The Gledholt Fault

The Estate Agent is from Frankley, Bland and Co, situate at Market Street and comprising two spacious office suites, one delightful chamber with built in valuations expert and hot and cold running surveyors, plus amenities. There are adequate parking spaces for two Ford Montessoris, a Nissan Somewhat and a Landshover Discovery.

‘Have you heard of the Gledholt fault?’ She asks me.

Is that a problem caused by a more than usually defective local builder, I wonder, or is it more fundamental, more potentially earth shattering? A West Yorkshire version of San Andreas, waiting to pitch us all to our doom, deep beneath the pothole rich streets of Huddersfield.

The Estate Agent’s name is Julie Street. Quite a good name for an Estate Agent really, but it can’t compete with the drama of The Gledholt Fault.

‘No, I haven’t heard of the Gledholt Fault,’ I say.
 

I look up at the massive beech and chestnut trees which loom above the rooftops all along the street. Luckily they’re on the North side of the street.

Then I look down and imagine the seething mass of white hot magma, dozens of miles below our feet, as it presses upwards a little harder, the rock above it begins to shift by an infinitesimal degree. It will be days or weeks before the effect reaches the surface and another hairline crack appears in the wall outside the bay window at the front of 61, Grimescar Street, Gledholt.

‘It affects several houses in this street, but this one’s meant to be sorted, there’s an engineer’s report,’ Julie Street struggles with the locked door. ‘I’m sorry about this wretched door. I’m sure this is the right key.’

How can she be so sure it’s the right key? Estate agents offices hold dozens of keys. It only takes one anxious junior estate agent, carrying his fifth cup of coffee of the morning. It only takes one hastily pushed, five-wheeled office chair. The cinquipedal obstruction precipitates the junior estate agent, who we shall call Darren Grimshank, into the freestanding metal cabinet that holds the keys. The cabinet lurches sideways, a sharp deluge of metal clatters onto the striped carpet. Why do estate agents offices always have striped carpets? Don’t their clients have enough headaches?

Some of the keys land in Darren’s coffee. Darren lands on top of the coffee and all the keys. Once they were all on carefully labelled hooks, now they lie beneath Darren, impaling his midriff, separated from their identities. The keys to number 11, Park Drive, overlooking the manicured rhododendrons and burgeoning prunus sylvestrus of Greenhead Park are tangled up in the large, sticky bunch that came from the boarded up terrace of back-to-backs overlooking the gasworks, between Kilner Bank and a trolley strewn stretch of the canal.

‘Perhaps the Gledholt fault has warped the doorframe,’ I say to Julie Street. I don’t mention Darren. He’s probably still running around town in his 1997 blue Fiesta, which he isn’t allowed to park in the company parking spaces, desperately trying to match up any keys to any properties. 

Poor Darren. He can tell a yale lock from a mortice and a rim lock from a bolt, but he can’t possibly know that the key he is trying to fit into the green, stained-glass front door of 12, Salmondbury Terrace, Moldgreen will never go in. It belongs to that boarded up pub opposite, the Olde Greene. 

Alan Newsome, who was the last landlord of the Olde Greene before he was declared insolvent, had barred Geoffrey Moore, the last inhabitant of 12, Salmondbury Terrace, before said Geoffrey Moore was declared insane. Barred him for life, for throwing darts in an unsporting and hazardous manner, so as to pierce the said Alan Newsome in the gluteus maximus. Three times.

The accused, Geoffrey Moore was then said to have shouted, ‘One hundred and eighty!’ The victim, Alan Newsome, shouted something more fundamental than numerical. The court case lasted eight days. Alan Newsome was laid up for eight weeks, with tetanus. Geoffery Moore was locked up, so was the Olde Greene.

It’s not that Geoffrey Moore’s house knows that the key which Darren is trying to insert is an enemy key and is therefore trying to repel boarders. The magma below ground may have that kind of power, but plain old Salmondbury Terrace doesn’t. It was built in 1870, the plaque on the wall says so, to house workers at the nearby Lucitania Mill. And it wasn’t built on the Gledholt fault, a long forgotten ley-line. However, before his incarceration, Geoffrey Moore had more or less filled all his locks up with porridge, mixed with Polyfilla. Darren only knows that none of the keys will even go in the keyhole.

But Julie Street is a more experienced estate agent than Darren. She has been waging unarmed combat with recalcitrant locks for twelve years. Pull the door, turn half a twist, a swift push as she finishes the twist. A judicious kick for luck, and we’re in.

Number 61, Grimescar Street shows the signs of its own combat with the forces below. Unlike Salmondbury Terrace, it was built in 1890. There’s no builders plaque, but then this was a house built for the upwardly mobile, not mill workers. The Art Nouveau lead-work in the original sash windows and the sinuous writhing of the iron fireplaces date it. Below the window in the front room, the Gledholt fault shows, deep fissures break through the yellow and cream flock wallpaper. I don’t feel like pushing my fingers into the solid darkness in there, although I should, to feel the depth of the cavity.

Elsewhere, the house is charming, with tall ceilings, attractive mouldings and a huge Victorian bath with lion’s feet. I could lie here, at full stretch in the generosity of hot water that its strong enamelled depths would hold, and watch through the stained glass as the long limbed beech tree in the garden, reaches out for the house. But in the basement, the darkness is tangible. The earth around presses in, the walls seethe with fine white crystals.

I say thank you to Julie Street. We both know I won’t buy this house. I decide to view 12, Salmondbury Terrace, I might even look at the Olde Greene. Darren is still there, struggling with the keys, but I’m sure Julie Street can open that door. I just need to ask her one question.

She laughs, ‘No, there’s definitely no Moldgreen fault! Not even any disused mine works under here.’

So, no excess of bright hot magma, just an absence of dark coal. And the Gledholt fault itself is probably just due to the roots of the chestnut trees. Sad really, we could do with some excitement in Huddersfield.

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