Nicholas Feeney, for information on local history.
Sarah Davis of the Shropshire archives, for particular help about Shrewsbury Prison rules.
Toby Neal of the Shropshire Star, for dialect help.
Rita Rich-Mulcahy, for helpful advice on the local accent and dialect for the audiobook.
Staff at the range of Ironbridge Gorge Museums, for invaluable information on the area and its history, who do a fantastic job of keeping that history alive.
Joanne Smith, Museum Registrar at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, for book recommendations and useful contacts.
Kerry Hadley, for advice on Black Country matters and a variety of other matters, professional and personal, including making me snort with laughter on a regular basis.
Early readers – Lucy Adams, Lynn Downing, Kathy Kendall, Pauline Lancaster, Louisa Treger and Sue White – for reading with such speed and enthusiasm, giving me confidence to carry on with my first foray into saga.
My dear brother Jon Chadwick and his lovely wife Pauline, for hosting and looking after Poppy and me during our many research visits to the Ironbridge area.
My agent Laura Macdougall, for the brilliant idea of suggesting saga in the first place and for always being there for me; the best agent this novelist can imagine. Also gratitude to all at United Agents for support and help.
My editor Tara Loder, for believing in this story from day one, for coming all the way to my kitchen table to discuss character arcs and for superlative editing, honing this tale into the novel it is today.
Everyone at Bonnier – special mentions to Sarah Bauer, Katie Lumsden, Eleanor Dryden, Sahina Bibi, Imogen Sebba, Felice McKeown, Ellen Turner and Kate Parkin – for making me so welcome and providing brilliant support throughout the writing, editing and publicity process.
Book bloggers, readers, reviewers and booksellers, for continued support in my writing career, sticking with me through the transition from Mascull to Walton and championing anything I write. I am so grateful to you all.
Tim Marchant, web designer, for creating wonderful Mollie Walton and Rebecca Mascull websites, which are even more gorgeous than I envisioned.
Sasha Drennan and Gill Hart at Lindum Books in Lincoln, for supporting this writer in everything she writes – whatever my name or genre! – and providing friendship and chats. And always stocking my books on your lovely shelves.
My author friends, those in and out of various collectives, such as my dear and original Prime Writers, and newer groups to me like the Savvies, the Loungers, the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Saga Girls – you have kept me sane, educated me and kept me smiling. Special thanks to Kerry Drewery, as ever.
All my Facebook mates, for indulging my penchant for cat videos and edgy humour.
My friends and family, for keeping me going with advice, hugs, childcare and other invaluable resources during the writing of this book.
Vanessa Lafaye, who cheered with me when I got this book contract, yet left us too soon to read it. You were my beta reader extraordinaire and my beloved friend. I miss you, darling.
Colin Miles, for loitering, laughs and love.
Poppy, my darling daughter, for making it so easy, every day, in every way, to be your mother.
Welcome to the world of Mollie Walton!
Keep reading for more from Mollie Walton, to discover a recipe that features in this novel and to find out more about Mollie Walton’s inspiration for the book . . .
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Dear Readers,
In the summer of 2016, I took my daughter to visit my brother and his wife in Shropshire. I’d never been to the county and knew nothing about it. All I remembered was an old friend of mine from university days saying she’d been to Ironbridge, how it was the first iron bridge ever built and that the area was the cradle of the industrial revolution. She also said it was beautiful there. I recalled thinking, how can something be industrial and beautiful? We arrived in Ironbridge and took a walk up to its main attraction, the glorious iron bridge itself, spanning the River Severn. We walked to the centre of the bridge and I looked down through the iron bars at the slow-moving river below. And then it happened.
It’s what I like to call the ‘history shivers’. This isn’t a phrase I created; I’ve heard writers and history enthusiasts use it when you experience something that really takes you back to a past age. I felt it when I saw the Brontë sisters’ writing table at their home in Haworth. And I felt it that day, standing on the iron bridge. I suddenly had a vision of how the river must have looked two hundred years before, flanked by all manner of burning, smoking industry, fed by the workers and masters who fuelled it, sending goods out into the rest of the world along the river and roads, the canals and railways. All that was gone now, but the remnants remained, overgrown by the beauty of nature. My friend had been right.
Just weeks before, my literary agent Laura had brilliantly suggested a brand new idea to me: writing a saga trilogy. She wanted me to come up with an idea for a story – families, industry, a beautiful yet industrial setting, conflict and drama. Standing on the bridge, I knew this was the place. Looking at both sides of the river, I realised I had my two families: one of poor workers, the other of rich masters. I had my setting, my characters, my conflict and drama all built in, just by gazing down from the bridge. I was itching to start writing! We visited some of the many museums of the area and everything I looked at took on a new meaning: this was where my two families lived and worked; this is what they ate and how they dressed and where they travelled to and so on. I took dozens of photos, bought a lot of books and postcards and started filling a notebook with ideas. The two families sprang almost fully formed into my head: the masters lived in a house on the top of the hill, looking down on everybody below. The workers lived in the ramshackle cottages that grew along the river when industry took hold. When I got home, I sketched out a family tree, then, by researching common names of Shropshire, I was able to fill in the blanks. I had my Woodvines and my Kings, my two daughters, their secret friendship and the troubles that awaited them. I planned out their lives over forty years, over three generations and three books, all mysteriously linked by a baby found on the bridge . . .
I went back to the area several times, visiting other important sites, such as the ruins of the Bedlam Furnaces, the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron and the Dana, otherwise known as Shrewsbury Prison. I fell in love with the area and with my characters, Anny and Margaret. My agent was delighted with the whole project too. When my publisher took on the saga trilogy, I found my editor Tara, who loved these girls and their story as much as I did. We talked about them always as if they were real people! We cared deeply what happened to them; we felt bad when we put them through hard times and cheered them on when they battled against adversity. Such is the stuff of saga! I hope you love them as much as we do.
Best wishes,
Mollie
Glossary of Shropshire Dialect Terms
Definitions have been collated from experts in dialect, such as Shroppiemon (see Acknowledgements) and also the Shropshire Word Book by Georgina Frederica Jackson, published 1879.
All round the Wrekin: taking too long to get to the point
Anna: haven’t
Babby: baby
Bait: food, a meal
Big-sorted: proud, stuck-up
Blethering: talking too much
Canna: can’t
Chappers: lads
Chillun: children
Chunnering: chatting
Clemmed: hungry, famished
Darksome: gloomy, melancholy, sad
Darter: daughter
Didna: did not
Drodsome: dreadful, alarming
Dunna: don’t
Earywig: earw
ig
Fadder: father
Frit: frightened
From off: from outside the local area
Gunna: going to
Hadna: had not
Hobbety-hoy: a youth or adolescent
Inna: isn’t
Lungeous: spiteful
Mon: man, often used as a term of address to males
Mun: must
Ow bist?: How are you?
Ow bist thee fairing?: How are you doing? How are you managing?
Proper jam: lovely; really good.
Shoosby: Shrewsbury
Shoulda: should have
Shouldna: should not/should not have
Summat: something
Trow: a cargo boat used to transport goods
Wanna: want to
Wench: used for a young woman in a similar way to ‘lass’ and is in no way derogatory to females. See the Shropshire Word Book definition: ‘a young girl, or young woman, of peasant rank, to whom it is applied in no unworthy sense – the good old word maintaining its respectability.’
Wonna: won’t
Wouldna: would not have
Rachel Woodvine’s Fidget Pie
This recipe makes a traditional Shropshire fidget pie, just like Rachel Woodvine makes for her husband John and her daughter Anny to take to work for their lunch. A slice of a fidget pie is delicious and filling.
You will need
For the pastry:
500g plain flour
1tbsp salt
140g lard, diced
200ml water
2 tbsp butter, for greasing
1 egg, beaten
For the filling:
300g ham or gammon, diced
2 onions, peeled and diced
3 large apples, peeled and diced
3 large potatoes, peeled and diced
100ml cider
50ml milk
2 tbsp plain flour
2–3 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp salt
Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas mark 6.
2. Mix together the flour and salt in a large bowl.
3. Heat the lard and water in a saucepan, until the water is simmering and the lard melted. Pour the hot liquid into the bowl with the flour.
4. Stir with a wooden spoon, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead to form a soft dough. Cover and set aside.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the ham, onions, apples and potatoes together. Add the cider, milk and flour, then the salt, pepper, sugar and sage. Mix together well.
6. Grease a cake tin (approximately 22cm) with butter.
7. Roll out two thirds of the pastry dough made earlier onto a floured surface, in a large circle. Line the cake tin with the pastry, letting it overlap the rim a little.
8. Roll out the remaining third of the pastry to make a lid large enough to cover the pie. Set this to one side.
9. Put the filling into the pie case, packing it tightly down.
10. Brush the pastry’s edges with beaten egg, then cover with the lid. Crimp the edges together, then brush the whole lid with beaten egg.
11. Bake in the oven for an hour, then turn off the heat and leave in the oven for another half hour before removing.
12. Enjoy!
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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Zaffre
This ebook edition published in 2019 by
ZAFFRE
80–81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE
Copyright © Mollie Walton, 2019
Cover design by Debbie Clement.
Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb (women);
Colin Waters / Alamy Stock Photo (scene).
The moral right of Mollie Walton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–78576–762–3
Paperback ISBN: 978–1–78576–763–0
This ebook was produced by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd
Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK
www.bonnierbooks.co.uk
The Daughters of Ironbridge Page 29
