The Reader’s Gazetteer: H

What did I say when I introduced this series?

Do I believe that I, a normal human being with no powers more sophisticated than being able to hold a map the right way up and knowing how to use the Deutsche Bahn app, could get to the place?

But when an author’s kind enough to not only give me a real life station, but a date and time of departure, too, who am I to quibble because I’m not magic enough to get onto the platform? Let’s talk about Hogsmeade. You (if you’re a witch or a wizard on the way to school at Hogwarts) get there by catching the 11am from platform nine-and-three-quarters at London King’s Cross on 1 September. (Any other means of getting there definitely fall outside the scope of this blog series.) And it takes all the rest of the day to get there. Which puts it somewhere in Scotland, although, as ‘the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain’, it seems to have developed its own distinctive culture:

Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees.

Harry shivered; unlike the other two, he didn’t have his cloak. They headed up the street, heads bowed against the wind, Ron and Hermione shouting through their scarves.

‘That’s the Post Office -‘

‘Zonko’s is up there -‘

‘We could go up to the Shrieking Shack -‘

‘Tell you what,’ said Ron, his teeth chattering, ‘shall we go for a Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks?’

But there, alas, you and I cannot follow.

I could quibble because nothing goes north of Peterborough from platforms 9, 10, and 11, but that would just be petty. Besides, there are all sorts of strange things that go on at King’s Cross. It’s got a fully functional platform zero, for goodness’ sake. And here’s a picture of a Festiniog railway loco in the middle of the concourse.

The whole question of the Hogwarts Express got me thinking about train journeys in other school stories: they’re quite often used, as in Harry Potter, as a liminal space, to introduce important characters and answer the protagonist’s questions about the world that they’re about to enter.

What I can’t decide is how the trains themselves work: would it be most usual to have a charter train, or to add a couple of reserved carriages onto a regular service, perhaps making an extra stop at a station nearer the school, or just to have the students travel by normal services? I’d assumed that the trains that take students to Malory Towers (leaving, one assumes, from Paddington) were chartered, but I don’t think there’s any evidence either way. (Incidentally, my father points out that, in any book where Darrell arrives by train, then so do most of the others, and if she’s driven down by Daddy then everyone else arrives by car too.) The Kingscote girls must be travelling (from Victoria) in reserved carriages on a standard service, because the Head is concerned about what other travellers might think about their behaviour.

I haven’t any other school stories in the house to check, so let’s return to the East Coast Mainline, and take a look at J. B. Priestley’s They Walk In The City. The city in which they walk is actually London, but a substantial portion of the narrative takes place in Haliford, which is a decaying mill town along the lines of Bradford or Huddersfield.

Haliford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is a textile town. A hundred years ago it was of no importance at all; merely a little market town, with a few small mills dotted about the hillsides. It grew steadily during the Fifties and Sixties; then came the Franco-Prussian War – a godsend – and Haliford made money… and after that, in spite of a slump or two towards the end of the century, the town grew and prospered, until at last there came the Great War – and what a godsend that was – and… the town, though a little lacking in brisk young manhood, reached its peak. It started slipping and sliding down the other side, towards nobody knows what, early in the Nineteen Twenties. The world seemed to take a sudden dislike to Haliford and its undeniably excellent products. Now, most of the mills have begun to look old. Some of them – grim black stone boxes though they are – have even begun to look pathetic. You feel – as they say round there – that they are ‘past it’. In the watery sunlight of the Pennines, their windows sometimes look like the eyes of a blind beggar. The tall chimneys that are still smoking do it now in a leisurely fashion, like retired men making a morning pipe last as long as possible. Many of the chimneys have stopped smoking, not having known the heat of a furnace for years. The air above Haliford ought to be clear by this time, but somehow the old haze still lingers, perhaps out of kindness to the bewildered townsfolk below, who would feel naked without it.

These days you’d probably be able to get a very good curry there.

Priestley obligingly tells us how to get to Haliford – at least, he tells us how to get to London from there, so it’s easy enough to reverse the process:

Both of them knew all about the ten o’clock train. It took Haliford men to the wool sales in London. It took them to buy wool in Australia and South America. It took them to sell Haliford fabrics all over the world, from Paris to Shanghai. Some of these fellows, with bags fantastically labelled, were already settling into their corners of first-class smokers, frowning over their pipes at copies of the Yorkshire Post and Manchester Guardian… In [Edward’s] right-hand waistcoat pocket was a ticket to King’s Cross, London, to say nothing of Beauty, Romance, Riches, Glory, Love… The station itself, with its glass-covered altitudes of quiet  and indifference, its sudden snortings and red glares, its high echoing voices, its fascinating suggestion of only being half in Haliford, the other half being anywhere you would like it to be, diminished and engulfed them both in a not unfriendly fashion…

‘It only stops at Doncaster, Grantham and Peterborough,’ said Herbert solemnly.

And it will not arrive at platform nine, ten or eleven, I can tell you that much.

Books mentioned in this post

Malory Towers series, Enid Blyton

Autumn Term, Antonia Forest

They Walk In The City, J. B. Priestley

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling

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