ALDERLEY Edge born literary master Alan Garner has criticised the village that spawned his talent.
Angered by property developers who he feels are destroying the heritage in the area, the world famous author has put his £1.5 million medieval property into a charitable trust to stop it falling into the hands of builders.
He said: “What has happened to Alderley Edge is very disappointing. I wouldn’t live in Alderley Edge even if I could afford it.
“I remember a time when there were shops that sold something you needed.”
His concern is so great that he has placed his home of 50 years, the Medieval Hall and Medicine House at Blackden seven miles from his birthplace, into a trust for the benefit of future generations.
He said: “Despite denying children and grandchildren their inheritance, neither I nor my wife could bear the thought of the house falling into the hands of well-heeled wreckers who might destroy 10,000 years of heritage for the sake of building a swimming pool and a tennis court.
“They are probably the only people who could afford it at its current market value of at least £1.5 million and we could not take that risk with our lives’ work.”
Born in the shadow of the Edge in the house that his grandfather had inhabited and with a family history he can trace back to 1592, Alan Garner OBE, FSA became world famous for his reworking of ancient mythology, weaving his grandfather’s tales into international bestsellers.
Long before David Beckham and Wayne Rooney came to live astride the East Cheshire ridge, his works made the Edge famous and were subsequently made into a series of film and television dramas.
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Red Shift were all written in the same fireside chair in the same room at Blackden bought in 1957 with £610 and a 100 per cent mortgage from the Order of Odd Fellows, then located in Alderley Edge’s Union Club.
He said: “I came from a deep rooted oral tradition, listening to the same tales that had been handed down from generation to generation. It was a deep but it was a narrow tradition.
“It was only when I passed the examinations to the Manchester Grammar School that I was able to put all I had learned into context. The teachers were and are great eccentrics who encouraged us to combine learning with imagination. It was at Manchester Grammar that I began my research into grandfather’s tales.”
As Alan researched his books, he became more and more interested in archaeology.
He said: “That’s why I know the Blackden site is such a gem.
“We are continually finding artefacts from as far back as 10,000 years, the end of the last Ice Age. We also know that the house is built on a Bronze Age burial mound and that beneath the house there are the remains of two further older houses and probably more dwelling places before then. It is a rare site and must be preserved”
Such is his love of the site and Cheshire’s history and archaeology, in 1970 Alan had the old Medicine House at Wrinehill relocated timber by timber and re-erected and linked to their own medieval hall 18 miles away.
Now he and his wife Griselda, with the help of some of the country’s top archaeologists, are running courses in history and archaeology for university students, adults and gifted and talented children from local schools, including his old school, Manchester Grammar.
During his time at MGS Alan discovered that the Alderley Edge legend of Merlin the wizard and Arthur the Hero dated back to the 19th century, while the ancient tale that under the hill there lies an army asleep waiting for the last battle of the world was far older.
He said: “The legend of the sleeping hero occurs right across the northern hemisphere in various guises as far back as 5,000 BC.”
Alan recently returned to his former school to reopen a library named in his honour.
He said: “Manchester Grammar School taught me that if you have been privileged to have had a good education, then you must put something back into the community.
“Privilege carries responsibility. It was made clear to us that if you used your knowledge only to acquire money and wealth then that education would have been wasted.”
Alan added: “There has always been new money in Alderley Edge. When the railway was built in the mid 19th century it brought in new money from Manchester.
“Some of those people were simply awful, but at least then there were also people who came from Manchester’s great Liberal traditions.
“The Pilkington family for example bought the Edge in 1938 to save it from becoming a building estate, giving it to the National Trust ten years later. I am not so sure that would happen now.”
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