The Noenghest of Edge Hill was sparked by some pictures I found online of those fantastic tunnels in Liverpool, quite the most remarkable things you could begin to imagine existing underneath a major city. I had known about them for some time, and always intended to write something featuring them, but I wasn’t entirely sure what. Then I came across the pictures a group of potholers had taken down the two tunnels. One of them featured one of the potholers lying on the ground shining a green light. The resulting image was so eerily alien it sparked the idea of shape shifting beings who lived in the shadows and transformed to Human to explore beyond the tunnel.
I then decided that a story set in Liverpool would have to involve the most distinctively scouse character to appear in Doctor Who, Samantha Briggs, who was the guest heroine of the Second Doctor story The Faceless Ones. This is one of the lost stories, but Samantha, played by Pauline Collins, is described as a brash, smart thinking young woman who doesn’t take no for an answer when she goes looking for her missing brother.
Now, I’ve checked as lot of sources, and I am not at all sure if Samantha got her brother back at the end of the story. The synopses all say that The Doctor rescued all the kidnapped humans, but I’m not sure if it means ALL the kidnapped humans or just the batch that were taken in the course of the episodes. Brian Briggs was already missing at the start. I went for a happy resolution, she got her brother back and went home to Liverpool to live a normal life. Why not? Jump forward eighteen years, to 1985, and she has been married, now widowed, teaching at a primary school and living in a small but nice house on the estate where most of her pupils live.
I chose 1985 partly because it is close to the Seventh Doctor’s own era, partly because setting it in the present day would make the character significantly old, and possibly unable to be as active in the story. Setting it on the Saturday of Live Aid gives it a definite place in history.
What can I say about those tunnels, except that they are fantastic. They are as health and safety nightmare with holes in the floor all over the place. They’re really not supposed to be open to the public at all. If anyone actually got the idea of making them into an attraction with guided tours I think it would utterly spoil them. Electric light fittings would destroy the wonder of a man made place with stalactites to rival those in ancient caves.
The streets mentioned are all real, of course. They’re part of the Edge Hill area of Liverpool around the entrance to the disused tunnels. The estate is no better or worse than ‘social housing’ is expected to be. The side of the bridge that Samantha lives on looks like newer, better quality houses, and there are probably a few more people there who were able to buy their council houses under the old Tory policy to create home owners. The other side is the standard grey pebble dash fronted homes allocated to those who need such homes with all the social problems that come with them. There’s not a lot The Doctor can do about that.
What I did have trouble with was the local dialect. You can’t fake scouse, and I don’t speak or write it. I didn’t have Samantha speak that way. As a teacher, she would be expected to speak more formally anyway. Young Billy uses as many colloquialisms as I am sure are genuine Liverpool street talk. ‘Bizzies’ is obvious. ‘chipper’ as the place where his tea comes from, and the liberal use of ‘like’ in his sentences just about works, I think.
Noenghest is an anagram of Stonehenge. There’s no particular reason for that. The word just looks good.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Samantha_Briggs
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Faceless_Ones
http://www.liverpoolwiki.org/Liverpool%27s_Historic_Rail_Tunnels
http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=757
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/sites/l/liverpool_edge_hill_cutting/index.shtml
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=43164
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=81126b7d91bb226ab0602d4277479cfe&t=48643
http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?s=81126b7d91bb226ab0602d4277479cfe&t=28382
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