Addendum to Richard Sleigh’s A History of the Ancient Parish of Leek, in its 1862 edition:

“At Moorland House, Leek, on Christmas Day, 1888, died Mr. Abraham Kershaw Killmister, a gentleman of retired habits, and of manners indicative of nervousness. The world at large little suspected that in him was to be found an author of repute.

He was the well-known ‘Tom Oakleigh’ of literary sporting celebrity, author of the “Oakleigh Shooting Code”; of the article on Shooting in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”; of the “Rod and the Gun” by Professor Wilson of Edinburgh, and ‘Tom Oakleigh’ of the “Dalesman”, a five-act play, and of various poems and literary articles, contributed to the “Mirror” and to the “Sportsman’s” and other magazines, principally between the years 1830 and 1845. In the “Mirror” and some other periodicals, he chiefly wrote under the signature of “Cymbeline.” For the article in the “Encyclopaedia” he received from the publishers Mess’rs. Black, one hundred guineas.

After his death a large unfinished work on Angling was found among his papers, and several manuscripts on astronomical subjects, astronomy having of late years occupied much of his attention (as he was indeed in all respects an humble seeker after truth); and he had at considerable expense erected an observatory and furnished it with a powerful refracting telescope, having an object glass, by Dollond, of near eight-inches diameter.

He often mentioned to me that his early sporting knowledge and tendencies had been much derived from the late Mr. Richard Sleigh, of Leek, a thorough sportsman of the old school, whole genial tales, and regular shooting and fishing habits, and favourite dogs, many here remember.”

The word newt came via Staffordshire…

“The Old English name of the animal was efte, efeta, resulting in the Middle English eft; this word was then transformed in some places to ewt(e). This form, pronounced “newt”, appears to have arisen in Staffordshire as a dialect variant of eft, and had entered Standard English by the Early Modern period.”

“Burtons Mineral Waters of Hanley”, Stoke-on-Trent. Local makers of Ginger Wine, and a maker who appears to be utterly unknown now except for this beermat on eBay and one mention in a trade magazine. I have a taste for ginger ale, so I’m interested to find a local connection. There seems to have been quite a trade at one time, in mineral and soda water making in the Potteries. But this appears to be a very late example, from the early 1970s given the mention of saccharin.

I had assumed the new mega-game Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla was all icy fjords and spicy feasting. But it turns out most of it is set in the British Isles in 873 AD. The latest PC Magazine notes how…

Many environments look like recreations of The Lord of the Rings’ Shire, which itself was inspired by old England … where the bulk of the game occurs. … You can tell the development team spent many years researching the England of old. This is truly one of the finest worlds I’ve seen in a video game.

Nor do non-gamers have to wrestle with fiddly game mechanics and “pillage 10 villages to win a cow” grinding. Because the Assassin’s Creed games get special tourist versions. Eventually. You can already tour Ancient Greece, Egypt etc, from previous games, via a “Discovery Tour” version.

Will there be a Discovery Tour for Anglo-Saxon England? Yes. It was officially announced a month ago that Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla will get a Discovery Tour, along with addon-packs (‘DLC’) to add druids in a wild and apparently supernatural Ireland.

As for the Discovery Tour date, my guess based on the DLC timing would be summer 2021, so that it’s patched and ready for the back-to-school educational market in September. The game appears, from this screenshot, to include the cat-taming from the Ancient Egypt version of the game…

… but sadly it’s Windows 10 only. Also, the PC Magazine review concludes…

“To get the most out of Valhalla, you’ll need a near-godlike gaming PC.”

I’m not sure if this has been suggested before, but I can find no trace of the suggestion. Here is yet another possible solution to the genesis of Tolkien’s word “hobbit”. That it came from his mind musing on, while marking exam-papers, the name of “Coalbiters”.

This being what would become the pet name for a group of his literary fellows some years later, the name arising from the Icelandic Kolbitar which was a euphemism for dull lads who laze by the hearth-fire when there is work to be done…

“youths who were indolent and dull and who lay in the ashes by the fire during the day, the so-called coal-biters.” (Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie).

The name being doubly fitting for Oxford professors because, as masters, they presumably had hands stained with black ink from their daily labours and were also liable to carry smudges of chalk (as if they had been lazing in fire-ashes) gained by labouring at good old-fashioned blackboards. But also fitting for musing on lazy lads who do not trouble to complete their exam-papers.

Anyway, the famous word “hobbit” was jotted down at the end of a long stint of marking school exam-papers, possibly as early as 1926 but likely some years later. Tolkien encountered a blank sheet from the final paper. On this he spontaneously wrote…

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”.

… and thus began The Hobbit. My suggestion is that line could have arisen, either prior and unbidden in his mind or in a mere moment’s consideration, from musing on coalbiters…

“In a hole in the ground there lived a coalbiter … hole-biter … ho..bit … hob-bit.”

Tolkien being presumably aware that hob was also a word from the fireside hearth (see below) and thus connected at least in circumstance with Kolbitar. He would also have known of ‘Lob Lie-By-The-Fire’ from northern England, and the modern German ‘Kobold’ as a common name for a ‘house spirit’.

Even more speculatively, the “hole” might even be inferred if he had then recalled how the word “hob” was used in Cheshire. From a key topography of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, on which Tolkien was by then the contemporary expert…

“In Cheshire, Hobbity-hoy is an awkward stripling between man and boy” (1823)

This link with a hole could be inferred from “Hobbity-hoy” since it likely derived in Cheshire from the likeness of the lithe and nervously energetic boy to a male ferret, which the Cheshire Glossary has it was called a “hob” in Cheshire and elsewhere.

Ferrets having of course long been used for rabbit hunting in holes, and having an ashy-looking underside of fur. After hunting in a sandy burrow, this pale underside would likely look even more as if the creature had been “lying in the ashes of a fire” — similar to how the coalbiters boys were imagined.

This word is also not incompatible with “hob” used in the olde-time fireside sense. In the era of big broad medieval fireplaces, a “hob” indicated the small shelves set in the corners of the hearth, above hot grates, on which tankards of cider and ale were kept hot. One can then imagine that the lid of a loose-lidded tankard would thus start to “pop” up and down when it became too hot and air needed to escape and the tiny vent-hole was insufficient, much like the action of a weasel or ferret popping his head out of a rabbit-hole and with the same flash of white chest-fur and shining eyes as some bubbling foam spilled up and out. One here also recalls the real tradition of lacing good cider with a dead rodent to help start the yeasting process. Could this be the origin of the phrase “pop goes the weasel”, when it was laughingly observed by the hobbity-hoy boys at the winter fireside that the dead weasel or ferret consigned to the brew on the hob “has cum’ alive again” and “iz tryin’ to pop out”?

A super bit of signwriting for a disused shop in Burslem, from Tom Edwards.

I’m not sure where you might find “Mother Town Marvels” online. Google appears to know almost nothing about them, and the Facebook “Our Burslem” group (seen noted in the corner of the window) is a general one.

A super new find near Lichfield in mid Staffordshire, from the medieval Sir Gawain and the Green Knight period. A stylized crowned head as a strap-fitting.

Creative Commons Attribution, Birmingham Museums Trust. I’ve here up-scaled, lifted the shadows a bit and slightly repaired some obvious touches of damage.

A couple of long-ago local history books I wasn’t previously aware of, which recently popped up on eBay. The 1973 story of the Staffordshire Sentinel, our local newspaper, from the mid 19th century onward. And a 1910 history of Hanley from “the 13th to 20th century”. Neither are on Archive.org.

The site of the Staffordshire County war memorial in Stafford.

Before…

And after…

What the heck were the 1970s planners thinking? Were they so bamboozled by ‘architecture-speak’ and vague vision of a socialist utopia, that they were able to fool themselves into think that a concrete slab was somehow an ‘enhancement’ of the site’s character? Or did they just assume that the site was already so ruined by constant heavy traffic (a busy road runs between the park and the new building) and the new modernist British Rail station, that raising such a jarring concrete eyesore next to it wouldn’t matter much? They did at least clean the soot-stained memorial to better match the new building, but the modernist concrete of the office block soon weathered into a mis-matched dullness. It can’t have been the postcard-cheery sight seen above, on a dull grey day in the 1980s.

It’s still there today, accompanying that adjacent all-time classic of modernist concrete-horror, Stafford Station. Only a few scraggy and struggling trees serve to hide it, a bit, in summer.

For those unfamiliar with Stafford, I should add that this is somewhat unrepresentative of the county town, whose centre (a half-mile walk from the station) otherwise still has many appealing qualities for the pedestrian arriving by rail. It’s relatively easy for the savvy walker to avoid most of the modernist grot, both here and in the centre.

As seen in the latest Country Life magazine, a “conker bag” from Emily Jo Gibbs.