Bridgwater – The Parrett’s Mouth

Description

Bridgwater has an astonishing wealth of trading history. For hundreds of years the River Parrett connected Somerset with Brittany, Spain, the East Indies and the Americas. Woollen cloth, wine, bricks and tiles were the foundation of a lucrative river trade which continues into the 1960s. Today, Bridgwater is a thriving industrial centre with many new small enterprises. The town brims with character and every autumn it stages a magnificent carnival. in the spring, the ancient business of nocturnal elver dealing still survives on the riverbanks.

This unusual and striking book is a collaboration between poet James Crowden and photographer Pauline Rook. It includes thirty new poems with informative notes, plus fifty black and white photographs commissioned especially to make the eight-hundredth anniversary of the town’s charter. Words and pictures together capture the essence of this lively community and the surrounding countryside.