The Hanging Gate

After the Great War, my mother's aunt ran a pub called the Hanging Gate in Salford.  My grandmother was staying there when she met my grandfather.  My sister-in-law and her partner now live in a smart flat on Salford Quays, a stone's throw from the rougher side of town where Doddington Street was; it has now vanished and been replaced by a rundown 1980s council estate.  On Saturday afternoon I walked from the Quays to Doddington Lane, which is all that survives - the name - of that area.  

I was walking between worlds, a hot stormy afternoon of sticky streets and heavy air, waiting for the storm to break.  I was walking backwards in time, tracing streets my grandmother knew in 1920, trying to see survivors of that time.  Street names, a church tower, a broader pattern of streets swollen for increased traffic.  Nothing to see, just graffiti and litter and modern decay.  I found Doddington Lane but no Doddington Street.  

It is 4.30 in another Salford.

Warm, a cast-over day, a work day.

A Saturday for shoppers and fat cars,

a view from a balcony.

4.30, they would have been dusting

polishing glasses

woodwork and brass

wiping stained glass clean for five.

Checking the pumps, the damp of the cellar,

cool on a day like today

(Even now I am drawn to cellars)

cobbles in earth, as if drowning.

The beer's brassy depths

settled and calm in dark vats

awaiting parties, laughter, 5pm.

I see my grandmother's room

settled and calm above the old words

saloon, snug, bar.

A room jammed into roofbeam, slate-space,

a Lowry rattle of window

opening onto chimney pots, brickwork, slops lane.  

And yet

Of the old city nothing survives above ground.  

Doddington Lane of the old names remembers

Youth and shaved heads and a wilderness of dogs.