“Master! Master!”

He looked up and saw a group of urchins watching him from the hedge. One child was a little older than the rest, a girl of about 9 years of age, dressed in a stained blue smock.

“What are you doing, master?” she asked.

“I’m making a survey of this land,” he replied courteously. “It is proposed that a canal shall be built through this valley.”

“What’s a canal, then?”

“It is like an artificial river, on which boats can float and carry heavy loads, heavier than can be moved by horse and cart. Do any of your fathers work in the mines?”

“Yezzir! My father’s in Pinford pit, alongaway!” shouted a small boy.

“Mine’s in Gants, upalong in Pintletrow!” yelled another.

“Well, children, when coal is taken from this area to Bath, it has to go on a cart. And it is very hilly here, and the coal is not very high quality and it is difficult to dig out of the ground. So that means that the coal is very costly to get to Bath. And now in South Wales, they have opened collieries that produce very good, very cheap coal and that coal can be loaded onto ships and taken straight to Bath at lower cost. But if a canal is built, the cost of taking the coal to Bath will be much reduced so the coal can be sold for a lower price than the Welsh coal.”

Most of the children had lost interest halfway through this speech, but the girl was listening intently.

“Will it go all the way to Bath? That’s a gurt long way.”

“Nearly all the way,” he said. “It will join the Kennett and Avon canal at Brass Knocker Hill, near Monkton Combe. That is about 2 miles south of Bath.”

“And will you own the canal? Are you a lord?”

He laughed. “No, no, the canal will be owned by a Joint Stock Company. I think the mine owners will have a lot of it. But I work for the Engineer in charge of designing the canal. And I am a plain mister, not a lord. Mr Smith. Mr William Smith.”

Several of the children’s faces dropped at this declaration, but he was a kind man, and reaching into his pockets he pulled out some pieces of limestone. “Have a look at these.”

“Ooh, them’s snailstones,” declared Pinford’s son.

“Learned men call them ammonites. They are the bodies of long dead animals which have been turned into stone, or fossilised. You get many of them here. And wherever you find rock like Mendips stone, you find ammonites like these. “

“We’ve got some big ones in the walls of our house,” the girl said. “Bigger than Fa’s hand, some of them.”

“I should enjoy looking at them. Whereabouts do you live?”

“In Baker’s Yard, upalong that a-way.” She pointed vaguely north.

“In Pintletrow? I shall make certain to walk through to examine such fine specimens. What is your name, child?”

“I’m Lizzie Ashman.” She gave a smile of surprising sweetness and dropped a curtsey; then she and the other children raced away, hurtling up the steep slope of Mill Lane as though gravity had ceased to exist.

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