Ryse Place
| Ryse Place
Foulkes Village [3, 81]
Basic Info:
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Ryse Place
Description
Ryse Place is an historic crossroads in northern Foulkes Village, notable for its monumental 19th and early 20th century shopfronts in Portland stone and brick: a far cry from the cheap consumerism and identikit architecture found in Finlay Boulevard nearby.
History
Ryse Place was a thronged market square for centuries before taking its present form, in which large department stores and specialist shops are found cheek-by-jowl. The number of traffic accidents caused by the advent of the 'infernal automated carriage', as the Foulkes Village Thunderer described the car, resulted in the belated pedestrianisation of the crossroads in 1989, when the Place was renamed.
The Place was once known simply as Market Square, but was re-named after a bloody street battle in 1939 which shook Malton and reverberated across the country. Marking the 80th anniversary of the Village's incorporation into Malton, a hard core of disaffected Villagers protested against the perceived injustices of the annexation. Many felt Malton's council was using the Village in an imperialist manner as a 'dumping ground' for heavy industry owned by non-Villagers, scarring the Village's leafy landscape and affecting its character irreversibly.
The separatists, known as Greenshirts (reflecting their proto-environmentalist stance), fought a running battle with Malton's Metropolitan Police from noon till dusk, after the Police baton-charged a peaceful gathering listening to a speech by Greenshirt leader Earnest Baumlieber. Baumlieber's speech included phrases taken from Etheldreda's prophecy, Aunde there shalle be those, in dayes yette to y-comme, who shall y-ryse and fyghte for ye freedomes of hir chyldes and those not yet borne. Ryse, ryse, aunde feare not! The cheering this aroused is thought to have been mistaken for an outbreak of rioting, sparking the brutal police actions that followed. The call to Ryse was commemorated in the renaming ceremony, attended by Earnest's grandson Frank.
Afterwards, the Police alleged that the Greenshirts had been indulging in smoking illegal non-tobacco products and chanting anti-patriotic pacifistic songs, causing a self-induced madness that could only be cured by the repeated application of batons to the head.
Casualty figures were never released, but several fatalities were alleged to have occurred among those arrested. Earnest Baumlieber was trampled by a police horse and never regained consciousness. His deputy, Eoin O'Malley, was taken into custody where the Police claimed he slipped repeatedly on soap in the shower, causing facial fractures and bruising, and finally tripped in his cell and accidentally hanged himself with his own tie.
The Greenshirts disbanded after this fiasco, but won a moral victory; this was translated into results 50 years later, when Malton Council agreed to allow Foulkes Village certain autonomies to reflect its historic status as an independent settlement.
Post-outbreak rumours have linked the bloody street battle with the subsequent bloodshed on Malton's streets. Some Villagers claim that the copious blood that soaked into the pavement has made the Place into a permanent zombie magnet; others believe the call to Ryse was in fact answered by the uprising of the once-dead across Malton. Foulkesian survivors have petitioned the remaining breathing members of Malton's Council for a commemorative plaque, to show that Ryse Place was the birthplace of the Zombie Movement known as 'Bloodshirts'.
