Lots of Bishton

The rooms of Bishton Hall have been turned this week into the repository for an enormous bric a brac sale.

The family have moved out earlier in the summer and the place has been sold, to make a hotel, probably - so all the contents have been put up for auction. Lock stock & barrel. There are so many pieces that it will take a week to finish the auction process.
Viewing the lots has proved a sombre activity.

Elegant dovecote

This dovecote sits in a field east of the Swainsley Tunnel in the Staffordshire Peak District.
Doves and pigeons are drawn to nest in dovecotes; meaning the owners could have another source of meat & eggs.
Apparently dovecotes were often built away from the lord’s main house and near a public highway, because they could act as status symbols: as only a rich man could afford them.
But this one is a nineteenth century construction, so it was probably designed as a decorative and elegant pastiche. It is certainly lovely in its simple way.

Knot no longer

'Match Of The Day' is back tomorrow, as Premier League football returns.
But this screenshot of one of the programme's opening credits (from last season) is now quite redundant, sadly, and will never be seen again.
It features the Stafford Knot and the iconic bottle oven, both signifiers of Stoke City Football Club. Which was relgated to the Championship last season.
Sob.

Rest from The Great War

It’s the number on this plaque that makes one stop and ponder.  The text says that the club formed here at St Chad's School Room in Stafford had to deal with forty thousand soldiers.
Stafford was just a regular market town; and to think that the numbers, in such a relatively small place, were as great as this over two years shows how enormous the effect of World War One was in provincial England.

Algae tracks

The hot summer means lots of algae growing in rivers. It is so solid here on the River Sow at Shugborough that the ducks make tracks through it as they swim.

Rainbow in church

The Meerbrook Church Flower Festival was really colourful and, well, better done than most.  (Frankly, a lot of church flower festivals look like the place is just decked out for a grand funeral).

The theme for this particular festival was 'A Good Read', and each exhibit illustrated the makers' favourite book. Featured were the usual suspects - from Tarka The Otter to Wind In The Willows etc.
Mind you, I was a little surprised to see that the exhibit in the photo above was a tribute to 'The Rainbow' by DH Lawrence, a book banned on its first publication for its risque passages!
Good ol' Meerbrook...

Yellow golf course

Just so hot...!
Even the grass at an expensive golf club, like this one at Pattingham, is dry and yellowing at the perimeters.

Hot WW1 day

At the annual Draycott Fayre, we found a gentleman in full World War One uniform, explaining the function of a forward-position observation dugout. It was a fascinating, fear-inducing insight.
The poor man was incredibly hot in his heavy uniform & cap - but refused to take even the jacket off ... "out of respect".

Peak strolling

Walking down to the river bridge from Alstonefield... in the Staffordshire Peak District

Pink runners

A view of Trentham Gardens round dusk. The pink band on the right-hand side of the photo is a group of runners, competing in The Race For Life

The annoying death of Brooke

Lichfield is full of little historical monuments like this one in Dam Street. It commemorates the death of a Parliamentarian general in the English Civil War, Lord Brooke, whose army had cut off the Royalist forces in the city. 
He died 365 years ago today.

The Parliamentary side was understandably aggrieved by this loss of a general and shortly afterwards a pamphlet appeared, called 'England’s Losse and Lamentation'. It said that Lichfield was “the sinke of iniquity, cage of unclean and wicked spirits; ungodly, prophane, and most perfidiously wicked; chief instrument of the Kingdomes misery. Let the remembrance of thee be hatefull; and thy name blotted out from among the Townes of the Provinces.”   Like I said...aggrieved.

Incidentally, the monument says Brooke was shot by a sniper whose job was to "annoy the besiegers".
The plaque was erected in the 1700s, when the word ‘annoy’ presumably had a little more venom to it than it does today…!

Graffiti for a child

This is a curiously vibrant piece of graffiti for a rather unfrequented foot-tunnel.  It runs under the A50 at Blythe Marsh, more as a sort of rain run-off than anything else, as it goes to nowhere really.

But whoever sat here for those lonely hours creating these pictures seems to have wanted to imbue them with childlike fun.