It started here. I’m still angry. They call the land grab enclosure, a word safe as a cuddle. But those drystone walls only comforted Percy, Trevelyan, Ridley, Delaval.

They made mass graves of the crofters’ cottages and their pittances of land, enough for a cow, a pig. You can see the low rough hummocks in sheep pastures, the ridge and furrow of vegetable patches scraped under sheeps’ hooves.

Bewick etched the new landscape. Spring lambs sheltering in the bole of tree roots, evicted farm worker families resting on the roadside, all they own strapped to their backs with hand woven shawls. His woodcuts made brutality look picturesque.

Work or starve. They were herded into pits, furnaces, factories. I’m still angry and disinherited.

Those who had lived by dawn and dusk started their working day with a siren alarm. They built turbines bigger than their houses, to transport the diaspora to Empire, or claim new lands in Canada. The fells, lowlands and Highlands are empty, loved for their bleakness and dry stone walls. I love the land. I’m still angry and displaced.

And men not needed in Parsons and Vickers Armstrong fought every bloody war. Northumberland Fusiliers side by side with Highland Regiments, the bravest, the most expendable. Ignorant that they were both shafted by the same Trevelyan. For the loss of life, their mutilation, I’m still angry and proud.

The pits have gone, engineering sold off to the highest bidder. I’m angry at the way it was done. Leaving a yawning dark depression for opiates, heroin and hopelessness.

So you tourists and travellers, hunker down behind a drystone wall when the wind scours the fells, delight in the peace and the loneliness of a curlew cry. There is still no right to roam. This silence was bought at a high price.

I am disinherited, displaced, proud and angry.