Surprise snow

 
No one really expected snow as the weather had been mild really for December - but then snow comes at unexpected moments.
There was enough snow to make it, in some parts of the country, an official White Christmas, but Staffordshire's substantial falls were a couple of days later. This is the scene on the hills & moors to the north of Leek, where it always comes thickest.

Wet wet wet marshes

 

Rain, rain, rain. Although the skies have been variable - sometimes blue, sometimes grey - and the temperature relatively mild for winter, it has been WET.

These are the Doxey Marshes, near Stafford.

Pub gone to the dogs

 

The Talbot in Cheadle has now closed, possibly forever.  It's a shame; it was just an old boozer, but a great old boozer.

'Talbot' was the family name of the Earls of Shrewsbury, who owned lots of land in and around Cheadle, even into the last century. 
The dogs that you can see in the shield of arms are of course hunting Talbots, and it could be that this breed of dog is so-named because the family adopted them for their arms some 600 years ago.

 

 

A victim of centralisation

This rather stylish building is the Old Fire Station, built in Fenton (part of Stoke on Trent) in the first decade of the twentieth century. It's now in the possession of a ceramics company.

The initials on it - FUDC - foxed me for a while, but they must stand for Fenton Urban District Council, which was abolished in 1910 when it was merged into the much larger city government. The fire station had the same fate - within ten years the city's fire services were 'centralised' and this building sold.

It's a shame that such smaller councils were stood down; I honestly think that neighbourhoods miss that sense of local control. 

Victoriana rules

 

The word most often applied to the Glebe Pub in Stoke town is 'stately' - and it is. This old Victorian was restored by the Joules beer company, and really is an asset to this already heritage-rich corner of the town.
The only shame is that we can't go there right now.  We are in the middle of a second Covid lockdown across all England.  Roll on the time when pubs can reopen!

The royal arms over the fireplace are the gasp-out-loud feature as one enters the pub.

Death has undone so many

Yet again, Armistice Day is upon us - the day to remember the servicemen and women killed in the world wars.
It's always sobering, and quite shocking, to walk into churches in villages deep in the countryside and see the record of how many of their young people were killed in WW1 - often a huge percentage of the village's population at the time. This memorial at Yoxall is no exception.
As TS Eliot's poem says: "I had not thought death had undone so many".

Wild panther on the loose

The most famous story of the Giffard family of Chillington Hall seems a little underwhelming compared to some of the affairs that the Giffards have gotten up to. It is that: one of them shot a wild animal. Hmm. 
Nevertheless, the story (legend?) is so important that it informs the family coat of arms.

There are a number of variations on the 500-year-old story, but basically it seems that Sir John Giffard had a menagerie from which a panther escaped.  From some distance away, Sir John saw the animal as it was about to savage a mother & child. Sir John shot it with an arrow; and prevented a tragedy.

As you can imagine, the story has been knocked about a bit.  Reputable sources say both panther and leopard, crossbow and bow & arrow, that Sir John was in pursuit or in the hall, and that the distance of the shot was up to … one mile!

But, good stories should never be over-examined.  

Thus, at Chillington Hall, you will see many references to this feat – including this detail on some rather lovely plasterwork.

Lights of Autumn

It's one of those autumns again, ie similar to the ones of the last few years: sunny days followed by foggy, turn by turn.
But the most interesting feature of these recurrent autumns is that the colours are so vivid: the russets very red, the greens so verdant.

Two close knots

Another for my Stafford Knot collection!  This knot graces the old railway station at Rushton Spencer, though the building (1844) predated the railway line. 

Only 20 yards away from this building is the (Stafford) Knot Inn - which also bears a knot (see its knot) - so, two for one!

Get a fragrant seat

 

This is a new one on me: on a petrol forecourt, alongside the pumps, there was this dispenser, where you can get, not just air for your tyres but, one minute's of a spray of fragrance for your car - for £1.
However, it doesn't specify what particular scent you'll be getting. I find that concerning.

For some reason, it also stresses: "Spray under seats".  Eh?

Staffordshire in the scales

This set of scales, made by the long-established Staffordshire firm of Salters, is possibly arouund 150 years old. I spotted it in a pub in Leek where it had been retired, and is simply used as decoration.

This close-up reveals the firm's trademark - a Stafford Knot pierced by an arrow.  Why an arrow? Who knows?
As the history of the firm reveals, this design was used on the shirts of a local football team as long ago as the 1880s (- and people think shirt sponsorship is a new thing!!)
 

Chilling corridors

As if there isn't enough to be worried about in these days, some people are phobic to empty corridors, especially in hotels.
It's all the fault of The Shining, the horror film set in an empty hotel: ghosts (and worse) keep appearing at turns in the vacant corridors. 
I suppose the horror is enhanced because what should be busy areas are disturbingly unpopulated.

 

In this deserted cinema, I even felt a frisson of something myself...

Telegrams office... once

There is a strange habit in England of allowing old artefacts from the past simply to stay in place – often for many years.  It doesn’t happen all the time of course – some people love to tidy away the past and make things shiny & modern, but it does happen often enough to be noticeable.

Here in Warslow village, they have left up the old sign for the Telephone & Telegrams Point.  It appears to be around sixty years old, but does look as though someone wipes it off every so often, just to give it a clean.

Towers ruins

Alton Towers, the palatial stately home which nowadays gives its name to the amusement park in its grounds, looks – from a distance – to be still the once grand aristocratic home it once was.
You’d never guess it is largely a ruin.

After the earls left in the early 20th century, it fell into disrepair, then dereliction.

If you walk up close (as any paying visitor to the park can do), you can see the crows flying in and out of the unroofed rooms. And there is no access, even to spaces that still have decoration (the chapel for example) because of how dangerous the state of the fabric is.

 

To be fair to the owners of the park & estate, what is left is kept in some sort of order, and repairs to the building did go on apace for over ten years from 1999 when there were even tours of the safer parts, but it all seems to have slowed a bit.
The restoration project still is alive, but, as I say, it moves slowly.

As in Shakespeare's day

 

A traditional sight in English summers - outdoor Shakespeare. This time we are on the village community green in Dilhorne, with the audience in socially-distanced spots.

It's interesting to think that this situation is also exactly how it was in Shakespeare's own day: a group of touring players have arrived, to perform for one evening, on their way around the country.

Legend fades away

This innocent looking mound on Tittensor Chase in the centre of the county has been known for centuries as Saxon Lowe. The word lowe indicates a burial chamber,  so... could it be the burial place of the most illustrious of Middle England's Saxon kings, Wulfere??? He did have a fort nearby.

Probably not.
Archaeologists can be kill joys sometimes. They think it's just a natural hillock.

Welcome back, ale-houses

In the miniscule village of Dodsleigh, which is off any beaten track, one will find a whitewashed building facing its tiny village green.   On it is this stone plaque, which reads:
Walk in my friend and Drink with me / Here Ale as good as e’er you fee* (see)
Refresh yourself is no CRIME / Stay not too long to spend your time 
Francis Sherratt 1751
(When Francis says “stay not too long”, he means “hesitate not too long”)

So I’m guessing that the building was once an ale-house.
It was opportune spotting it, as the government recently allowed pubs to re-open (after three months!) and many of us have missed them.

In England (mostly because of the weather), pubs are the only public spaces in which local people can freely meet and talk and socialise at any time. 
There is a sociology thesis to be written on how this fact has influenced English society.

* in the English of 300 years ago, an s was often written in an f shape

Where sheep may safely laze

April & May were distinguished by sunshine and heat – July by rain.  It came in swift grey torrents and made the gutters gurgle.
These sheep have grown so wary of the rain’s sudden downpours that they have retreated to the cover of an overhanging hedge, so as to be sure of being out of the wet.

Muse shows a leg

On top the Colonnade in the gardens at Alton Towers is a line of statues of which this is one.

In her pose, she rather confidently 'shows a leg'; resting her right arm on her thigh, with her right leg stepped up onto a support of what might be small rocks. 

I was surprised, as you rarely see the legs on modest Graeco-Roman sculptures of women - unless it is of Diana, goddess of the hunt (who needed a short skirt in order to run), or, erm, nudes. 

In the catalogue, she is named as Melpomene, the muse of Tragedy, though traditionally it would be her left leg raised. The object she holds is the Mask of Tragedy.

But nowhere can I find the significance of the raised leg. I wonder what its import is?

Elephant ready for grinding

Well, museums should be re-opening this month... if, that is, they have met the Covid-prevention conditions imposed by the government.

This means that you will once again be able to view these grisly elephant bones at Shirley's Grinding Mill Museum in Etruria. They have been preserved there for over one hundred years as a sort of odd trophy.
The mill ground flint and bone to be used in the china-making process.

Quite how the mill got the elephant bones is another story.

Swapping a crab for a ram

The old Wedgwood Institute in Burslem is a lovely building, built in the Venetian Gothic style.
As you can see, it has an ornate frieze around its top depicting the astrological signs of the zodiac named with their corresponding months and a scene referring to the sign.

But... the makers got muddled up.
As you can see in centre of the the photo, the roundel at the top depicts Cancer The Crab (June 22 to July 22), the month says June, but, er, the scene depicts a man holding down a ram (March, Aries!). 
Where is the usual scene for Cancer, a woman collecting crabs?  Yep, you guessed it: over where the ram should have been.
Somebody clearly wasn’t concentrating.

Wedgwood himself seems unbothered though.

At the heart of Croxden

After his death in 1216, King John's body was carried cross-country for burial from Notingham (where else?!) to Worcester Cathedral via Staffordshire, where his heart was supposedly left, en route, with the monks at Croxden Abbey in the moorlands here. 

(The bits and pieces of royals were regularly extracted from their corpses before burial and distributed. I am not sure why this practice ocurred...)

However, Croxton Abbey (you can see how the confusion arises...) in Leicestershire also claims to be the burial place of the heart.  The various commentators get in quite a spat about it.

Unfortunately Croxden was largely dismantled following Henry VIII's destruction of the monsteries, and is now a ruin as you can see.  So if there was a marker giving proof that this is where John's heart was interred, it was no doubt expropriated or broken up about that time.

But we know for sure that John did not leave his heart in San Francisco.

A chapel for the Devil

Lud Church (or Lud's Church) is a natural cleft in the rock, about forty feet deep, in the Peak District. A sort of small chasm. You can clamber down into it from entrances at both ends.

It is the supposed setting for the Green Chapel, which features in a scene at the end of the medieval poem, Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, which, it's thought, was written by an (anonymous) monk based at an abbey in nearby Leek.
It is an astonishing poem, and it would be sad to go through life never having experienced it.

On a gloomy day, the place can be very gloomy indeed. Sunlight never reaches certain parts of it ever, which is why the sides are covered in slime of moss.

Can this be the Chapel Green? 
O Lord, said the gentle knight. 
Here the Devil might say, I een,
His matins about midnight!

For more about Lud Church, click here and/or click here 

Folly pokes up blue

Some of my favourite walks are round the Ecton hills which are almost totally given over to Nature these days.
However, it is not a blue conifer you see in the middle of this photo, it is the high point of Ratcliffe's Folly.  Ratcliffe himself seemed to like isolation, which is perhaps why this house is so on its own on Ecton Hill.

Let loose on a stile

At last. The guidance is that most of us can now drive a distance to enjoy the countryside, albeit also while also advised to follow social distancing rules.  That's ok.  I'm happy not to make others feel uncomfortable.

In the joy of being let loose, the youngsters don't even mind the profusion of nettles, which seem to have gone a bit prolifically mad in our human absence.

Lock-up in lockdown

This fascinating small round building in Alton village in fact must have been rather grim for its occupants. It is the village's lock-up (temporary prison) - and has no windows. It dates to the early 19th century.

The English language is odd.  Is someone consigned to a lock-up... in lock-down?

Highlight of the day

In lockdown, one is asked not to walk far from home, and to go just for exercise.  So, curiously, going for a walk and seeing the lines of a pylon sketched against the sky at twilight are something of a highlight.

What is also curious is that there are no planes in the sky.

Blossom in a pandemic

Even in the midst of this pandemic, Nature just carries on of course.
This has been a particularly wonderful year for blossom, and we've had two hot sunny weeks to make it even more dazzling. 
As people go out and take their permitted one bout of daily exercise, they stop to stare and admire the blossoms. It's almost as though we are in Japan - surrounded by Hanami-style blossom awareness.

Chalked rainbow

Such home-made rainbows - painted, chalked, made of fabric - are appearing everywhere.  They are intended as a sign of hope to all during the coronavirus crisis.

Coal-door

It was hard to work out at first what the function of this little door was - or what, when it was opened, you might see.

A passer-by explained that it was an old coal-hole.
Most houses' coal-holes would be at ground-level, as the coal-store was often in the house cellar, and the coal merchant could just pour his delivery straight in and down. Presumably this house had no cellar, or coal-shed, so a back-room must have been used - and this unusually high coal-hole was where the load was poured in.

Action - frozen

The only action at Port Vale Football Club in Stoke on Trent right now is in this frozen pose of Roy Sproson. 
Games at the ground have been cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Roy was one heck of a player; and fans toiled long and hard to raise the funds to have this staue made and installed. 
The Vale languishes at the moment, but once, seventy years ago, reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup. Fans have long memories.

Closed due to Corona

Villagers have been used to buy their eggs here at this farm each day.  Not this week.
So it goes.

No buses stop here

Bus services in rural, and even now in semi-rural areas too, have been simply cut. They are no more.
This means that there are many bus shelters that are useless.

But parish councils continue to maintain even very remote ones, like this example on the road to Dilhorne, in the rather sad & forlorn hope that ‘one day bus services may come back’.      

The power of Rugeley

Rugeley has never been considered a pretty town – and it’s not.  It’s the centre of an old mining district, and, like so many of former such towns, now feels neglected and forlorn.
In fact, it is now more famous for the huge power station on its fringes.

There is an odd sense of pride in Rugeleyans; they seem to say, “industrialised is what we were, and what we are - and we don’t worry about it much… why do you?”

Nudes for the suburbs

January is the month for garden centres.
It is very strange to me that sales of nude and semi-nude female statues are the centrepiece of many of them, such as this one at Trentham.
What is it all about?

Although they pretend a guise of being quasi-classical atworks, they are in reality, plainly ... semi-naked ladies, meant for the pleasure of the suburban gardener.