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.

As old as it gets in Alstonefield

Alstonefield may be a remote village, away in the hills of the Peak District, but it also has some of the oldest monuments in the county.  The ancient church and churchyard, which is over 1000 years old, is fairly littered with Saxon stone fragments.
Even the base of this Saxon carving that you see here is probably Saxon (with its characteristic knotwork) itself, being most likely a former wayside cross.

Three standing bishops

These three standing stones in Checkley Churchyard are known as the 'Three Bishops' because (the story goes) they were erected, about a thousand years ago, in memory of a nearby battle in which three bishops are said to have died.
Bishops, in those days, were somewhat more involved in fighting than they are today...

The Saxon-cross carvings are fascinating.

Of course, no one really knows what their origin is, though, half a mile away is a small tract of land known as Deadman's Green.  Locals like to say that this is known as such because that was the site of the supposed battle.  Maybe.

This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website

Ancient dragons

The Saxon history of the county has been under extra scrutiny since the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard.
But there is already a fair bit of Saxon-era stuff to be seen, though most of it is largely ignored really and a bit mysterious.

In the Church of St Leonard in Ipstones, two hundred years ago, some builders found this sculpted relief under some plaster.  The relief was in the archway of a door - the technical term for that is that it is a tympanum; and so the piece is known as The Ipstones Tympanum.
It is about 1000 years old, and clearly uses saxon art-motifs.

It shows dragons fighting.  Nobody really knows much more than that about it.

Vikings like Land & Water

This installation is a tribute to the Viking past of Burton, though at first it looks like some abandoned word-carving and bits of stones. Strangely, that was partly the sculptor's ambition, as she wanted her work - called Land & Water - to look like a half buried Viking grave/boat.

The maker, Rosemary Terry, deliberately placed it on Andressey Island, the slice of land that sits in the middle of the River Trent at Burton.

It's a weird thought - because Burton is virtually in the middle of the country - but the Vikings managed, in 874, to SAIL all the way here from Scandinavia.
The river is navigable all the way from the North Sea to this point; and the Vikings only stopped here in the end because the river was no longer navigable going west.

Watling Street goes on (and on)

One of the great things about just wandering-where-you-will is that you often come face to face with things you never expect.

Here, in the middle of countryside near Lichfield, I just came up against a modern street sign. There is nothing unusual in that, except that “Watling Street” is a route that is at least two thousand years old, and I'd read about it in history books. This ancient trackway across England (from Dover to Shropshire, cutting through south Staffordshire) was named Wæcelinga Stræt by the Anglo-Saxons; and then the Romans developed it, since when we know it as Watling Street.  Basically, the A5 follows the same route.

It’s weird suddenly realising that you are on a piece of earth that has been tramped for millennia, and is probably full of ghosts. It’s even weirder seeing a modern street-sign … as though history had never happened.