75 Main Street
Mexborough
S64 9ND

Sunday 9 September
11am – 2pm

Tickets: £5. To reserve your place, please book through our TicketTailor event page.

Join us on our famous Ted Hughes Paper Round to close this year’s festival weekend. Led by Dominic Somers and Steve Ely, you will walk in the footsteps of a young Ted Hughes, following his childhood paper round through Mexborough and into Old Denaby.

In 1938, eight-year old Ted Hughes’s family moved to Mexborough from Mytholmroyd when Mr & Mrs Hughes acquired a newsagent’s shop at 75 Main Street. For several years young ‘Teddy’ Hughes took on the Old Denaby paper round for his parents. Using letters by Ted Hughes and archival resources, Steve Ely and Dominic Somers have reconstructed the route of young Ted’s paper round and in this performance trail reanimate it, pointing out places, landmarks and landscapes that were important to Hughes – and the inspirations for several of his poems and short stories.

Part walk, talk and poetry reading, ‘Ted Hughes’s Paper Round’ has become a well-loved fixture of Mexborough’s annual Ted Hughes Poetry Festival – and last year gained national attention when it was featured on Radio 4’s ‘The Echo Chamber’ with poets Tim Dee and Paul Farley. ‘Ted Hughes’s Paper Round’ begins at 11.00 on 75 Main Street on Sunday 9th September, and ends at the Manor Farm pub, Old Denaby at 2.00pm.

Meet outside 75 Main Street, Mexborough, for departure at 11am prompt. The terrain is mostly level with good access throughout; we recommend that you bring suitable footwear.