Just south of Stoke are old rock houses that people used to live in, the Beech Caves near Tittensor, a few miles south of Trentham. Seemingly they’re being left to the local yobs and vandals. Might they be restored and turned into a hobbit-y tourist attraction?

North Staffordshire Naturalists’ Field Club, Annual Report, 1878. Sectional Reports : Geology, report on field trip to the “New Red Sandstone quarry, at Beech” and vicinity. “Not far from Beech inhabited cottages, cut in the living rock, were observed.”

An old scrapbook cutting from the Sentinel, 1920, photographed by Simcock of Dale Hall…