Rugeley Roman mystery

No one actually seems to know what this Roman soldier is doing here, on the facade over some shops in Rugeley.  The sculptor is unknown; and the material it is made out of is fibreglass.  Rugeley has no more Roman history significance than any other market town in England.
Most puzzling.

Deadman in cemetery

I'm afraid I'm one of those who find cemeteries, especially older ones, endlessly entertaining.
Where else could one's sense of irony be reinforced - by finding the grave of Mr Deadman?

Mr Deadman's angel-monument in Rugeley Cemetery is curiously old-fashioned  - you'd have thought it was a late nineteenth century piece, not one made in 1944, which is when Mr Deadman died.

Garden golf course

There is something very practical about this householder's use of a small front garden.  He or she has installed a putting green!
Very practical.  No need to drive to the golf course; fresh-air and exercise on tap (albeit, ummm, limited amount of walking); and minimal maintenance (artificial grass, you see).
I'm strangely impressed by the thinking...

Grotesquely frightening

This is one of the 'grotesques' that you will find acting as a pillar-stop in the Lady Chapel at Bradeley Church.
Its job is to scare off evil spirits.  It sure frightens me.

Lobby in Croatia

In Croatia, I was oddly fascinated to see this sign, which (apparently) pointed the way to a restaurant where I could get a bowl of lobby.  Staffordshire Lobby is a left-overs stew, a little like the Liverpudlian scouse dish.  I wondered if an ex-pat was pushing the idea.

Of course, no lobby was forthcoming. 
The owner of the restaurant explained that 'Lobby' was just the restaurant's name.  However - this is the puzzling bit - he could not remember why this name (a meaningless and very odd one for Croatia) had been chosen...

Horns in waiting

The mysterious and ancient Abbots Bromley Horn Dance takes place this year (2015) on Monday 7 September.  I have been a little disenchanted in the past with the sight (of men skipping about in costume wearing antlers on their heads) - but the village does take the whole thing very seriously.

So does the local church, where the antlers & hobby-heads are kept in pride of place permanently waiting for their annual outing. They look rather slyly grim to me.

Good luck wedding charm

You'll find this odd, rather amateurish carving in the porch of St James Church at Longdon - it is of a hand, with a heart at its centre.
The church guide says it is called 'The Bride's Hand', as brides used to touch it on their way in to the church as a way of bringing good fortune to the marriage.  Some still do.

I can find nothing else about it, as for example... how old is it?  Why does it show a left hand, when it is on the right-hand side of the porch door? If that is a heart in the centre, why is it upside-down? 
I suspect, however, that it was just a bit of fun when it was carved - and is nothing more than that.
Well, I think so...

Get the rat look

There is a saying "...only in the Potteries..." - accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders - meaning that it's so crazy it could only happen here.  (I suppose the phrase is used in lots of regions, but everyone likes to think it's unique to them.)

This car has been freshly painted.  Hard to believe.
Now, why anyone would want their car to look like it's been left in a field for thirty years I don't know, but if you too want your car to "have that rat look", just check out rustypaint.co.uk.

Like I say... only in the Potteries .... !

Astrological quirks!

It's a very odd thing: but there are some howlers of mistakes on the facade of the Wedgwood Institute in Burslem.  The frieze along the top shows the twelve signs of the zodiac - but the signs for Cancer and Aries are in the wrong places. 
As you can see here, Aries (15 April to 15 May) is hovering over March, which is all wrong.  (The man is gathering clams/crabs by the way, which is not entirely obvious...). 
Also, further along the facade, the June figure seems to be shearing a ram - whcih should surely be Aries ?

This buidling was a wonder of its time.    I wonder if they realised the mistake when it was unveiled; or did those who realise just stay shtum?

This quirk is featured in the locally-set novel, The Spyders of Burslem.

Christmas ghost story - 'buried alive'

At Rushton Spencer village churchyard, under the yew-tree, you'll notice a grave that is out of sync with the other burial.  Thomas Meakin (or Meaykin) is laid the 'wrong way round', ie his gravestone faces west instead of east.  This can happen for a number of reasons - but one is that the grave might contain an unhappy spirit.

If Thomas' story is true, then he would be unhappy.  His friends suspected that he had been drugged with a powerful poison, fallen into a coma, and been buried alive.  When they dug his grave up, it is said that he was lying not on his back, but on his front - a sure sign that he had waked after being buried.
Thus Thomas was re-buried the 'wrong way round', with the new inscription "As man falleth before wicked men; so fell I".

There are a few sources for the story - neatly pulled together on the Mondrem website.

American Indians? ...in Staffordshire

This wood carving on a choir-stall at Checkley Church is most mysterious.  It is usually described as two portraits of native American Indians... but, as these bench-ends have been dated to the mid-sixteenth century, this seems improbable.

Yes, the 1500s were the Age of Exploration, so it's possible the carver could have been on a trading ship to America - or seen a drawing of an American native - but why would he then have carved it in a quiet country church, with barely another reference to tell us what is meant? 
Yes, the curling tentacles above the portraits might possibly be American maize, but, if so, it's a very stylised version of maize.

No-one really knows.  It might even be a Central or South American Indian ... or not an Indian at all.

A crooked pub

Yes, this pub is literally tipsy. One end is actually four feet higher than the other, because the sunken end is dipping into subsidence. 
There are odd optical illusions that occur - like seeing a marble roll over a table upwards, and grandfather clocks that appear to be ever on the verge of falling over.

Actually, the weird thing is that The Crooked House was declared unsafe (not surprisingly) in 1940.  But a local brewery decided it would be fun to preserve it - and sure enough, despite its remote location, it has been a tourist attraction ever since. 
Regular checks are carried out to ensure it's not slipping dangerously...

A row of gold coin

A street not far from Stoke town centre is a monument to good fortune, but unless you look carefully you'll miss the fine details - the words between the bricks.

The row of glazed tiles you see in the photo was installed on the exterior of all the houses along Shelburne Street, a row of terraced homes, when the street itself was created.

The story goes that the developer of the houses here had won a considerable amount of money at the races - which he then used the fund the project.
And the name of the winning horse?  Well, the clue is in the tiles... "Gold Coin"!

May we all have such good fortune in the New Year...

This post was featured on the City Daily Photo Theme Day

Ghost story for Xmas

A ghost story for you – seeing as it’s Christmas Day!

In North Staffordshire, the most famous ghost story is that of Molly Leigh (or Lee). 
She was a real person, and most likely was simply just a secretive woman – but she lived alone too, and that was enough to give any credulous eighteenth-century man his suspicions that she was a witch.
Sure enough after her death, she was ‘seen’, as if in life, sitting in her cottage with her pet bird.

And here the real story starts. The local parson, horrified at what had been seen, ordered her tomb to be turned sideways. Unlike all god-fearing folk, who are laid to rest east-west, Molly’s tomb, in the graveyard at St John's Church in Burslem, was now laid on a north-south axis - as you can see in the photo above. Molly's tomb is the big one on the right of the photo.
In fact, this was a very rare occurrence, so the tomb is quite an historical oddity.

Even until recently, local kids would dance around the grave singing “Molly Leigh, Molly Leigh, You can’t catch me” - but… it’s not advised… you never know what might happen...

Related link:
The story of Molly Leigh 

This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website

Candy cottage

This might be a good place to be at Christmas!

This house frontage in Tutbury always makes me smile as I pass it – one wonders if there is a gingerbread-man sitting in there behind the door…

However, I’ve never discovered its history, or why it is called this. If you know, I’d appreciate a note in the comments box (below). Cheers.

The Queen makes a face

The face grinning at me from within this car gave me a start when I first saw it. I was just walking along, and then suddenly saw The Queen sitting in this parked car.
At least, I think it's The Queen.

It took me a second to realise that someone had perched a mask on the seat's head-rest.

Lived to be 125...

Yes, according to this old wooden board inside Adbaston Church, one parishioner there, William Wakeley, lived to a ripe old age - better than most of us can hope for even in this hygienic age. He died in 1714, aged 125.  So it says...
The effect of this historical object is a little offset by the wall-heater next to it, but I guess it gets cold in these old churches (St Michael & All Angels is twelfth century).

Funnily enough, his actual gravestone, which is by the church door, is not much to look at.

Medieval artists have a joke

Medieval artists could just as subversive (and as able to insert humour in serious places) as the artists of today.
I say this because, in my previous two posts, I have been writing about a jokey art project which has 'infiltrated' the Potteries Museum - but the long-ago artists who made the carvings in his photo seem to have been of the same mindset!

These carvings - in the chapter house of Lichfield Cathedral - are hundreds of years old, but display exactly the same impish humour.
Quite what the masons who made them were thinking - or what the story behind them is - I just don't know.

But it made me laugh out loud in what is, really, a very serious place!

Nineteenth century punk kitchen

Ah - another "Neo-Dawsonism"!  Yes, this is another barmy, contribution to the current, subversive art project at the City Museum in Hanley.
See my previous post, which explains the background to what's going on here.

This is an exhibit in the Social History section of the museum, which is showing a nineteenth century kitchen - complete with mannequin.
But the artists have artfully added a rocker's leather jacket to this 200 year old scene... thus confusing all visitors to this part of the museum!  Weird.

Incidentally Discharge are a real band - a punk hardcore band, and about as raw as they come, from Stoke-on-Trent.

Freaky species goes on show

This freakish skeleton is in the Natural History section of the City Museum in Hanley, next to the stuffed birds, and not far from the Mammals. As you can see, it has extraordinarily long arms.
When I passed it, more than a few people were scratching their heads. They were wondering: what sort of animal was this? An urban monkey?

Well, after the double-take, one realises it's a joke. Well, sort-of. It's part of a subversive art project in which a number of odd, barmy objects are placed around the museum at strategic points, apparently as though they really are long-term exhibits.  (There's a plane made of pottery in the engineering section for instance...)

The label by this skeleton describes it as Homo Tesco, and there is a completely nutty description of its history - including a comparison with its close species 'Homo Asda'. It explains the waering of the blue plastic bag as an attempt at a 'shirt'.

The art project, which runs at the museum until December 9th, is called 'Neo Dawsonism' - though a quick search on Google only turned up references to the late great Les Dawson's jokes, also known as Dawsonisms.  Hmm.

I must admit that I thought it very funny - and, somehow, very brave of the museum to allow it!

Related Link
The Walter Mitty Archive