Essex Bridge, for a Queen

Built for Queen Elizabeth I nearly five centuries ago, this little stone bridge, the 'Essex Bridge', crosses the River Trent a few miles from Cannock Chase.
The Earl of Essex built it, they say, so that the Queen could ride across it, from his stately home on the one side, to the forests beyond. Thus she could do some hunting whenever she stayed in this neck of the woods.
The little v-shaped niches are for passers-by to stand aside in safety when something broader comes on.

Of course, the locals just use it to cross the water, as a short-cut, not bothering too much about its history. And, why not?

United in Silent Night

One of Staffordshire's nicest Christmas stories is associated with this church - St John The Baptist at Great Haywood. 
The church is the local Catholic one to Shugborough, which is where there was a hospital in the Second World War caring for German prisoners of war.

A quirky, but wonderful, tradition at the church remembers how those prisoners would attend the church's Christmas service, because, even now, the singing of the first verse of the carol Silent Night ('Stille Nacht') is always sung in German - in memory of those lost men who fought anyone from a different nation, but who still thought there was only one Church.

Watching the gravestone

This graveyard angel is different to most in that, instead of standing above the grave, it is attached to and looking at the gravestone itself. 
It's worn, but it still has a strange, morbid fascination to it.
You'll find it at Great Haywood.

Lord Of The Rings on the bridge

In The Lord Of The Rings, by JRR Tolkien, the village of Tavrobel has in it a bridge at which two rivers meet.  Tolkien's son Christopher has confirmed that the site is based on the real village of Great Haywood, here in Staffordshire.
Tolkien lived near here for a while as he recuperated after a stint in the trenches in World War One.

This view from the famous Essex Bridge looks toward the River Trent (on the right) and the River Sow (on the left). 

There is also a canal tucked away a little behind all that greenery - the start of the Staffs & Worcester - but I don't suppose an Old English scholar would have wanted to include that aspect...