Grey days at Lichfield

Only England can do such grey, sombre days as these. There is virtually no colour in the sky, buildings or water, and if it weren't for the evergreens, it would be one monochrome wash.

This photo shows Lichfield Cathedral in the distance, over Stowe Pool, which is the Victorian reservoir just outside the city centre.

Bring on the spooks and ghosts

Heath House is an old Victorian-Gothic pile at Tean, where the family that live there have had to think up new and interesting ways to preserve the building. Nowadays it's well-known for hosting grand wedding events and the like.

One new wheeze is Ghost Tours. As of next week, there will be regular 'entertainment experiences' featuring whatever may be haunting the house's less brightly-lit locations.
Hmm. 

Related link:  Haunted Secrets Of The Heath House

Reservoir convert

I have always avoided Tittesworth Reservoir as an attraction. Why would I want to visit a big lake of water constructed in the 1960s?

Actually though, there is a fascinating walk around the perimeter of the water, and it's wooded and contoured so is more interesting than you'd think.  Plus it does have a previous Victorian history which is evident in some of the older parts.
In the 1990s they built a Visitor Centre and expanded all the conservation work there.

I'm a convert now.

Hanley... improved

Strangely the light fall of snow has stuck, so the white stuff is still with us.

Frankly, the (laughably-named) Gateway To Hanley approach looks considerably improved by the conditions.

Bottle-oven in snow

The snow has come back yet again, though this time as but a light layer of icing-sugar... so to speak.

Strange about the frequency of the bouts of snow. It seems like we have had five or more separate snow-falls this winter, just when I was beginning to get used to having one or two at most every winter.  Still, snow is better than hail & gale.

What you see in the photo is an old pottery-making factory with its own kiln (bottle-oven) stuck in the centre of it. 
Of course, the bottle-ovens are now all listed, and none is actually working, so when this building was turned into offices, they had to keep the kiln in the centre, just as it was!

Poet surrounded by weeds

George Heath's gravestone stands, surrounded by weeds, in a lonely country churchyard near Leek.  Pretty much unknown now, he was in fact pretty much unknown then - even though this is 'The Moorland Poet' as he was called locally. George Heath died 150 years ago, at just 25 years old.

His poetry is a bit post-Wordsworth:
"Slow creeps the light athwart the concave still,
Steals a low whisper on the breathless calm,
Bringing the scent of opening flowers, a balm;
Breaks o'er the earth a grand, a rapturous thrill"   but, like in these lines, not bad either.

He's buried in Horton churchyard, which is a bit ironic, as he first caught the chill which led to his fatal consumption while restoring the old church there...

What's odd though is that there is no sign or pointer to his grave. Admittedly, he was not a Top Poet, but Staffordshire Archives feel that he is important enough to have recently published a guide to their collection of his works, so you wonder why there is no real attention paid to the grave.

Link: Guide to Staffordshire George Heath collection 

This post was featured on the Cemetery Sunday website

Keele's prison... not

This church looked like a jail to me, the first time I saw it. Those imposing keep-like towers and the narrow windows gave me a chill. 
It's one of the major buildings overlooking the main square on the Keele University campus, and I wondered then what brave university-department could be housed there - dissection studies perhaps?

The fact that it turned out to be the university church bemused me.

Keele is a modern university, established just after the war, and the church is deliberately multi-denominational. So, maybe the intention of the look was deliberate - in that it could not be identified with any one Christian sect or tradition.
It's made of Staffordshire blue-brick.

Link: Keele Chapel Church

'Picturesque' village almshouse

Marchington is a village best described as 'picturesque'. There's nothing much to do there, but each corner of it reveals another rather intriguing building to look at.
So the village is best seen as the place to walk round before going on a local country-walk.

The Marchington Almshouses (in the photo) were built by the Chawners of nearby Houndhill (hence the hound in the moulding, I would guess).


By the way, if you're interested in the villages of Staffordshire, the county's Women's Institutes took part in a project some years ago to write a page or two each about their villages for a book (published by Countryside Books). 
It's a little out of date, and a bit twee, but informative...  and, sadly, I think it is also out of print - but second-hand copies do exist.

Link: Countryside Books

Venice... in Staffordshire

The annual Venice carnival, which runs for the twelve days before the beginning of Lent, is now under way.
Sadly, the nearest I shall get to Venice this year is this superb painting of the city by the Victorian artist William Wyld. You can see it in the Nicholson Institute (aka Leek Library). It’s part of the collection there.

Though it’s over 100 years old, the picture has a wonderful vividness.

Links: Venetian Scene by William Wyld (on BBC Paintings)

Massive - and abandoned

These massive walls at Froghall stand almost alone in the midst of a forested valley.  One wonders at first if they are the remains of a castle.

However, it's clear that they are built on to the side of a hillside - so castle they are not.

They actually are kilns - the doorways being where the raw material was loaded ready for firing. The raw material in this instance was limestone, quarried nearby, to make lime (for agriculture mostly).

It turns out this abandoned area - now a beauty spot - was a thriving industrial centre in the nineteenth century.   Ozymandias would have appreciated the irony.