The Landscape of Paper Sisters
The Landscape of Paper Sisters
A REAL treat for you today – Rachel Canwell, author of the fabulous PAPER SISTERS is here to take us into the setting of her novel. It is inspired by her very own family story but is a story of fiction that is truly poignant….
This is quite the story behind the story so, Rachel, we are honoured you are here today!! Kettle is on, biscuits are opened…..now we can begin…
Rachel Canwell
Settle in everyone….this is fascinating……………………
Growing up I was always told the story.
Of the hospital, no bigger than a barn, tucked beneath the bank, between river, marsh and fen. A hospital that waited for 70 years for the patients that never came.
A hospital that had been tended by my family from its beginning to its end.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
Fen hospital (c) Rachel Canwell
But what is its story and how did it come to be?
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
Let’s start at the beginning; back in the spring of 1881, when in the village of Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire the new port was finally completed. Perched on the bank of the River Nene, surrounded by the sprawling and echoing fens, the port had been billed as the answer to all the village’s hopes and dreams; a new and superior port to that down river in Wisbech. A port whose wider channel and deeper basin meant it could accommodate large, more prosperous ships.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
On 14th May 1881 the first boat, the SS Garland, entered the dock, ahead of the Grand Opening scheduled for late June. A festival and celebration that was never to be.
The Bridge (c) Rachel Canwell
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
For less than a month later, on 9th June, the port began to collapse, falling piece by piece into the river below. Frantic efforts to rebuilt it were unsuccessful and eventually the scheme was abandoned taking with it a fortune and shattered dreams.
The Port was not rebuilt in any form for over a hundred years.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
Fen hospital today (c) Rachel Canwell
Yet still a part of it endured, for on the opposite side of the river was the small isolation hospital. Built as a legal requirement to accommodate any sailors that may have come into port showing signs of the deadly illness of the age; cholera, diphtheria, typhoid.
My great-great- great grandfather Edward Burton, having been appointed the hospital caretaker, lived, with his family, in the attached house. It was his job to tend the hospital, keep it stocked and ready for the sailors who never came.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
On the event of Edward’s death, the mantle passed quietly to his son, Henry, who then passed it to his daughters Mary Allett, aka ‘Alice’ and Rose. And it is Henry’s family who provide the inspiration for Paper Sisters.
Alice in old age in the hospital (c) Rachel Canwell
Henry died in 1906, just months after his 18-year-old son Alfred drowned on the marsh whilst wildfowling. His wife Sarah died soon after leaving Rose and Alice to run the hospital alone.
Alice was engaged, to a soldier, his name lost to time, who never came home from WW1. All that is left is the crucifix he sent home from the front and Alice’s engagement ring. Both of which I now treasure.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
Following the death of her brother Alben and his wife Sarah Jane, Alice brought up one of their six children, my grandmother Ivy. When Ivy married her husband Stanley moved into the hospital house; my mother, Sadie was born there.
Fen hospital (c) Rachel Canwell
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
The hospital was not official closed until 1950 when it was sold by the Port authorities. And for all those years my family looked after it, keeping the hospital was stocked. Holding it in readiness. Why it waited so long, open overlooked but obsolete is not clear. But what we do know is that in all that time the hospital never cared for single a patient.
Map of locations in Paper Sisters
All the characters in Paper Sister are fictional. Eleanor is not Alice. Lily is not Rose. Their father Henry was no monster. There was no Frank, no Clara or their children. All their tormented relationships and hardships are entirely imagined. The hospital house has long since been demolished but the hospital itself still stands, acting now as a construction company’s store.
But the landscape, the fallen port and most importantly the hospital are beautifully, hauntingly real.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Paper Sisters
Twitter: @bookbound2019
Insta: @rachel_canwell/
