Available to listen to and buy at Bandcamp
Release date: 12 December 2020
Format: digital download. Artwork and typography by Landschaft.
Finding Cloud Hill was a happy accident. A nexus of canal, railway, motorway and soon HS2, tucked away in Sandiacre a little visited corner on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, we approached along the Erewash Canal south from Ilkeston, St Giles church and Church Farm crowning the hill viewed across watermeadow from Pasture Lock under the winter sun. NGC map reference: SK48004, 37257 / 52 55' 5" N, 1 17' 15" W. EXploring further, a walk up Cloud Hill to St Giles and Olaf the rector explaining the former importance of Sandiacre, and how St Giles was endowed with booty from Edward III's 100 years war adventuring. The interior is richly ornamented with architectral embelishments from Romanseque to late Victorian (see Corpus od Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland at www.crsbi.ac.uk item 2788). Present day Sandiacre, a dormitory settlement for Nottingham and Derby, former heavy industry now a tapestry of light manufacturing and warehousing with extensive post industrial deriliction remaining to the north; open country to the west to Dale Abbey. I have a for long time been curious about and attracted to the area bounded by M1, A38, A52. So this work is my homage to this corner of England, off the tourist trail, quietly living down the years existing as a crossroads, with Cloud Hill pulling the fertile immagination towards thoughts of Alan Garner and mysteries of the past.