Sweet Arcadia

Lyrics

[spoken word] The trains took us away from the smoke, from Fenchurch Street Through Limehouse, West Ham, Barking, and over the fields To Laindon, Dunton, Pitsea, Benfleet To Southend-on-Sea 39 miles and 40 chains over the fields, through the thick clay We took over the neglected meadow, the untidy farmyard, and overgrown hedgerow Smallholdings--homemade, handmade Makeshift towns, a land for the people, a home of your own Sweet Arcadia Tumbledown shacks and tumbledown cliffs A refuge from the rent book We built our own shops, we built our own cinemas, we named our own houses: The Haven, Cozy Nook, Landsbury, Beerer John, Tellsville, Bon Ami And when the waters the breached the seawalls, we moved back inland Into Surrey: Box Hill, Normandy, Selsdon Vale Into Kent: Cliffsend, Seasalter, Dungeness Into Sussex: Jurys Gap, Pett Level, Peacehaven Sweet Albion, makeshift, make do and mend We built mock-Tudor sheds and houses from train carriages From asbestos and corrugated iron We took your land, and we made it our land Sweet Arcadia [sung] Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia Ohh, oh, Sweet Arcadia