Abbey Fields, Kenilworth at Twilight

10th November 2018, Day before Remembrance Day

I stepped onto the well-trodden pathway of years past, next to the memorial to those who fought bravely in the “War to End All Wars”, a distant memory populated with its many tokens of little crosses and red poppies from the townsfolk. The green rolling fields of the immense park dipped down and lay ahead of me.

 The trees still in their splendor of pied piper colors, transforming and shedding off the season all in stately array. The sky darkened and through the wispy curtains of clouds, shades of pink, purple, and orange radiated out from the sun, now sinking low behind houses across the greenway. The wind rustled the leaves and quieted everything down.

Shadows of people came into view, some with little running shadows that I made out to be dogs or children, some in carriages all bundled up just as warmly as their parents were adorned in heavy overcoats. These interruptions appeared periodically amidst the quiet solemn air that hung about the place. I soon made out the perimeters of this wide-open field, a street making up its circumference was dotted with old houses and buildings from a century or so ago.

Soon I stumbled and shuffled through wet, crumpled leaves, some stirred by the passing wind, and I saluted the “Good Folk” as they went about their way. More Oaks paraded by with their recognizable leaves that soon vanished to make room for a children’s park still full of life given the time of day it was with round-abouts and other equipment constructed in the sand. To my left, a red building hid an indoor pool which sat in front of a most curious “flying” cable-line. It was occupied by some highly excitable young girl who screamed as she flew above the heads of the other children and her family, coming to a halt in mid-air and flying uncontrollably backward, pulled away to fall into the safe arms of her father yet again.

The place of the long buried dead ones lay ahead of me. I traversed up to greet them and when I turned around the happy family at the cable-line was out of sight. The remnants of the old abbey came into view, one solitary building of stone and brick with a sign that pointed down showing that I was standing on the old abbey’s foundations. To my left, looking above the swampy, simmering pools, the ruins of Kenilworth Castle could be seen through the dark layers of trees.

I walked amongst the other stone structures of the ruined abbey and soon stood within the stony place markings of the ancestral dead. I noted that most had been interned in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some graves leaned forward precariously as if the weight of the dead was too much for them to bare, while others stared back, completely vacant of their once printed namesakes, hollow monuments to those whose life was snuffed out from them, including their names. Grand sarcophagi intermingled with the tombstones, showing off the forever beds of those that lay within.

I thought of the ancient dead, of stories told since time immemorial that flooded up through the centuries to haunt our ideas of what lay in the great beyond. I walked with some trepidation mixed with awe. Soon a melancholy tune offering “soul cakes” came to my mind and I breathed the song to life amongst the quiet and restful dead.

I soon found a path muddled with dirt and leaves and attempted to walk, feeling my shoes stick to the ground underneath me. More children came by and flew like banshees, fast on the winds propelled by their broomstick bikes.

A new set of tombs lay ahead of me, all modest squares set into the ground. Above, the calming spire and frame of the church of St Nicholas was silhouetted against the almost grey sky, once blue with light. I paraded around the church, noticed the doors were barred and turned my gaze towards the vast homelands of the dead intermingled with trees, as a crow and several squirrels, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, played amongst the tombstones.

With the emerald park at my back, a row of pillared trees led me towards the street all in their cloister silence. I knew I would be back to explore this lovely green park again with its ancient church, its stone-cold graves and the rest of fair Kenilworth; I would sit in the cute local tea room across from the Castle to have my cuppa on a cold winter’s day or sometime next spring when light would return to the land again.

I bid adieu to Abbey Fields, and followed the path up towards the bus stop, which was one wooden webbed shed besides the road. Soon I would be heading back to my home away from at my flat in Coventry and to continue my studies at the University of Warwick once the weekend was over.