The Search For Family Became A Saga
The idea of dramatizing
the story grew, the more she uncovered. “My imagination was first fired when I
looked closely at the Reighton Parish Records from the early 1700s. The
marriages revealed a closely-knit community, and the deaths were intriguing—an
unusual mixture of young adults along with the expected babies, children and
elderly.”
As a lover of all things historical, Joy wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a small coastal village in Filey Bay three centuries ago. It would have had no electricity, no running water and poor roads. Joy says, “I decided to begin the story of the Jordans of Reighton in 1703 as the Great Storm of that year was well documented by Daniel Defoe. The weather becomes as important as the characters, often determining the action.”
The following
extracts are from Book One, Witch-bottles and Windlestraws.
***
They dreaded the return of those winters of the late 1600’s; years when they were cut off completely from the outside world and when heavy snow even fell in May.
William Jordan,
watching his breath steaming above the pew, was also remembering those cold
winters. He and most of his brothers and sisters had been born then. He’d spent
long, dark days kept indoors for weeks at a time, bundled up in such thick
clothes he could hardly move. Other memories were of a silent white world, the
snow piled up outside and small birds, frozen to death, dropping from the
trees.
The really cold
spell began on the evening of 5th January. That night the temperature plummeted
dramatically and kept falling. Rabbits froze in their burrows, and pheasants
lay dead in the hedgerows. The wind came from the northeast and, although Filey
Brigg looked clear and distinct one morning in the sunshine, all views were
soon blotted out by a snowstorm. The sky became a dirty yellow and everything
went quiet as if nature itself had shut down.
***
By the end of
January, the Gurwoods sat with as many clothes on as they could manage, as near
to the fire as was safe and, even then, did not feel warm. John had the
unwelcome experience of waking one morning to find his nightcap frozen to the
bed-head. He couldn’t shave because the water froze on his stubble before the
razor could do its work and, when he cut his chin, his veins were so far below
the skin that he hardly bled.
Water froze in
the bowls and buckets and even Martha Wrench’s ale froze in the casks. The
ponds and wells, and even the cistern at Uphall, all turned to ice; chunks had
to be hacked off and melted over the fires. Dickon tried to make sure all the
animals drank warm water but, by the time he carried it from the fire to the
troughs, it had gone stone-cold again. Within minutes of pouring it out, ice
would start creeping over the surface like ghostly fingers. The still air had
almost a tinkling sound and, out in the yard, any sound carried for miles. At
night, trees could be heard cracking apart as frost penetrated the trunks.
Reighton, lying in a hollow, was trapped by the ice and snow. No one came into
the village and no one left it.
***
The novels are
full of old remedies and superstitions. The following extract describes one
strange rite—placing a witch-bottle in a new house to ward off evil spirits and/or witches.
***
There was just
one thing, however, that Mary needed to do before she could consider the house
ready to live in. When the men were out ploughing, she fetched Sarah Ezard to
carry out a secret ritual in the kitchen.
Sarah had brought a small brown stoneware bottle full of urine.
Mary shuddered.
‘William will hate us doing this.’
‘What ’e won’t
see ’e can’t grieve over,’ Sarah replied.
‘Come on, let’s get on with it.
Pass me all that I need.’ Mary
handed over a few small iron nails, some human hair and finally some small
chicken bones. Sarah put them in the
bottle and then stopped it up with clay.
Then she tied on a piece of leather to secure it. They prised up the hearth stone, dug out a
small hole and wedged the bottle in upside down, packing the earth back round
it and over it. Then they laid back the
flag, satisfied they’d done what was necessary to ward off evil spirits.
***
The five novels
cover the years 1703 to 1734.
Book One: Witch-bottles and Windlestraws
Book Two: New Arrivals in Reighton
Book Three: Whisper to the Bees
Book Four: Bonfires and Brandy
Book Five: A Time for Reaping due out in 2024
The saga might
be finished, but Joy has not forgotten Filey and is working on a new book
called The Boy with Mussel-shell Eyes. “I had an idea inspired partly by the
folk song, The Bonnie Fisher Boy, and by a report in a Scarborough Newspaper from
1822. It’s a love story written through the letters of a girl who stays in
Filey one summer.”
Learn more
about Joy and her writing HERE.
