One
Walking such borders is a ritualistic thing. Year after year parish boundaries would be navigated and “beaten” along the route, so that each generation knew the line. Today, these lines are perhaps more poignant in that they are forgotten. To follow them now is to trespass, to pass through a veil between worlds, as the rivers and brooks are deposited between what we understand to be the city. Even the ancient entrance site, at the meeting point of the Full Brook and the River Tame, mimics a portal to another realm: a dark tunnel with an emerald path gleaming at the end.
Ancient parish boundaries were odd things. They often had enclaves and exclaves; detached pieces inserted into the middle of someone else’s land. These sometimes crossed counties, or formed islands of one county within another. The Delves is one of the tamest of unusual parish outgrowths. It was a compressed diamond at the north-east of Wednesbury’s bounds, attached to that parish only by a thin ribbon of land midst the tangle of boundaries where multiple rivers meet near Bescot. It was chiselled into shape by these waters, which formed its border. The coming of the railway physically severed the Delves from the rest of Wednesbury, and one hundred years later it was formally removed and given to Walsall.
Walking such borders is a ritualistic thing. Year after year parish boundaries would be navigated and “beaten” along the route, so that each generation knew the line. Today, these lines are perhaps more poignant in that they are forgotten. To follow them now is to trespass, to pass through a veil between worlds, as the rivers and brooks are deposited between what we understand to be the city. Even the ancient entrance site, at the meeting point of the Full Brook and the River Tame, mimics a portal to another realm: a dark tunnel with an emerald path gleaming at the end.