Thank you, Nigel, for inviting me over to your blog to talk about my pamphlet, The Montefiore Bride.

The Montefiore Bride is a short story told in prose poetry and forms part of the Worth Park timeline I wrote back in 2017, during my residency at a local Victorian park, when studying for my Creative Writing MA with the University of Brighton. The full poetry timeline will be published later this year by The Hedgehog Poetry Press.

During my residency, I researched the park’s past going back to 19th September 1888 when Sir Francis Montefiore, the first and last Baronet of Worth Park, brought home his Austrian bride. Unfortunately, Lady Marianne, Sir Francis’s wife, was only at Worth Park for one year before returning home to Vienna and never to return to Crawley, but no one knows the details why.

The bridal couple’s arrival at Three Bridges Station on 19