Situated at the entrance to the Severn Valley Park and opposite Highley Station, this 4.5m long panel in steel and ceramics symbolises the development of the village and reflects the voice of the children.

Symbolism
The ‘Book Ends’ or two end panels represent duality. Prior to the coal mining, Highley was famous for two types of sandstone from its quarries – red and white. In the period of coal mining there were two mine shafts either side of the River Severn – Highley and Alveley. These sites were connected under the river via a coal seam and above the river via a bridge. Camaraderie, team spirit and competitiveness existed between the two communities of Alveley and Highley, which also depended upon each other for their livelihoods. Highley as it now stands is the amalgamation of two smaller villages, the old miner’s terrace housing and the later ‘Garden Village’ development locally known as ‘Top End’. The two communities were later linked by a strand of housing along the Bridgnorth Road. A narrow chase is cut out of the centre panel and links the two ends like a tunnel through a mine seam, a hedgerow between fields or a bridge between communities.

The centre panel of ceramic tiles is the voice of the children. In the workshops I asked the children and young people of Highley about their village and ‘how it seemed ‘ to them. I selected the designs from several hundred and scanned, sized and arranged them into the composition. The final images were then faithfully reproduced into hand-made ceramic tiles by local ceramic artist Elaine Gregory. Seven rectangles cut out of the panel allude to the ‘Seven Sisters’, a row of 400yr old beech trees located in The Old Vicarage and shaped into giant candelabra – of which only four now remain. These A4 size rectangular voids are also represented in the seven bronze A4 size plaques that meander through the village – titled ‘Seam’
The steel girders above and below the panels symbolise rail lines.

‘How it seems, How it seams’ came to me in a dream. Repeated, it becomes the song of the steam trains as they pass by. It is the mantra, a cyclical phrase which in meditation lifts the conscious mind from the temporal and mundane to the philosophical and transcendental.