Honouring the woman

Emma Darwin was the wife of Charles Darwin, not to mention his cousin (that sort of stuff was okay in the nineteenth century...).   Emma was a Staffordshire girl, and lived at Maer Hall in west Staffordshire, where Charles was a frequent visitor. The pair married in Maer Church.

Emma is fascinating for lots of reasons.  She brought to the marriage all the intelligence and creativity of the Wedgwood family (she was the grand-daughter of Josiah I), so she was no slouch in understanding and commenting on Charles' work.

So I think it's terrific that Shrewsbury School has named one of their halls after her, despite her not being known for her own work. 
(Why Shrewsbury?  Because Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, she is honoured in Shrewsbury by association, so to speak).

The gates that dazzle

A Stafford Knot entwined with a symbolic plant (a Tudor rose, I should think). Strange.
Anyway, this is the design on the gates at Maer Hall, a very grand building indeed.  I can't find out anything about this combination of or why it should appear on these gates.

It's likely the gates were built in the late nineteenth century when the Harrison family, a Liverpool ship-owning family, lived at the hall.

In the sunshine, this design fair dazzles one...

Estate village nurses its past

Maer village in west Staffordshire was what's known as an 'estate village' - in other words, the whole place owed its living to the local lord-of-the-manor. You might be a smallholder renting land & house from the manor, or a below-stairs servant - either way, you all deferred to the family living at Maer Hall (which is a vast establishment, and still there).

That sort of arrangement more or less collapsed in this country after the Second World War, but, curiously, at Maer, the feeling of being an estate-village lives on somehow.
For example, in the village hall, a previous member of the local gentry looks down, in this painting, on the activities of the present villagers.

Having the painting still hanging there at all seems vaguely old-fashioned to me, especially in the way it symbolises a much less democratic time.
But maybe Maer people are nostalgic for those times...  Possibly.