This painting, “Mitchell Fold from the Macclesfield Canal”, shows a group of cottages a mile South of Higher Poynton and they intrigue me. In a landscape that comprises scattered farms and isolated houses we have a short narrow cul-de-sac of terraced cottages, far more likely to be found in the nearby mill towns. I can find no history for them on the net, and can only assume they were workers’ accommodation for one of the big farms nearby, but they are about a mile from any of those, and even further from any large country estate. They make a perfect subject and I have sketched and painted them several times, in different seasons. That was in the old pre-pandemic days, though, when having towpath walkers squeeze past me, or look over my shoulder, wasn’t a health risk.