The Spectator reviews the new book The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgwood and the Transformation of Britain. Those worried that the book might be a socialist wokewash of the man need not fear, because…

“there is not much sign of the ‘radical’ of Hunt’s title [except for] his manufacturing of the anti slave-trade medallion featuring a generic African in chains […] Similarly, the casting of a medallion to celebrate the French Revolution seems less of a radical act when we learn that Josiah’s son suggested that the figure of Liberty could easily be modelled on that of Hope in [an existing Wedgwood] medallion celebrating the colonisation of Botany Bay [i.e. the prison colony in Australia].

Yes he was an abolitionist and lent his name to petitions and suchlike, and even served on a committee, yet so did a great many of his class at that time. My feeling is that such a leading businessman would have had to ‘go above and beyond’ the usual in his efforts, in order to be now claimed as a political radical (in the way that modern leftists think of such things). Also, he would not have seen overseas slave-holding in modern terms. Back then it was often presented as a practice incompatible with Christian and British values of personal liberty and freedom of religious-conscience, and thus framed in terms that do not sit at all well with modern authoritarian leftists.

Conversely he also had a passion for Free Trade, the other great cause of the time. This meant he sold globally and to all comers — and thus today’s leftists can find a few early Wedgwood pots in overseas slave plantations if they dig hard enough. But it seems they can go little further in their witch-finding, without dragging out the old false claim… that the slave trade provided the capital for the Industrial Revolution, and thus set up Wedgwood for success. This claim has, in recent decades, been strongly and convincingly debunked.

I’m pleased to see that Tom Fort’s book Downstream is now on Archive.org to borrow. He follows the course of the Trent in a punt, but first investigates in some detail the river’s moorland source and non-navigable upper reaches. The scan is bad, even by Archive.org standards, but it’s readable.

I gave a hardback copy to Stoke-on-Trent central reference library about a decade ago, but it seems it never made it to the shelves.

On eBay, a fine painting of Stoke Station by George Heiron (1929-2001) with a local train and the North Staffordshire Hotel in the background. I have no passion for trains steam or otherwise, as machines, but the background and setting are interesting. Still a very recognisable scene today. His 2000 book The Paintings and Photographs of George Heiron can still be had second-hand for a reasonable amount. One wonders if there are more from Stoke & Staffordshire?

A fine job, relatively nearby…

Offa’s Dyke Projects Officer. Shropshire Council is seeking an enthusiastic and appropriately experienced Project Officer to deliver a programme of conservation works and public engagement for Offa’s Dyke.

“A near-complete Anglo-Saxon dwelling and oratory has been discovered, believed to date from the early ninth century” and located a few miles from Burton-upon-Trent. “The caves had long been considered to be 18th-century follies”, but a detailed new study by the Royal Agricultural University and Wessex Archaeology shows them to be much earlier.

The PDF is not yet online but the abstract has…

“… Saint Hardulph, a deposed Northumbrian king who seemingly retired as a hermit at this site. The fabric of the cave itself has [long been assumed to be 18th and 19th century, re:] nearby Foremarke Hall. Analysis shows that such a late origin for the structures is very unlikely, and that modifications in the 18th or 19th century were on a small-scale and saw no significant enlargement…”

This may interest Tolkien people. A c. 1900s lantern slide of the ford and bridge-end at Great Haywood. Photographed from the village side, as Tolkien would have known it perhaps 10 or so years later. The ramp goes up onto the bridge. The colorising is on the original.

Comparing it to more or less the same view as seen in a wider and winter form in British Isles, depicted by pen and camera (1904), and judging by comparing the growth of the small tree, the date here is perhaps summer 1904 or 1905. Most likely the latter, and possibly even 1906.

The “Score” label presumably means that, when viewing in a sequence, its appearance would have been accompanied by music.

Now open after much work is Tamworth Castle in mid Staffordshire, with its major new attraction the…

“£768,000 ‘Battle and Tribute’ exhibition, including mead hall, immersive combat film experience and touch-table strategy game, bring the area’s Anglo-Saxon history to life, including the role of our famous warrior queen, Aethelflaed. It also explores the Staffordshire Hoard, including themes of battle, kingship and the warrior culture in Anglo-Saxon Mercia.”

The castle grounds are now set for a £350,000 makeover.

A snapshot of Eccentric Britain, at the Luce Bell Gallery in the UK until the end of June 2021.

The big blockbuster Alice in Wonderland exhibition at the V&A in London is also on now.

Nice. The Cerne Abbas Giant was probably first constructed in the late Anglo-Saxon period, according to…

“a new state-of-the-art sediment analysis by National Trust archaeologists”.

They’ve concluded the giant can have been made no earlier than 700 A.D. Given that it’s obviously not Christian in the modern sense, it’s therefore presumably a genuine if rather late pagan survival from the liminal conversion period.

Cerne Abbas Giant, by Eric Ravilous.

Similar work on the famous White Horse put that hill-figure at around 1,000 B.C.

Some Staffordshire sections from Tobias Churton’s book The Magus of Freemasonry: the mysterious life of Elias Ashmole, scientist, alchemist, and founder of the Royal Society…

Following the Royalist defeat at Worcester in July 1646, Parliamentary officers ordered Elias Ashmole to keep out of London […] he returned to the area of Shallowford in Staffordshire, near the Bishop of Lichfield’s palace at Eccleshall, about twenty miles northwest of [his home place of] Lichfield.

Ashmole was a friend of Izaak Walton [who was of like mind, and had retreated to the same area …] They were certainly friends by the time of the 1676 edition of Walton’s world-famous The Compleat Angler … To those who are familiar with his references, Walton’s work, apparently devoted to the harmless pastime of angling, reads like a covert message to depressed Royalists and dispossessed Anglican clergymen throughout the country. […] The book’s message can be read as “Be calm, contemplate the waters;
receive inspiration therefrom: all troubles will pass.” Or, as Walton himself recommended, “Study to be quiet.”

The “troubles” referred to by Walton derived from the puritanical, repressive, anti-ecclesiastical, and generally hot-headed manifestations of Cromwell’s [Puritan] government. […] In his letter to Barlow, Walton notes that he is himself “not suspected,” to the extent that he can even attend a “fanaticall meeting” of Puritanical activists […] The violence [of the Puritans] extended beyond stones, lead roofs, and church bells. [This point refers to the fact that the puritans were busy destroying Lichfield cathedral with its three magnificent spires]. On August 2, 1652, Ashmole went “to heare the Witches tryed, and tooke Mr Tradescant with me.” […] In the event, six witches were hanged […]

[Returning from the trials] On August 19, 1652, Ashmole “entered Lichfield about sunset.” Against the reddish skyline he would have seen the silhouettes of two spires, the third truncated at its base, having crashed through the roof. According to local historian Howard Clayton’s Loyal and Ancient City, after the Parliamentarian destruction of 1646, “Centuries of religious custom disappeared and the Cathedral Close became for 14 years a place of ruin, inhabited by squatters and haunted by owls at night.”

On September, Ashmole “took a Journey into the Peake [Peak District], in search of Plants and other Curiosities.” Ashmole’s “Noates”* of his journey contain short entries of peculiar words, sayings, rhymes, miners’ language and customs, cookery recipes, people, inscriptions, and sights. For example, a Staffordshire oatcake was called a “Bannock” consisting of oatmeal and barley, baked on a griddle. “A Spider is called an Aldercrop.” [a folk preservation of the Old English word at(t)orcoppa and the Middle English attercop]

He mentions a man called “Wagge” from the moorland village of Wetton who “is Staffordshire Astrologus,” a fellow astrologer. At Dove Bridge (near Uttoxeter), Ashmole actually participated in a magical “Call,” or invocation of spirits. “I came to Mr: Jo: Tompson, who dwells neare Dove Bridge. He used a Call, and had responses in a soft voyce.” Ashmole inquired of the spirit concerning the health of his friend Dr. Thomas Wharton, who was poorly. “He told me Dr: Wharton was recovering from his sickness, and so it proved.”

Incidentally, at nearby Great Haywood, Tolkien later caught a similar spirit-of-place. As he stood on the long bridge there, listing to the “wistful murmuring” of possibly-spirits beneath it (Lost Tales II).

* – “Noates in my Peake Journey“, printed in the five volume Elias Ashmole, 1617-92, aka Elias Ashmole: His Autobiographical and Historical Notes. Vol. 2 seems to be the target that contains the “Noates in my Peake Journey“. Archive.org has another volume, but Vol. 2 is not there or on Hathi. The hardback set only has one library copy for the whole of the UK university system.

There are three “Noates” of interest according to The Antiquary via Google Books. None has been digitized and placed online by the Bodleian.

Ashmole MS 1137 is said to be a copy by an engraver, the original being lost.