Inhuman castle figures

Tamworth Castle has a disorienting habit of placing mannequins in its various rooms, all dressed in period costume. 
It's a bit like Madame Tussuad's: one is not quite sure at first if they are not human.  You don't like to disturb them.

The ghost of St Editha

Baron Robert Marmion looks frightened to death – as well he might. This tableau (in Tamworth Castle’s ‘Haunted Room’) shows him in 1139 after a particularly threatening dream in which Saint Editha appeared to him.
Eh?  Yes, it seems Saint Editha was no wuss, because, despite having been dead some 300 years, she was apparently furious with Baron Robert for having expelled the nuns from a convent she had founded at nearby Polesworth.

In fact, it wasn’t enough for the saintly lady for just to threaten him, as – from out of the dream-world she inhabited -, she also struck him with her staff, which caused his head to bleed. And ache mightily it seems. What a lady!

Baron Robert – as you’d expect – rushed off to find the homeless nuns and made sure they were restored to their previous home in Polesworth.

The confusion to my mind – is that St Editha is now identified with the famous Black Lady ghost which haunts the castle. Surely saints don’t come back? I thought it was only unhappy souls? 

Ah well: no one expects the supernatural to make sense.

Link: Tamworth Castle's ghosts

Staffordshire's greatest woman?

International Women’s Day - Ethelflaeda comes to mind. I guess, if you had to nominate Staffordshire’s greatest woman leader, you’d have to think of Ethelflaeda, who was the Anglo-Saxon queen of the kingdom of Mercia (whose core was here in Staffordshire) over 1100 years ago.

She was King Alfred’s warrior daughter, built the original Tamworth Castle, and was conqueror of both the Danes and the Welsh.
She only died after having made it possible for her young nephew Athelstan (seen here with his aunt in this statue outside the castle), who was brought up at her court, to acclaim himself King of All Britain. 
The story is that she also was the originator of the very idea of a Staffordshire.

Celebrations for International Women’s Day (which is today, March 8th) are an annual feature of life at the local university, Keele.
Link: Keele University - Women's Day Celebrations