Fish pour off the bridge

 

This stone sculpture on a bridge in Newcastle-under-Lyme above the Lyme Brook, is called 'The Return'. It vaguely amuses me, though I do worry some of the fish on the far edges of the parapet are actually dead. Who knows?

++++

To comment on this post, just use the Comments field down this page

To get an email alert into your inbox every time we make a new post (about once a week), just put your email address into the Follow By Email Box (in the column to the right on this page) and hit Submit.  Your email address is kept private and never reused

Goddess in Hednesford

You come across this pediment sculpture, high up on a block of flats, if you walk along Anglesey Street in Hednesford. There is no real indication what the scene is meant to depict (and no plaque) so it's a bit of mystery.
However, Nozlopy's guide to Sculpture in Staffordshire says she is probably the Goddess of Science trying to teach what she knows to two poor boys (you know they are poor because they are barefoot).
It turns out that this building was once the Hednesford Technical Institute (built 1912).

Squeezed church sculpture

In Blore Ray church, there is this extraordinary sculpture group.  For some reason, the group is squeezed into a small side-chapel, which is so crowded that this was the best photo I could get without usign a wide-angle lens!   It is fabulous though...

This is the Bassett Tomb, made in alabaster around 1640. 

Parliament's gift

You'll find this little angel just outside the main door of Pattingham Church.  It's not a very distinguished piece, but it does have an inscription on its base: "From the Houses of Parliament. Presented by Mr Geoffrey Max... MP 1934"
But... what is doing out there on its own?  Why is this 'special gift' not carefully mounted inside the church itself?

Hmm. I have a theory.
It's not a very good sculpture. so I suspect that the church wardens were not terrifically pleased to be given it.  What to do with it? - they thought.         Answer: ... oh, just stick it outside, up against a wall!
It's just a theory - but I like it.  Seems to fit the facts...

The gardens behind the amusements

Alton Towers will be re-opening soon - and hordes of pleasure seekers will be pouring in from all over the country to enjoy the delights of this famous amusement park.

It's a shame though that many of the visitors may not even come across one of the real delights of the estate: the formal laid-out gardens.
Just right now though, the gardens rest in solitary silence.

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.

The spooky eyes have it

This rather spooky piece of art appears to be watching one through very beady eyes - but then that's what the artist Hattie Coppard wanted us to think.  The piece is called 'Watching The Washlands', and overlooks Andressey Island, the little piece of land in the middle of the River Trent at Burton.

The eyes idea is reinforced by the legends of Saint Modwen whose hermitage was on the hills opposite. St Modwen was famous for miraculously curing diseases of the eye.

Whether this is a reassuring piece of work though, I'm not so sure.  It's a little disturbing to come across it on a grey day.

Wonderful (if sentimental) tomb-sculpture

The week between Christmas and New Year is when many of us take a 'brisk walk' in the countryside.  Out in the Peak District Ilam (a National Trust site) is a favourite choice.
The whole area is of course beautiful and also contains some lovely sights.  The little estate church is nearly always open - and worth going into for many reasons, not least the wonderful (if sentimental) tomb-sculpture by Francis Chantrey - which shows a dying man with his children...

Jumble for a fantastical journey

The flying car sculpture at Alton Towers Hotel by Peter Price demands to be seen from every angle, as something new appears on each side!  The objects in this jumble (deliberate jumble to be fair) are all ones that would have been taken by the inventor and explorer Sir Algernon Alton in his fantastical journeys.
Sadly, Sir Algernon is a completely fictional character, invented as a 'theme' for the hotel.  Ah well.

You can see the front side of the sculpture by clicking here

Staffs saint - by Staffs sculptor

Saint Bertram was a Staffordshire saint and hermit, so it's fitting that he has been sculpted by a Staffordshire artist.   Harry Everington co-founded the short-lived Frink School of Sculpture, which was based in Stoke-on-Trent, in the 1990s.

This work by Everington can be found in St Bartholomew Church at Longnor.  Tradition has it that St Bertram founded a church at Longor in the eight century.

Horrifying statue

To me, this carving is one of the most horrifying sights in the whole county.  It stands in a secluded spot on the far side of the canal in Stone - and it is quite unmarked, with no sign to explain what it is, which almost makes the more horrifying.

The piece remembers the murder of Christina Collins, a young woman who was raped and killed by some boatmen as she travelled with them on a narrowboat along the canal in the nineteenth century.  Her body was found in the water further south, at Rugeley.

This terrifying sculpture, with its twisted neck, naked torso, missing arms, large pudenda and strange jagged line down its centre, seems to point to the agony of her last hours; and I find it difficult to look at.

It is sobering reminder - on the day before International Women's Day - of the horrors that women go through.  

Spring's green man

This Green Man figure is to be found on the archway into Blithfield Hall.  He is a symbol of the natural world, and of Spring.

It is curious how popular the green-man is - and how often it appears in statuary.

The cavalier remembers

This rather lively Cavalier adorns the facade of Patshull Hall.  He indicates, rather openly, the Royalist views of the former owners, the Astleys. 

Patshull Hall, the home of the Earls of Dartmouth for a hundred years or so, is supposed to be one of the largest listed buildings in the country - but it has hit hard times, and is currently in receivership. The last aristocrat to be associated with the hall - Lady Barbara- died last year.

The place, which is pretty isolated anyway, seems rather gloomy right now.
(It is not to be confused with nearby Patshull Park Hotel).

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.

Bagnall lions

Funny old autumn weather: long streaky sunlight, bright pale-blue skies and sharp air.

These four lions in a garden in Bagnall seemed to enjoy the sunlight as it arrived.

Fairy on the water

There are over a dozen fairy sculptures to be found while walking round the lake on the Trentham Gardens site. They are in trees, behind benches, etc.
I thought that the fairies, created by artist Robin Wight, were curiously model-thin and provocative, but maybe that's just me.
The idea is that children try to find them all while following the 'Fairy Trail'.

This one, near the lake shore, is, erm, relatively easy to spot.

Lady in a niche

This charming sculpture is to be found tucked away in a niche, almost out of sight, in Keele Hall, the mansion that is the oldest part of Keele University.

It has no attribution or labelling.
I was rather wondering who the sculptor was, but no one seemed to know.

Tunstall Shard sucks up light

The Tunstall Shard is a spectacular piece of large modern sculpture standing slap bang in the shopping area of Tunstall.
It’s made of stainless steel and reflects sunlight fiercely. Local people are really proud of it.  More than one stopped to talk to me and praise it as I stood looking at it.

Somehow, in the taking of this photo, the light from the sculpture sucked up all the luminescence, making the rest of the scene look dark somehow.
Don’t know how that happened.

The loving care of bankers

This rather touching sculpture of an ‘embryo man’ has a quite mundane interpretation.
The man is sitting within the shape of a 50p coin; and this 1976 piece is a tribute to the way that Trentham Gardens, here in Staffordshire, welcomed the staffs of the major banks, which re-located here during the Second World War.

Recent events might make people such as you and me rather sceptical about the inscription, which tells us that the work “…symbolises the all-embracing concern of the clearing banks for the financial well-being of their customers”.
Yes, well, I guess many people might be less inclined to believe that now!

Link:  The Fifty Pence Coin sculpture 

Sapphic Anna grieves in Lichfield

This magnificent tomb is one of the first monuments you notice on walking into Lichfield Cathedral. It celebrates the father of the poet Anna Seward, and was erected in the last eighteenth century.
Anna, known as the Swan of Lichfield for her poetry, had nursed her ailing father for ten years before he died, and then commissioned this memorial; so the female figure in the sculpture represents daughterly grief, and maybe even can be said to symbolic of Anna herself.

Curiously, Anna has now been picked up by literary historians as a possible ‘Sapphic’ writer. She never married, and many of her poems express a longing for her close friend, and adopted sister, Honora, who died young.
She also made friends with the “Ladies of Llangollen Vale” two reclusive women writers of the time, who were known to wear semi-masculine attire.   In Stapleton Martin's monograph, she expresses support for women's rights, and a disdain for the type of marriage she saw around her.
I guess it’s possible – why not? – though no one has yet suggested she was a practising lesbian.

One other thing about the tomb is that it shows a bare-breasted maiden (representing Grief, or Daughterly Duty).
We nowadays find it odd to see bare-breasts on such a solemn piece, and in church too – but it’s possible that the bare chest is trying to show us that the figure of Grief is so distraught that she has let her clothes fall into disarray.

Related link:
Seward Tomb (in Public Sculpture of Staffordshire And the Black Country)