‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’: English Teacher’s ode to small town life

Posted On March 3, 2025March 3, 2025

Cities are often made to be mythic: Places like Tokyo, New York and Istanbul aren’t easily defined by any one person or event. For other places, the opposite is true; they are reputationally outsized by the people born there or the things that have happened within their limits. English Teacher frontwoman Lily Fontaine is from the latter kind of place.

She was raised in Colne, a small market town in Lancashire. Colne itself is little known, but it’s a short walk from the manor that inspired the setting of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a town over from where John Simm and Lee Ingleby took their first drama course, and one of many sites once on watch for witchcraft during the Pendle witch trials. It also happens to house the largest paving slab on record.

These touchpoints, among others, make appearances on ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’, Fontaine’s ode to her hometown. The song speaks to the juxtaposition of these enormous characters shadowing over the town’s quiet landscape. But the figures of the past aren’t the only looming edifices in these communities, there are also those that strut around like giants of the present.

“These semi-rural stories leak into most of my writing”, she told NME. “In particular, this song tackles delusions of grandeur and inferiority from the perspective of a small town’s local celebrities. It’s split into two halves”.

Fontaine started writing the song in 2018, during her final year at university, having had enough space from the town to properly recognise its distinct character. She released a dreamy, lo-fi recording of the song in 2020, eventually reshaping it for English Teacher’s debut album a few years later.

There’s an easy parallel between the song’s making and its meaning. Fontaine moulded something old into something new when she remade ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’; in the same vein, she can no longer be defined by Colne, having been reshaped through other places, but her experiences in it will always remain. Hometowns are our tethers to our pasts, and we can never escape that.

This sentiment defines the mood of a song that has continued to evolve for listeners since its release, perhaps making it the most timeless piece on the band’s debut record. There’s an intoxicating mix of history in the grandest sense, as well as history on the personal level. There’s also an aura of nostalgia but also a degree of irksome ire and moving on. Above all, there’s a sense that in 20 years time, even Fontaine will look back on the track differently—that’s the peak of its triumph.

The song’s subject is lyrically explicit, with sentiments that are more universal. “A lot of people are from small towns and villages that you never really hear about”, she told Dork. “Maybe people will relate to the idea that their story is interesting, regardless of where they’re from.” Moreover, their stories, like the song, can be deeply multifaceted and evolving.

Such poignancy, playfulness and defiance of platitudes are what marks the band out as a force of note, and ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’ is an early signature tune that may well always define Fontaine’s writing.

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