Fish pour off the bridge

 

This stone sculpture on a bridge in Newcastle-under-Lyme above the Lyme Brook, is called 'The Return'. It vaguely amuses me, though I do worry some of the fish on the far edges of the parapet are actually dead. Who knows?

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Queen Vic in the flowers

More than 100 years after her death Queen Victoria still stands highest in Newcastle under Lyme.
Statues of royalty are in fact few and far between in North Staffordshire, though the area does celebrate many of its industrialists (and sportsmen) with public statues, as well as, of course, its war dead. So this image of Queen Victoria seems a bit of an anomaly really locally.

The municipal gardens in the virtual centre of the town are beautifully groomed. This year the theme is of the Peacock Butterfly.

Crystal no longer shines bright

How the mighty are fallen.  This sad-looking, decaying pile is the once honey-pot of North Staffordshire, the Crystal Ballroom (aka Tiffany's aka Zanzibar etc etc).  It was the big dance and disco venue between the 1970s and 2000s for this region.
It was never 'cool' - one went to the small clubs for any real atmosphere -, but it was incredibly popular.  Saturday night queues were so long they are the stuff of legend - sometimes stretching down into Newcastle town itself.
Now it's just an empty hulk.

Guitar heroes at the bar

You might have done a double-take looking at this photo.  What is it?  Well, it's the bar at The Rigger rock pub in Newcastle under Lyme - where guitar fret-boards take the place of bar-pump handles...!
Stylish or what?

The Rigger is a proper rock dive.  On the walls (painted black obviously) are inscribed quotes from bands such as Metallica through to Thin Lizzy.  Skull & crossbones designs (naturally) line the walls; and there is live music of the loudest kind most nights.  So it's no surprise that guitars have pride of place at the bar.

And this is no jumped-up newcomer.  As far as I'm aware, the Rigger has a history as a home of rock for nigh-on forty years; and maybe more than that.  One day the history will be written!

This post was featured on the City Daily Photo Portal

Tribute to pottery industry

The Lancaster Building in Newcastle under Lyme, was built, in the late 1930s, right in the middle of the town, as an expression of local pride and to indicate the town's modernism.  It's a fine and functional building.
It pays homage to the town's past with a series of roundels on its sides - this one indicates the small, but important, element that pottery played in the industrial life of the borough.

Jewish cemetery marks decline

One surprising aspect of north Staffordshire Jewish population statistics is that the number of Jewish families in the area has reduced from 200 to 20 in just fifty years - an decline of ninety per cent!
The reason is hard to pin down, but it could be that many of those 200 families were twentieth century refugees, and so they have just moved on again.  The community tries to be active nevertheless.

The grand old synagogue has had to be sold, and a tiny little new synagogue was built by the already established cemetery instead.  The cemetery is gated off, but has a solemn air.

Grim pub sign

The Black Friar Pub in Newcastle-under-Lyme has a strange & curious sign - as you see.

Yes, a black friar; yes, you see a pint in his hand... but what does the scythe imply?  Surely that makes for a rather uncomfortable resemblance between this figure and the Grim Reaper himself - Death!

Not sure I'd want to go into a pub which has that figure for its 'guardian' - but actually, they do a pretty good pint...

Knot welcomes newbies

The maternity ward entrance at the North Staffs Hospital has a huge Stafford Knot decoration to the left of its main doors - as you see in this photo.

It amuses me to see people's puzzled looks when they see it. As it is unlabelled, and they don't seem to know what it really is, I suppose they are just guessing at what it can represent.
A nappy perhaps?  Or maybe the stork's little package...?  It could be.

Good luck to everyone who will be born there this year...

Memorial to "benevolent individuals"

This is a most unusual cemetery memorial, as it remembers no particular person, nor does it name any individuals of this group of "benevolent" people.

It's a memorial to all those who have donated body-parts after their deaths to the local university's School of Medicine.  The main campus of Keele University is just half-a-mile from this site, Newcastle-under-Lyme's new municipal cemetery.

It's maybe unique in its dedication. I'm not sure.

This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website

You are here, wherever you are

There is something spooky about this sign, which I saw in the main building at the City General Hospital in Newcastle.

When it says: "You are here"... but, erm, where is here, exactly?  it doesn't say.

I had surreal imaginings about having to endlessly wander blank corridors, only to be told (by sign after sign after sign) that I was forever and ever "here".   Spooky.

Slppery gravestones

Saint Giles Church in Newcastle-under-Lyme was rebuilt in the nineteenth century. The builders (it seems) couldn't be bothered to remove all the soil they had to dig up so they almost literally chucked it to one side, creating the hillock you can see next to the church to this day.

The gravestones too seem to have been disturbed at the time, and - with space in this urban centre very limited - seem to have been rearranged in the clumsy jigsaw fashion you see in the photo...  Walking over them is not to be advised on wet days, when they are almost waxy in their slipperiness.

This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website   

Hovis raffles off cottage

Could 'Hovis Cottage' (on the busy A34 dual carriageway, of all places, in Newcastle-under-Lyme) be anything to do with the Hovis bread company?

I thought it was probably unlikely, but one Google search later I found the excellent potteries.org website, which specialises in researching the history of the North Staffordshire conurbation.
According to it, the cottage was built by the Hovis company many years ago as a charity raffle prize.

The story seems bizarre and unlikely – but strange enough to be true!

See: Hovis Cottage – on Newcastle Canal on potteries.org

Clock of 1902

You don't often see clocks on the exterior of buildings now, so this clock is quite a collector's piece.

It was placed on a smart row of town houses, the London Road Villas, which, as you can see, were proudly constructed in 1902.  London Road is the main road out of Newcastle-under-Lyme going east.

Books revival in Newcastle

There are not many rare & second-hand book shops in town centres in Staffordshire. I can count them on the fingers of one hand.
I guess that charity shops (the Shelter one in Hanley is okay) have stolen the bottom end of the market, and that Amazon/ebay has the more lucrative end.

So it was nice to see a new one opening - in Merrial Street, in Newcastle-under-Lyme (near the police station). The books are a tad pricey for me, and it's not easy to find what you want, but the range is good and the owner's enthusiasm is infectious. (He will bargain too, if pushed).

The owner is convinced that news of the 'death of the book' (hello, Kindle!) is premature. He says you can't love a kindle like you can a book, and a kindle "doesn't smell like an old book". (He's right there!). I wish I was as sure as him - but I'm not.

Christ goes without...

What's special about the Jesus in this photo? Can you see?

The picture was taken at the Unitarian Chapel in Newcastle-under-Lyme, where they say, proudly, that Josiah Wedgwood himself was a regular attender three centuries or so ago. I was being shown round the tiny building, and was asked the same question - but I failed to come up with the answer. Answer: Jesus has no halo (a sign of a divine nature) in this glass. Unitarians are Christians, but believe Jesus was fully human, not divine, so he gets no halo.

Procession for Britain-In-Bloom

Newcastle takes the Britain-In-Bloom competition seriously - if this procession of children, who were singing about flowers and waving floral arrangements of their own, is to be believed.

The children (led by some very enthusiastic teachers!) paraded through the town centre as part of the town's effort to raise awareness of its involvement in the competition that rewards florally-conscious communities...