The annual September Heritage Days are coming up. Some local places of interest…

* A chance to don a builder’s hard-hat and get inside the refurbishing St. Marks in upper Shelton. Saturday 9th September 2023, 11am to 3pm, no booking. Heavy restoration is still going on, replacing the roof trusses and more.

* Our Lady of the Angels and St. Peter in Chains, the large Catholic Church on the edge of Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent. 16th-17th September 2023, noon to 5pm, no booking. Of tangential Tolkien interest. The adjacent Convent Pools, where the Catholic Convent school-girls did Botany studies, can be visited at any time in the adjacent Hartshill Park, and the pools and their walkways were restored about a decade ago.

* The Milton Building opposite Sainsbury’s in Stoke town. Formerly the city’s first School of Art, more recently as NHS offices, and today it’s what appears to be a centre run by an evangelical church. Note the “talks include Phil Rowley’s presentation on the Schools of Art in Stoke-on-Trent”. Saturday 16th September, 2023, 11am to 4pm, no booking.

I seem to recall from the past that the annual list may expand a bit in the next few weeks, with last-minute additions.