Wild Weeds

Wild Weeds

Groundwork Erewash Valley (no longer in existence), an environmental regeneration and community development charity, was a major partner in the Nutbrook Trail project. In 2001they obtained further funding for some artwork to be installed on the trail. Art, usually in the form of fairly robust sculpture, is a common feature on national cycle trails and some routes, such as the Cloud Trail, have the dubious distinction of sculptures funded by the Royal Bank of Scotland. 

After a competitive tendering process Hilary Cartmel, a Nottinghamshire based sculptor with a strong record in creating public art, was commissioned to make three pieces for the trail. They look as splendid as ever, and since 2001 many thousands of people must have seen them as they walked or cycled by. 

You'll find the first sculpture at the southern end of the trail where it meets Midland Road in Long Eaton (near Asda). Further north, just after the point where the trail leaves the canal towpath at Stanton Lock, is the second. The last one is towards the northern end of the trail, down in the hollow where it joins Dog Kennel Lane and just before Shipley Hall Cricket Club. (This one has unfortunately acquired some graffiti recently; I'm not sure who is responsible for the upkeep of the sculptures now that Groundwork is out of business. Any ideas?)

What do these sculptures depict? Sculptor Hilary Cartmel explains. "The theme of 'wild weeds' was my idea. I walked the trail and saw the verges full of wild plants - the kind that would be called weeds in your own garden." The plants she chose were Birch, Vetch and Campion. The sculptures are made of galvanised mild steel and are blue-grey in colour. They look good in any light or weather. They are not meant to be botanically accurate, but create a vivid impression of the profusion of wild growth typical of the Nutbrook and Erewash valleys. They are tall and thrusting, asserting their right to grow wherever they like. 

Hilary wanted to link the sculptures not only to the natural features of the area but also to its history and its people. She achieved this by creating a mixture of words and images in relief on the plinths. 

A  poem by Janet Devereux was chosen for the Long Eaton sculpture, Birch. 

Come all you people pause awhile

and I will tell you a story

BIRCH

a story of this endearing valley of ours

of factories and flowers and furniture

of lace bobbins and pianos and pencils

of mines, railroads and canals

of water and willows

where kingfishers and herons dive

where quiet flows the Erewash

Nora Waite from Ilkeston wrote a poem entitled "Nutbrook", and Hilary sampled it for the sculpture known as Vetch, near Stanton Lock. 

Barges gaily painted carry their heavy load

of limestone, coal and iron along this watery road...

the fieldfare, lapwing, kingfisher and the swallow...

windflower and coltsfoot, weeping willow and catkins...

the gillyflower and the kingcup, forget-me-not and celandine,

these in childhood were all jewels of mine

These words are accompanied on the plinth by some artwork done by pupils of the Coppice Primary School in Marlpool. 

VETCH

At first sight the third sculpture, "Campion", in Shipley Park, is similar in all respects to the others. The style of the sculpture is the same. There is a plinth with images and words in relief. The images depict aspects of the life and history of the area. The words are about the locality and by a local writer. But the writer this time is a man, a man who died decades before the Nutbrook Trail was even conceived. That man was DH Lawrence. Perhaps more surprising still than the name of the author is the source of the quotation used. It is taken from Lady Chatterley's Lover, a book whose title is well known but which few people read these days, and even when they do, probably not for the passages chosen by Hilary. 

It is fair to say that it is not Lawrence's best work, but it does contain some graphic descriptions of the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire borders in the years after the First World War. The Shipley Estate and Hall are mentioned by name. Lawrence was writing around the time that the estate was sold to the Shipley Mining Company and the extraction of coal on the estate was increased to the extent that mining under Shipley Hill eventually led to the demolition of the Hall. 

The Hall [Shipley] stood serenely spread out winking its Georgian panes as if cheerfully...The mines had made the Halls wealthy, now they were blotting them out as they had already blotted out the cottages...The Industrial England blots out the Agricultural England. One meaning blots out another. 

CAMPION

Lawrence was describing a change taking place in his day, and he could not have foreseen that the industrialisation of the area would itself be blotted out in turn by the regeneration of the landscape. The creation of Shipley Country Park and more recently the Woodside Nature Reserve, the "linear park" of the Nutbrook Trail and all those other pockets of reclaimed open space and wildlife habitat such as Pewit Carr, Manor Floods and Straw's Bridge have all helped to heal the countryside. The sculptures are in part a celebration of this process. 

Hilary Cartmel, not surprisingly, is an enthusiastic advocate of public art. When she visits a new area she finds that any artworks help her to discover and understand the place. The very best also stimulate the imagination. She admits that it can irritate and annoy some people. Hilary sometimes revisits sites where her own work has been installed to find out what people think, without revealing that she is the artist. She has not been back to the Nutbrook Trail yet, but if she did and you bumped into her, what would you have to say about "Wild Weeds"?

Go to www.hilarycartmel.co.uk to find out more. Many of Hilary's artworks are in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, the nearest being the Beeston Canal Wall near Beeston Lock. 

(This is an edited version of an article which appeared in Ilkeston Life last year.)

Jeff