Cane came in here until the tramline was lifted
A receiving store, fourteen years shut, and a stubborn decision to leave the rails in the floor instead of concreting over them.
What was still here when we got the keys
Forty metres of narrow-gauge rail set into hardwood blocks, a weighbridge plate with the maker's name still legible, the loading gantry, and a consignment board with the last season's tonnages chalked on it.
All of it stayed. Tables sit between the rails, the lights hang off the gantry, and the consignment board now carries the week's programme.
The new parts are the pit, the kitchen, the bar in the weighbridge office and eighty chairs. Everything else was already in the building.
- 1953
- The store opened on the tramline.
- 2009
- The last consignment was weighed in.
- 2022
- The doors opened again with a pit in the loading end.
Four things that do not change
A game costs nothing to join and returns nothing but a number on a score pad.
The pit runs on what the valley grows. When a fruit is out, it comes off the board rather than arriving from a warehouse.
Eighty people, and not one more, because the gantry throws sound straight back down.
Nobody drives out of here over the limit while we can help it. We will call a car and hold the keys.