He first went there with his school, long ago. The teachers had told the classes that the stone work was from Roman times; remnants from hundreds of years back. It turned out that it wasn’t Roman at all. It was an old mill first used for smelting lead in the late 1600s and then between around 1760 and 1850 fine paper was produced there to wrap the products of the nearby iron and steel industry - often cutlery and probably the pins, needles and wire made in the local area. All that remained today was the pond which had provided power by supplying a water wheel and some and some ruinous buildings. Romantic maybe – but not Roman. When they had met years later, he could not wait to take her to this place, high up on the hillside in the depths of the forest with the stream trickling, then rushing down from the tops. Tawny, hazel, mustard and coral tainted leaves and ferns painted the background for the scene. And she had loved it too.
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