The City of Barcaldine

Barcaldine is a cathedral city in the extreme north-east of Arransia at the mouth of the River Rye in the County of Edirn. It is the administrative seat of Edirn and, with a population of about 81,000, by some way the largest urban area in the county. It is an extremely busy commercial and administrative hub with a wealth of historic buildings and is often considered to epitomise the pre-industrial, maritime face of Arransia, although no longer a significant seaport. For a short time between about 1490 and 1540, Barcaldine was actually the second largest city in Arransia after Danby, although Stainton then regained its second place.

The city stands at the lowest bridging point of the Rye, which broadens out into an estuary to the east before reaching the open sea at Scaur. Prior to the battle of Ugglesby Head, the Arransian fleet under the command of Admiral John Brodie was famously moored in the Rye, although some miles downstream. The Rye at Barcaldine is still over 400 feet wide, and the Old Bridge, originally built in the late 14th century, has 14 spans of varying lengths. This bridge manages to carry two narrow lanes of traffic and, although prohibited to heavy lorries, is extremely busy. Close by to the west is the 19th century New Bridge, later widened to four lanes, and about a quarter of a mile further up the river a two-track 19th century railway bridge. The two road bridges are the only connections across the river until Sedgwick about six miles upstream and represent a significant bottleneck, especially since the eastern terminus of the A5 Expressway reached the southern bank in 2000. The New Bridge – interestingly – is unrestricted, although the Old Bridge has a 30 mph speed limit, which is often hard to even approach. There are plans for another river crossing and a northerly bypass of Barcaldine, but these remain well down the list of roadbuilding priorities.

The core of the city is the area within the city walls between the Marwick and Sinclair Basins, which were originally areas of marshland. Barcaldine shares with Aldminster and the much smaller Kirkbride the distinction of having the only significant remaining sets of city walls in Arransia. They were built in the 12th and 13th centuries as a defence against Skanian searaiders, not as a protection from Brunswickian invasion. The walls enclose an area of about a third of a square mile, significantly less than Aldminster, and have a circuit of just over two miles. Two of the original mediaeval gates survive, with wider 18th century apertures alongside, but in more recent years several other modern connections have been built. As with Kirkbride, but not Aldminster, it is still possible to walk round the complete circuit of the walls at their full height.

Dominating the riverfront in the south-eastern corner is Barcaldine’s impressive castle, one of the largest in Arransia, which still serves as a prison and the home of some of the County Council’s adminstrative departments as well as a tourist attraction. Although, like all Arransian prisons, run in an orderly and corruption-free manner, Barcaldine Castle has become a proverbially unpleasant place to be incarcerated. It is fair to say Arransian prisons are Spartan but never squalid.

The area within the walls contains some of the densest urban development anywhere in Sabrantia and Beruna, with narrow streets lined with six and seven-storey houses in many cases dating back to the late 15th and 16th centuries. Many have now become shops or other commercial premises but over 10,000 people still live within the walls. As the major commercial centre for a wide area of North-East Arransia, Barcaldine has a very large number of shops including four substantial department stores. The general “feel” of the place is of somewhere larger than its actual population might suggest and indeed in many respects is comparable to Howick, which has twice the population. The dominant building material is grey stone which gives a somewhat dour appearance. The extramural suburb of Westgate on the other side of the Sinclair Basin has a similar development pattern. This is less well off and many of the houses are now working-class tenements. While some of the city is run-down and shabby, there is very little evident dereliction.

While undoubtedly a place of tremendous historic interest that is visited by many tourists, for some reason, perhaps because it has such “real world” busyness, Barcaldine does not seem to fit easily into a camera lens and does not surrender its charms easily. Amongst the larger towns of Edirn, the fishing ports of Bouth and Marske and the inland university city of Aldminster are more obviously appealing tourist venues. It also must be said that Barcaldine in places is distinctly rough, and Westgate, the main street leading from the station to the city centre, is very seedy and, despite the efforts of the city council to clean it up, gives a poor impression to visitors. The City Council, backed by the national government, have made an application for the city centre to gain World Heritage Site status, but so far this has not been accepted.

Barcaldine is very much a “one-sided” city and historically there was very little development on the marshy southern bank of the Rye, although in the 2000s a large industrial and distribution park has been created near the terminus of the A5 Expressway. This is also served by a rail connection, and has exacerbated the city’s traffic problems by generating a new rush-hour traffic flow.

Because of its dense development and restricted site, Barcaldine probably suffers the worst traffic congestion in Arransia outside of Danby. There is a relief road to the west extending north from the New Bridge, but to get to Scaur to the east you have to traverse the city centre within the walls. There are several multi-storey and underground car parks within the walls and any suggestion of pedestrianising some of this area would be met with ridicule. Some of the tall town houses are upmarket family residences and have had underground garages constructed.

Barcaldine has an extensive 4'8½" gauge tram system, one of only two in Edirn (along with Lemingore) using standard rather than 3'6" gauge. The tram system is unique in Arransia in using a conduit system for power collection rather than overhead wires. This was adopted to make it easier for double-deck trams to pass under the arches of the two 18th century city gates. The system still mostly uses bogie double-deck cars in a crimson and cream livery with a distinctive pointed roof profile, which is also shared by some double-deck buses of the Harkness Road Car company. The tram lines cross the movable bridges across both the Marwick and Sinclair Basins. The tramway authority are notoriously ruthless, probably more so even than in Danby, in dealing with any obstructing parked vehicles. A fairly common problem is tourists from Brunswick – or indeed other parts of Arransia – seeing the lack of overhead wires and assuming the tram tracks are disused. Barcaldine also has a small, entirely single-deck, municipal bus fleet.

Although the city centre is fairly flat, there is virtually no transport cycling in Barcaldine. The typical response from a local would be “we didn’t fight the war to have to use pushbikes”. On the other hand, small motorcycles are very popular for commuting. As the University is on high ground to the north of the centre, the students don’t tend to cycle either, and each morning the procession of heavily-laden trams making its way up to the campus is very conspicuous.

On both sides, the city centre is partly cut off by two basins reclaimed from former marshland – the Marwick Basin to the east and the Sinclair Basin to the west. The Marwick Basin is now the centre of the remaining commercial trade, whereas the Sinclair Basin is mostly used by pleasure craft and also contains a preserved lightship and the SS Lady Catriona, now the last surviving example of the small, fast, coal-burning merchant ships built in the last two years of the Great War, which for many years was used as the supply vessel for Craig Holm. The Marwick Basin is spanned by a swing bridge; the Sinclair Basin by a bascule bridge. The road across these, which also runs within the city walls, is still the main east-west route across the city. Both are half-tide basins with a single pair of lock gates which are typically only opened for a couple of hours at high tide, although the Sinclair Basin also has a small conventional lock for yachts which can be used at any state of the tide. Fortunately, the Sinclair Basin bridge is now rarely raised, as when it is it causes gridlock over a large area of the city.

Although it has never been able to handle large steamships, before the Great War Barcaldine was a substantial commercial port with a lot of coastal traffic around Sabrantia and short-sea links across the Sleeve to Mayenne, Colmar and Skania. Indeed, during the latter part of war its cargo traffic increased as the fact that ships were able to tie up very close to the historic buildings of the city made it very difficult for Brunswickian bombers to target them. In the first four months of 1949, Barcaldine was the busiest commercial port in the country. A primitive system of containerisation was developed to minimise handling time at the quays, and also to conceal what was being shipped, although regrettably because of union pressure this was abandoned after the war, and the Arransian merchant marine eventually lagged behind when containers began to be widely used in the 60s and 70s.

Since the war the importance of Barcaldine as a commercial port has declined, mainly because of the problems of cargo handling on built-up city quays, although some cargo is still dealt with. The Marwick Basin can handle ships up to about 4,000 tons, although most tend to be smaller. Some of the quays still have railway tracks, but all of these are now disused. The City Quay facing the Rye has now become an attractive promenade with all maritime traffic removed apart from occasional excursion vessels.

Barcaldine is connected to the rest of Arransia’s inland waterway network by the Derwent & Rye Junction Canal which runs into the Rye about three miles east of the city. This canal has been enlarged to the 140’x16’ barge standard but nowadays sees little commercial traffic. A problem with the canal link was always the need to negotiate about a mile of the Rye tideway before reaching the city basins. Plans for a canal connection to the northern end of the Sinclair Basin were drawn up in the 19th century but never came to fruition.

The city is a major railway centre, with the electrified main lines to Danby via Wrangle, and Stainton and Hebburn via Tetney, terminating in the six-platform Westgate terminus, which has an impressive two-span steel-and-glass arched roof. There are also branch likes to Sedgwick, Stow and Thurness, and the highly scenic route up the Harkness peninsula to Bouth via Scaur, Rockcliffe and Keiss, which continues through the terminus to the north, runs around the top of the city centre and has another station near the Marwick Basin called Barcaldine East. The branch lines are all normally worked by diesel multiple-units; that to the small town of Stow usually by a single car. The Rockcliffe route has generally seen some summer steam working in recent years. As the focal point of the railway network of North-East Arransia, there is also a large automated marshalling yard for the wagonload freight system. Indeed, Barcaldine is notable for the huge expanse of railway trackwork covering a mile or so out of the station throat.

Barcaldine is the port of registration for all of the North of Edirn including the Harkness peninsula, and so all of the Golsingby whaling fleet have the name of the city on their stern. It was also historically a centre of shipowning, with Edirn families controlling large fleets of worldwide tramp steamers in the pre-war era. This is now very much diminished but it is still possible to encounter a Barcaldine-registered ship anywhere in the world that may never even have seen an Arransian port.

Like Edirn’s other seaport towns, Barcaldine has an unusually high concentration of pubs even for Arransia, with currently about 230 within the city boundaries and over 100 within the walls. In the 1900s it is reckoned that there were over 300 with a smaller total population. There is a small brewery, Grierson’s, situated just outside the walls alongside the Sinclair Basin, whose sweet, malty Anchor Ale is popular in the city and in the Harkness peninsula but not widely distributed outside that area. The city also has the substantial Maclure's grain whisky distillery alongside the river west of the Sinclair Basin, owned by United Distillers. The city’s definitive drink is probably not Anchor Ale, but “Maclure’s Old Barcaldine” blended whisky, which is effectively a straight 50-50 blend of Fordyce single malt and Maclure’s, with a touch of Keiss to add more peatiness

Barcaldine is the seat of a bishop within the province of Pentrich. The cathedral of St Andrew is relatively small and is a hotch-potch of different architectural styles with one of its pair of western towers significantly higher than the other. It is an interesting point of note that all of Arransia’s 13 historic cathedrals are dedicated to different saints.

Barcaldine is home to the Northern Echo daily newspaper, which originally just served the city and its immediate environs, but in more recent years has extended its circulation all along the North coast of Arransia – it is now the best-selling newspaper on Verne Island, for example. This is well-known for its populist tone and trenchant support for the Navy, farmers, the whisky distilling industry, and Arransian shipping and fishing interests. It is often derided as exemplifying a characteristic type of narrow-minded Arransian outlook, but on the other hand that is what makes it so popular. Until recently it had a printworks within the city walls at Barcaldine, but has now moved out to a new site on the business park south of the river (which is actually outside the city boundary).

The city is also home to Barcaldine City football club who are a fairly constant presence in the Arransian first division and indeed have won the league on three occasions in their history. They are known for their highly committed working-class support and their tightly-packed stadium in Westgate is one of the most intimidating in Arransia to visiting teams. In 1981 they famously defeated Sporting St Denis of Mayenne, 7-1 in the Sabruna Cup on a night of near-freezing horizontal sleet, in a match that is still talked about today.

Barcaldine has a new university created in 1964 on a greenfield campus to the north of the city centre, which now has about 3,000 undergraduates. It took over the existing Barcaldine Institute which occupied premises within the walls. This tends to concentrate on physical sciences, and to be honest is not one of Arransia’s more highly-regarded universities, although it does have a respected department of Astronomy.

Although it has a good number of middle-class jobs associated with the county administration and professional firms, Barcaldine (like most of the rest of Edirn) is not a particularly well-off place and at times can have a somewhat rough and edgy atmosphere. The area within the walls includes both some of the most expensive houses in the city, and some of the poorest tenements, providing a very stark contrast. For fairly obscure reasons associated with the war, there remains a strong element of anti-Brunswickian feeling in the city, whereas in Lemingore down the coast, where a lot of houses were destroyed by bombing in 1949 in a poorly-targeted attack on the port, people don’t tend to be particularly bothered. The other place in Arransia where this is the case is Ormsby, where the bombing of the working-class district of The Eyes early in the war is still bitterly resented to this day.

Barcaldine is not really an industrial city, but has many businesses supporting the local agricultural sector and the shipping trade, and a major railway motive power depot. In recent years the establishment of the nuclear power station at Thurness has brought work – and high-tech jobs – to the city and it is currently benefiting from the construction of Thurness B and the massive wind farm further down the coast. Clonby a few miles east at the mouth of the Rye has become the main supply base for Arransia’s so far not very successful programme of offshore oil exploration. The major military air base at Keiss, home of the Brunswickian AWACS force, also brings employment to the area.

The city has two Parliamentary constituencies. Barcaldine East (which also includes the northern suburbs) is a rock-solid Liberal safe seat, but Barcaldine West (which includes the walled city) is more marginal, and has been won by Labour in good years. The last year this occurred was in 1986, but in 2010 the Liberal majority was only 326 and the Liberals in fact slightly trailed Labour on first preferences. Lemingore and Balfron are the only other places in Edirn where Labour have won seats in recent year. Unlike most other Edirn towns, the City Council has a strong political division, with, following the pattern of national elections, the Liberals generally in control, but Labour managing to take power in good years. However, in 2005 the two parties, conscious of having been engaged in petty and unconstructive rivalry, formed a “Unity Coalition”, only to find themselves losing seats to Independents at both end of the spectrum in subsequent elections to the extent that by 2009 they had almost lost their majority. Barcaldine, like many Arransian local authorities, elects half its councillors every other year, but the electoral calendar is not tied in with national elections, and Barcaldine’s are in October.

Some of the above may seem a little negative, and certainly Barcaldine is not a nice, cosy place, but in reality it is a lively, busy, rumbustious city with a strong sense of civic pride that expects to be taken as it is rather than as others would like it to be. Rather like Arransia as a whole, really.

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