s old map of Keighley you can see a Mill, where my family worked at one point in time, that was (roughly, allowing for a bit of artistic licence) right here where you are standing.

There was a street of houses not far away called Wellington Street, and one Great, Great, Great Grandmother was born there and
a generation earlier a further removed Grandmother died there, they lived whole lives here, and I walk over the top of it, with no sense of wonder, worrying about missing the bus.

Sometimes when I think about my family history, I imagine it like a never- ending set of Russian dolls, with me being the biggest doll, and all the generations that came before fitting neatly inside. When you go back through your family history the details of the previous generations get smaller, harder to see, but they are still part of you. I think that’s true of the history of a place as well, everything that ever happened here, it’s real and it’s important. Keighley has a history just as interesting and varied as Oslo does. If you are standing reading this in what is currently the window of an art gallery just take a second to feel that wonder. Imagine all those people who have occupied this space before, living lives as real as yours for thousands of years.

You are standing in history.

Essay Commissioned by Keighley Creative as part of an ACE funded lockdown program. My essay on the everyday magic of my home town was written on the gallery windows by sign writer Leanne Parkin and displayed December 2020 – February 2021