You Lived Here Mrs Pool(e)

Mrs Poole and Jenny Zigzag lived in the same house in Shipley; but a hundred years apart.

Old indentures state merely that the house was in the occupancy of Mrs Poole or “formerly in the occupancy of Mrs Poole and now unoccupied. No first name, no husband, no family, no occupation. Earlier, on an electoral register, Mrs Poole’s name is spelt without the ‘e’, although it is almost certainly the same person; even the spelling of our names gets lost over time.

People die or move on, leaving traces of their lives and labours in a fragment of wallpaper, scratches in paint, hand-made nails or vestiges of ironwork. Meanwhile, the significance of the innumerable, mysterious and very visible symbols carved in old kerbstones all around the area is forgotten.

Jenny investigates memory and loss, the marks we make and the things we leave behind.