Junction that is not a junction

It's turned warm now, and sitting on the Junction Inn terrace watching the canalside activities around is a good way to relax...
The surrounding waterside is called 'Norbury Junction' but in fact it's no longer a junction: the adjoining Newport Canal is now derelict. 
Still, there are shops and maintenance yards, and it is in the countryside, so families still turn up in numbers.

Dudley & Dowell 'collectable'

'Dudley & Dowell Ltd /Cradley Heath /Staffs' - so proudly reads this metal drain cover, which I saw near Norbury Junction.
It's the sort of thing one never notices - but the distinctive smell of sitting & stagnant water emanating from it, erm... alerted me to its presence.

Of course the town of Cradley Heath was 'moved' from Staffordshire into West Midlands County in a local government reorganisation nearly forty years ago, so it shows you how old this drain is - and how long these metal creations last!
In days gone by, the Black Country, of which Cradley Heath was part, really did have a reputation for iron work, so the address would have carried something of that reputation to the casual passer-by.

Believe it or not, old manhole covers by Dudley & Dowell are collectors' items.
Don't know about drain covers though. Hmm.

This post was featured on the City Daily Photo Monthly Theme Day.

Gravestones on the move

This amazing summer blazes on, with yet another day in the twenties (Celsius).

This rather uncomfortable quartet of headstones is to be found at Norbury Church, where the authorities have decided (or were they pressured?) to uproot the stones, away from their original graves-sites to 'more secure' spots.  In many English churchyards, the oldest headstones are being moved - for fear that they might fall on somebody.

The Staffordshire historian Fred Hughes calls some instances of this policy "institutional vandalism".  The end-result, certainly, is appealing to nobody.

Brassy Hawys

This memorial brass, in Norbury Church, is reputed to be the oldest in Staffordshire, though it gets no special treatment (as you can see).
The lady underneath it lived in the fourteenth century and her name was Hawys Botiller.

Ruins for a poet

The poet Richard Barnfield was born here - at Norbury Manor.  As you can see, the building has beens torn down and all that is left is this ruined site, although the moat that surrounded the old manor-house is still here. It’s green in this photo, because of all the algae in it.

Richard Barnfield, as the phrase goes “did not fulfil his early promise”.  Born in 1574, two of his sonnets were good enough to be accidentally ascribed to Shakespeare, but he seems to have stopped bothering with poetry by the time he was twenty-five. 
Pretty much no-one has heard of him; and there is no memorial to him, either here in Norbury, or in nearby Stone where he lived most of his life.
Shame.

These ruins are reached on a public footpath about three hundred yards from Norbury Junction  They are not easy to reach by car

Bashed up bishop

Smashing up stone figures is a lot harder than one thinks, and while the Protestant reformers really would have prefered to completely demolish the 'Papist' images left in English churches in the 16th century, often they simply didn't have the resources.

So, they would often settle for just smashing off the noses of the various saints, angels, Virgin Marys, and, as in this case at St Peter's Church in Norbury, a bishop.
He now resembles a boxer...