The little details

When writing historic fiction, the little details are the things that bring the story to life. At the beginning of the pandemic I was writing Plagued and I was totally immersed in the world as it was in 1918. I’d read several books of soldiers personal accounts of their time in the trenches, books written by a nurse on the Western Front, details of the chain of evacuation, information about Netley Hospital and about the Spanish Flu. The photographs I found helped me get the feel for what it would have been like, both in France and in England, but it was the little details about the era that made all the difference.

Knowing Southampton so well was an advantage, but it sometimes made it hard to imagine it as it was then, rather than as it is now. The old OS maps and Kelly’s directories were useful, but ultimately, it was the photographs I found on history sites that really let me imagine it as it would have been in 1918. Not everything I found made it into the book, but it all helped me envision the town as Thomas and Mary would have seen it. Some things did make an appearance in the story. Things like the clock tower at the junction of New Road and Above Bar and the map of the world at the front of the Echo Office during the Great War.

Some of the landmarks featured in the story are long gone and I had nothing but photographs to tell me what they were like. For instance, the seaweed hut on Weston shore was demolished by the council in 1967, and I don’t really remember it. Luckily there was plenty of information about it and several photographs. It was built by the local fishermen and was about twenty-five by fourteen feet in size. It was used to store fishing gear, as a shelter and possibly for smuggling. The roof was covered by matted seaweed, much like a thatch.

The floating bridge is another lost landmark. I remember travelling on it once or twice as a child and it continued to operate until 1977. The floating bridge I remember was very different to the one Mary, Thomas and Freda would have travelled on though, so photographs of the earlier incarnations informed my writing.

Another little detail from the story was the coastguards station on Netley Hard. It was only mentioned briefly in the book, when Thomas was standing at the gates of Netley Hospital waiting for Mary. I knew it was there because I’d seen it on the old OS maps but I had no idea what it looked like. Thankfully, I found a photograph on the Netley Abbey Matters website, so I could imagine what he would have seen.

The Stag Gates were another of those things I’d heard about but never seen. They were removed in the 1920’s so that Lodge Road could be widened, but, in 1918, Thomas would have passed them regularly on his baker’s round. They stood at the junction of Lodge Road and the Avenue, and once formed the entrance to the Bevois Mount Estate. In fact, Lodge Road was one of the carriageways to the house. The gates were erected by William Betts in the mid 1800’s. The stone pillars, each topped with a stone stag, stood over twenty feet high, but it was hard to imagine what they were like until I found photographs. Their description never made it into the finished book, but knowing what they were like set the scene in my head.

When Thomas walked back from St Denys train station with Martha and when he walked to the Junction Inn to meet Joe, he’d probably have walked along Empress Road. I walked the route myself to get a feel for the journey, even though a description of it never made it into the final draft. Today, Empress Road is an industrial estate, all big square box like constructions, but back then it was a street of neat terraced houses, much like the one Thomas lived in. The old photos I found helped me imagine it better.

In another scene (deleted from the final draft when I was busy murdering my darlings), Mary stood on the corner of Radcliffe Road and watched Hetty talking to Bert outside the Engineer’s Arms. The old pub is still there today, although it’s no longer a pub, but most of the buildings around it have changed beyond recognition. I was pleased to find a photograph of it as it would have been back then, even if the scene never made it to print.

One little detail that played a big part in the story was Freda’s obsession with fairies. Lots of little girls believe in fairies, but in 1918, they were big news, thanks to a fraud committed in 1917 by two young girls, Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths, from Cottingley near Bradford. I’ve written about this story before, so I won’t go into all the details again, but I’m sure the real Freda probably did believe there were fairies at the bottom of her garden.

In the end, not all the little details I discovered made it into the book. Readers don’t want detailed descriptions of how a kitchen range works, what a copper boiler looks like, or how a rag rug is made. Knowing about these things helped me get inside the character’s heads, though, and, hopefully, made their world more believable on the page.

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