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Hollow Meadows

Hollowhull (of ships and plants), κοιλος, skull (as κεφαλη and caput that which holds, contains), holehold, etc. Hell.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, diary, 1863

 

Corridor-coloured. A place

of eyes. Things

put away,    privily

*

englishedith

08-05-2005, 16:07

:help: Can anyone tell me is this place still there and what was it home/hospital/institution? 

 

PhilipB

08-05-2005, 19:33

As far as I'm aware this used to be a Borstel. The building is still there but not used as such now.

 

deecee

08-05-2005, 22:51

A friend of ours had a son who used to stay there because of very bad epilepsy, this was back in the 70s. It was a kind of institution for people with mental and physical disabilities. 

 

*

 

Chlorine is heavy, creeps

like nightwatchmen. Clocks

mock: tonic / 

       clonic /

 

*

 

HughW

09-05-2005, 21:38

Three possible manifestations of the same institution?!

 

from Pawson & Brailsford's Illustrated Guide to Sheffield (1862): 

 

In 1849 the Guardians leased from the Duke of Norfolk about 50 acres of moorland, at Hollow Meadows, about six miles from the town, with a view of reclaiming it by pauper labour. Nearly the whole of the land has been brought under cultivation, and sub-let to farm tenants. The Farm, as it is called, is still retained by the Guardians, and a number of the able-bodied men who require relief in times of bad trade are sent to labour at it. The undertaking has been so successful that at the time we write (February 1862) the Guardians are in negotiation for the leasing of further land.

 

from White's Directory 1901:

 

The Truant School, at Hollow Meadows, was established in 1879 as a means of discipline for recalcitrant children, and will hold 90 boys.

 

from White's Directory 1919/20:

 

The Sheffield Educational Committee Industrial School is at Hollow Meadows, about seven miles from the City, on the main road to Manchester, and provides for 90 boys, the average number of inmates being about 80. The boys are largely employed in market-gardening. Superintendent, Mr Isaac McHardy.

 

*

 

Walking stammers, unsequenced with

stagefright: requires a trick, a sleight

of mind - look, over there, quick - Ha! 

Fooled you. Faster. Too fast. Feste, the 

jester, harries & grips - O lente lente 

currite -

 

 

Ousetunes

10-05-2005, 07:23

I think I can remember, when in the 1970s we seemed to go over the Snake Pass nearly every Sunday, my mum referring to the place as a 'Bad Boys Home' or a 'Naughty Boys School'. Something like that.

 

*

 

The baby. Starfish 

mouths behind 

glass cross-

examined by steel

threads. Air

gelid, thick like

brine. Is he

dead, is he

mine? Mouths

open anemone-

red but I 

am far inside 

green, soundless,

unfathomed

 

*

 

Jan39

25-05-2005, 20:20

I was told it was last used as an isolation hospital.

 

*

 

They should have left the moon alone. I saw it

this morning still high in the west, looking 

so pure and alone but it isn't, not 

any more. Not after that Sunday night, 

or Monday I suppose, it was four in 

the morning but I couldn't sleep because 

of the heartburn and his elbow, it must 

have been, jammed under my ribs. You couldn't 

tell what anything was at first, and the voices

all broken and fuzzing like off-station 

radio; and that place so utterly

empty. They should have left the moon alone.

 

*

 

Stoner

30-05-2005, 10:36

At the back of the site is a private woodland that you can still walk through. I remember as a youngster walking through the wood and looking into the hospital which specalised in fitting artifical limbs. From the woods you could see into a room which contained a huge stock of spare limbs which was very spooky to look at as a child.

 

*

 

I must have been about seven, my brother was still a baby, sleeping in the cot in my parents' room, and I had the little back bedroom which looked out over the allotments. The storm woke me. I crawled to the end of the bed and pulled the curtains open to watch. The sky was pale green and the thunder didn't just roll like drums, it cracked like a whip, like someone splitting the world in two. She was standing just by the shed, over the way. She was wearing a long white dress and she held her hands to her ears as though the noise hurt her, and she kept shaking her head as if she was saying No, no to someone I couldn't see. The lightning flashed like an x-ray and she looked up and she looked right at me and I saw her face, she looked more frightened than anyone I had ever seen and she started trying to tell me something, but I couldn't hear for the rain and the thunder and the shut window, and I heard the baby start to cry and my mam and dad waking up, and then something moved behind me and I turned and it was the cat, she must have been scared by the storm and got out of the kitchen and up the stairs, and when I looked back out of the window she was gone, the lady was gone and I never saw her again. 

 

*

 

OntarioOwl

25-01-2006, 03:06

When we were naughty as kids our grandparents used to threaten us with being sent to the 'naughty boys' home at Rivelin.

 

*

 

Superconductive. Tripping & 

lapping. Above the weir's 

furred lip, the pools rusty 

with sunlight, chuckling like 

uncles: Tha' better behave or tha'llt

g' t't Meadows. Over the moor 

the swifts are screaming: news

 

news -