‘Here in Luke’s gospel Jesus reminds us of our responsibility to children: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”
‘Children suffer everywhere in our land, in lightless mines crawling through the dust pulling trucks of coal, in the factories where their young lives are stolen for profit amid the clatter of deafening machines, in nameless places where they are forced to satisfy the lusts of the depraved by violence, poverty and need. In this valley, we will make a sanctuary for children who need us.
‘In partnership with the Hailsworth family the Children of Fire will build a school for those in need. There children who are abused will find a shelter and there they will breathe our clean air. They will be taught to read and write, they will be taught trades so they can build better futures for themselves. But above all they will be loved!’
Rachael seemed to have grown taller as she spoke. ‘brothers and sisters, join us as you can in this calling. They are our neighbours, we see their need and we hear God calling us to help them. Give yourselves now to that call. Let it be our crusade!’
Her hands were now raised above her head and she looked ecstatically towards the sky. As she finished, an intense stabbing pain shot down Josiah’s left arm, he called out and clutched it with his right hand.
‘What is it, Josiah? Hold me if you are faint,’ said Martha Cooksley.
Josiah took a deep breath and looked down at his arm. Where the lifeless fingers projected from the sling there was a slight movement, as his left forefinger twitched. Thomas slipped his hand over it.
‘Thanks be to God,’ he said as he and Martha hugged Josiah and Rachael’s congregation cheered, praising her gift and challenge.
Historical Notes
When an author sits down to write an historical novel, it’s a case of running along the border between the two worlds of fiction and fact, keeping both in balance.
The 1840s was a time of great change. It was the beginning of the Victorian period, but much of what we think of as being typical of that period was not yet in place.
The Queen herself was still young and not necessarily the universally praised mother of the nation she was to become. This is illustrated by the four attempted assassinations on her life from June 1840 to May 1849.
Irish politics was volatile. The rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1797 was a fresh memory and it involved tactics that we might well consider terrorism today. The last manifestation of organised rebellion was in 1804 when the resistance of James Corcoran collapsed. In the 1840s, Irish resistance was exemplified by the Young Ireland whose activities eventually led to a further uprising in 1848. By then divide and rule policies from London had hardened the sectarian divisions of Catholic versus Protestant.
In the period the symbol of the end of the Napoleonic War in June 1804 at Waterloo, is balanced by the Peterloo Massacre in June 1816. They represent the struggle between the old political order and the new economic order of the industrial cities that plays out in tension over constitutional change. The result was that Chartism emerged as the most popular political movement.
In terms of physical settings of the book, there are several buildings that exist today that make appearances in Children of Fire.
The Packhorse Bridge, known nowadays as the Roman Bridge, crosses the river Goyt as described a few miles upstream of Marple.
Until recently there really was a giant-sized cross on the north ridge of the Goyt Valley, my Furness Vale. There will be again when the local Churches Together get it repaired after damage in a storm.
There is no Long Clough or Pulpit Rock, though there is a story that John Wesley preached from a rock when establishing a Methodist Society at Marple Ridge. But Long Clough Chapel exists, complete with its dedication tablet. It is Hollinsclough Methodist Chapel in Derbyshire.
The lime kilns at Marple were real, as is the canal and the locks of the Marple flight on the Peak Forest Canal. Coal mines were common in the area towards and beyond Poynton.
But the real scene stealer is Hailsworth Hall, in reality Lyme Hall (a National Trust Property) displaced a few miles. Much of the internal and external details of Hailsworth Hall are taken from Lyme Hall including, paintings, carvings, and especially the library and the dining room.
All the inventions in the novel were either current at the time or could have been made with the current technologies of the time. The compressed blackpowder in the blasting candles of the Furness Vale Powder Mill could have been produced at the time and were produced in the early 20th century in response to the convenience of using dynamite but by then the market was already lost for blackpowder blasting.
The most significant question must be this: would there have been a religious community like Children of Fire? I have no direct evidence of such a community but it was a time of religious change. The Irish workers coming into the growing industrial towns like Stockport, brought Irish Catholicism with them. They were matched by a second group of immigrants from the countryside, who were Protestant. The church that rose to fill their needs was the Methodist Church.
The Oxford Movement was just around the corner; this would lead to the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church of England.
The Primitive Methodist Church used meetings in the countryside as well as building chapels a model that was mimicked by the Chartist and emerging Trade Union movement. There was plenty of room for a self-styled prophet like Elijah and a female religious leader like Rachael.
But as I said Children of Fire is a novel not an history book; it’s a tale meant to entertain. Enjoy.
For those wishing to visit sites used in the novel there is a guide on Paul’s website at www.paulcwbeattysbooks.co.uk
Acknowledgements
There are too many people who have helped me with this book for me to thank all of them individually, but special thanks are owed to:
Staff of the Police Museum Manchester for advice about the status of the new Borough Police Forces in the 1840s, like the Stockport Force.
Ian Tyler, responsible for the initial idea behind Children of Fire, through his book The Gunpowder Mills of Cumbria: A History of Cumbria’s Gunpowder Industry, Blue Rock Publications, 2002, reprinted 2010, ISBN 0 9523028 8 8
Dr Francis Mair, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of Manchester, for explaining the details of the production and action of gunpowder to me.
And last but by no means least, Writing Magazine and The Book Guild Publishing for putting up the prize which has enabled Children of Fire to be published.
Notes for Book Groups
For those reading Children of Fire in book groups, free notes to aid discussion written by the author are available at www.paulcwbeattysbooks.co.uk
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