Some may wish to read the best of this blog as an ordered and sequenced ebook. It’s not yet in an ebook format, but here is a linked table-of-contents totalling 55,000 words. These range from full essays to short fragments, and many of these would be polished and expanded for a full ebook:
Last updated: January 2021.
ON WATER:
Old Staffordshire saying: Fetch a duck off water.
On Jenny Green-teeth.
‘Lady Wells’ in the High Peak.
The springs at Willowbridge Wells, near Newcastle-under-Lyme.
ON FOLKLORE:
Some possible archaic survivals in North Staffordshire folklore.
Staffordshire Folk and their Lore (1896) – some extracts and notes.
Lore from the North Staffordshire Field Club Transactions, 1897.
Fletcher Moss, a new source on North Staffordshire folk-lore.
The Folk-lore of North Staffordshire, version 1.5 (2020).
WILD THINGS:
In the Midderlands.
Mythical beasts and places of Stoke-on-Trent.
Mythical Beasts of Birmingham.
THE NATURAL WORLD:
The Natural Kalendar.
The Auroch Skull of 1877.
Children and rainbows in Staffordshire.
“Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun”.
The Runic Poem’s “moor-stepper”: Orion.
On the curlew in North Staffordshire.
AT HOME:
Painting Trentham Hall and Gardens, 1835-1935.
Speaking tubes in North Staffordshire and The Old Pottery Kiln, Bradwell Wood.
Beech Caves rock homes.
WALKING WITH ERASMUS DARWIN:
Old fossils, new ideas.
A survey of the biographies of Erasmus Darwin.
Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden – a survey of the best podcasts and ebook versions
AT BURSLEM, ETRURIA AND AROUND:
Burslem in 1730 and 1790.
Brickhouse / Cock Yard, Burslem.
Cock fighting and dog fighting.
“The Sytch, Burslem”.
The view from 18 Victoria St.
George Orwell on Burslem, February 1936.
HEALTH MATTERS:
A pox on Stoke?
Stoke as the home of the first health food: “Hovis” bread.
Wedgwood Institute as a symbol of “savage inequality”?
Slavery profits did not bankroll the Midlands industrial revolution.
Did Karl Marx ever visit the Potteries?
Air pollution in the Potteries: worse now, or in the past?
Dead by age 50?
OFF WITH HIS HEAD:
The skull-collector of Stoke: Joseph Barnard Davis (located elsewhere).
A Chartist leader escapes from the Potteries, 1842.
THE KEARY FAMILY:
In the Potteries in the 1820s and 1840s.
Miss Keary as folklore and song collector:
Miss Keary on the sing-song proverb-speech of the Potteries.
Miss Keary rescues the North Staffordshire Halloween song.
Miss Keary on doorstep luck in North Staffordshire.
“Hark the robbers!”
The Mount (1909) by C. F. Keary and Keary’s The Mount – now online.
STOKE:
12 ‘lost things’ from Stoke.
Katherine Thomson (1797–1862).
A Vision of Hartshill.
Holy Trinity church, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent.
J.R.R. Tolkien in Stoke.
Visualising the ‘Potteries Thinkbelt’ in the mid 1960s.
Ken Dodd and Stoke-on-Trent.
History of Majestic Chambers, Stoke town.
STRANGE DOINGS AND TRACKS IN THE MOORLANDS:
Gog and Magog at Ipstones.
Magic Methodists.
Dr. Arthur Edward Dodd.
IN THE PEAK:
A hobbit-hill near Buxton, in the 1820s.
Ebenezer Rhodes, in his Peak Scenery (1824).
Hindus and the Peak District.
OLD MERCIA:
Bury Bank and Beowulf.
A 7th century rock-cut warrior grave and bowl at Barlaston.
Two novels: Wulfhere (1920) and Elfwin (1930).
SOME WEAVINGS:
Interviews (located elsewhere).
All around the Wrekin.
Some Shropshire jibes.
On The Butts, Baggins, and Butterflies.
OLD BIRMINGHAM:
Tolkien in Birmingham: one and two
Tolkien in Staffordshire: one and two.
“And as far off as Birmingham?” – a review of the book Sherlock Holmes in the Midlands
LOCAL WRITERS:
A survey of writers in and around Stoke. (located elsewhere)
The macabre work and life of Mary Howitt.
Mary Howitt’s “Sun-pictures” (linked in the above post).
Milton’s Comus – a forgotten Midlands gem?
Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife.
ITV’s 23-hour Clayhanger adaptation.
Roy Fisher as a poet of the Staffordshire Moorlands.
Where to find T. E. Hulme.
POEMS:
A lichen mnemonic.
North Staffordshire Souling Song.
“The Man in the Moon”, Ludlow, circa 1314-1349.
A rhyme for children.
Posts on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are to be found in polished and expanded form in my book on Gawain and its setting. Notes on the historicity of my novel The Spyders of Burslem are now included with the novel.