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".