An interesting visual idea for a ‘viewing tower’ variant on Stoke’s bottle-kilns, as seen in the latest edition of The Critic…
“in County Kildare, a giant helter-skelter of a building put up in 1743 as a granary.”
Perhaps the city might one day want to consider putting up some ‘new’ bottle-kilns, while grabbing some worldwide publicity for such via an open architectural design competition.
New on Libivox a free reading of “The Cone” by H.G. Wells. Regular readers of this blog will recall the local Stoke-on-Trent setting of the Basford Bank / and the ironworks (not yet a steelworks) at Etruria. I have a fully annotated version of this this macabre revenge tale, to be found in my book H.G. Wells in the Potteries.
As with all Librivox audio readings, this one is in the public domain (i.e. is free to re-use in any way you want).
The Potteries Post has updated, with new ‘news you can use’ in the arts, creative industries, wildlife and heritage.
A new academic paper, “The Midlands of England: Economic Backwater or an Agricultural Powerhouse?” offers the results of a…
“palaeo-environmental investigation from Aqualate Mere near Newport, Staffordshire [6 miles west of Stafford,] undertaken on the sediment record [found there …] from the later prehistoric period onwards. The results challenge the idea this region was a backwater, as there is near-continuous agricultural activity around the mere from the Late Bronze Age through to modern times.”
An important local booklet, recently popped up on Archive.org to borrow, Cinder Dip for Breakfast: a collection of memories (1982). Being 48 pages of vivid memories of childhood and evocative charcoal line-drawings of Stoke-on-Trent scenes and people. Sponsored by the Beth Johnson Foundation, and drawn from sessions with older people on the Bentilee estate.
New updates on my The Potteries Post. Millions in funding, up for grabs… and 10,000 new trees planted.
Newly posted local books, free on Archive.org…
* New lifestyles in old age: health, identity and well-being in Berryhill Retirement Village (2004)
* Childhood’s Domain: play and place in child development (1986) (free-range kids, about a third of the book was researched via fieldwork in Stoke-on-Trent)
* Thanks For The Memory: great tales from North Staffordshire’s past (1999)
* AA 50 walks in Staffordshire (field-checked 2009) (offers plenty in North Staffordshire).
* Best Staffordshire Walks (1996)
* Cycling in the Peak District: off-road trails and quiet lanes (2007)
* Voice of the Universe: building the Jodrell Bank telescope (1987) (revised and updated)
* Wedgwood, of Etruria & Barlaston: an exhibition to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Josiah Wedgwood (1980, museum catalogue)
* Mason Porcelain and Ironstone 1796-1853: Miles Mason and the Mason manufactories (1977)
* Master Potters of the Industrial Revolution (1965)
* Keele Hall, a Victorian country house: the rebuilding of Keele Hall in the mid-19th century (1986)
* A History of the County of Stafford: Vol. 7 – Leek and the Moorlands (1996) (The Victoria County History)
* The River Trent (1955) (Has opening chapters on sources, the pottery towns, the upper Trent, the River Dove).
* Limestones and Caves of the Peak District (1977)
* Well-dressing in Derbyshire (2003)
* Man-land relations in Prehistoric Britain: the Dove-Derwent Interfluve, Derbyshire (1979)
* A Medieval Society: The West Midlands At The End Of The Thirteenth Century (1966)
* An Index of Names in Pearl, Purity, Patience, and Gawain (1981)
* Cheshire under the Norman Earls (1973)
Part of the largely off-road walking route from Hanley Park and the Cauldon Canal – Berryhill Fields – Bentilee. Unmarked as such, I should add.
Currently on eBay in b&w (here colorised) and of possible interest to historians interested in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Swythamley Hall as it was at perhaps circa the early 1900s. The card being posted from the Wincle sub Post Office in 1905 and the deer being at the Hall since at least 1895…
And co-incidentally, some curious evidence from 1895 of the wild weather in the area together with a view across the parkland…
John Ward’s The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent (1843), free on Archive.org.
The Potteries Post has updated. More news you can use from the Staffordshire Potteries.
