Add one to the ‘famous people from Burslem’ lists.
Bernard Hollowood (1910-1981), born in Burslem, became a cartoonist and then the editor of Punch magazine from 1957 through 1968. The magazine is forgotten now except among the over-70s, but Punch was then the leading British humour and spot-cartoon magazine of the post-war period.
Old-style clay pipes on eBay, including one from Stoke-on-Trent. They look a bit too new to be antiques, but I suppose they might be if someone had saved them properly in a tin box.
Conserving Herefordshire’s Ice Age Ponds Project Conference. Wednesday 2nd March 2022 in Hereford.
Nice. Are they the only place in the West Midlands to have them, or are there also some in Staffordshire and Shropshire?
I had to search long and hard for this. An actual map of the area covered by the ‘Forest of Mercia’. The area starts below the ‘Chase’ bit of Cannock Chase, and runs down to just north of the urban rim of Wolverhampton, and then also runs south a bit around the city.
They’re currently one of the partners in DEFRA’s new £12.1m national tree-planting boost, and as part of that are locally delivering planting into early 2022… “a mixture of small-scale planting, some on school grounds and others on larger scale public open space. Native trees and shrubs will be planted … Some sites have also been identified for the planting of orchards”.
A forthcoming and as yet undated Samuel Palmer art exhibition, in a key place…
We’re working towards bringing some of Samuel Palmer’s paintings back to the Darent Valley, along with related artworks by other artists. Watch this space for updates including dates and location.
Tree of Life: The Arborealists. An exhibition in Gloucestershire, until August 2022. Others by the same group are coming up, including ‘Ancient Trees’ in 2023.
From “The Potteries in the year of the Great Exhibition”, issued as a 28 page booklet by the Festival Committee of the Council of the City of Stoke-on-Trent, to mark the Festival of Britain in 1952.
The paragraph below was part of a short extract published at the back of the Festival brochure. Here edited for clarity, sense and errors.
“The traveller [when walking from Stoke to Hanley in the year 1851], once off the main thoroughfare [in Stoke town], was almost immediately in open country. After passing the railway bridge [at the top of] Liverpool Road, Stoke, he would walk towards Hanley along a main road with green fields on either side, flanked by trees and hedgerows with cattle and sheep grazing right [down the hill] to the point where the Station Road ‘bus stop stands now. Directly opposite stood the isolated house known as Winton Villa (still visible from the railway bridge [to those travelling on a train, but] now built around by N.C.B. [National Coal Board] offices). [This Villa was] then the abode of Robert Garner1 one of the early surgeons attached to what is now the Royal Infirmary (but which was then situated [nearby] in Etruria Vale). The fields later consecrated as the [Hanley] Cemetery rose above the hollow lane which became Stoke Road. Blackberry bushes grew at its side. The [road to Hanley rose to cross the line of the Cauldon canal (1779) which] flowed by tall trees in which magpies nested (which gave the name to [nearby] Pynest Street). [As the traveller crested the final rise into Hanley he looked back west and saw] The valley [spread out below. This was] watered by the Fowlea [Brook] and was very pretty — the waters clear, sweet and full of fish. In the meadows along its banks, even beside the new railway, the shepherd still guarded his flocks.”
1. As well as a leading local medical man, Robert Garner was one of the founders of what became the North Staffordshire Field Club. In old age he became ‘The Father of the Club’.
Call for Papers: Tolkien and Time. Regrettably the German site is covered in extremely vicious ‘EU cookies crap’ (in German), so here’s a screenshot with javascript turned off…
