New in a free ‘public domain’ Librivox audiobook, Darwin’s The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. The reading being of “On the Loves of the Plants”. Hopefully we’ll also soon have “The Economy of Vegetation”, which of the two is rather more interesting due to its horror sections (set in the Staffordshire Moorlands) and science-fictional future prognostications (submarines, airships etc).
The integral Notes are handled as separate readings rather than as if footnotes.
Good to see that the Burslem Festival is ‘on’ this year. 30th April – 1st May 2023 in the town centre, St. John’s Square and Market Place.
Doreen in red, and Chloe’s mum, seen at the edge of Burslem Park. Preparing a previous year’s Festival ‘float and vehicle procession’ to set off down Moorland Road to the town centre.
Newly available to borrow on Archive.org, the book Pugin-Land: A.W.N. Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury, and the Gothic Revival in Staffordshire (2002).
A local book I’d missed, back in 2019, A Brief History of Stoke-on-Trent…
“Seeks to bring some of the city’s history to a general audience in a brief, manageable way”
Apparently written in the 1970s by a Burslem man, and now polished and brought to publication by the man’s grandson. Has almost nothing about pottery making and selling, according to one irked reviewer who seems to have assumed the cover reflected the contents. But that lack is understandable, since such intricate and abundant business history would swamp a short book. Apparently it moves from the district’s ancient history (sounds good to me) into recalling some of the local working-class living conditions that were within living memory in the 1970s.
Who knew? Over 200 issues of the magazine Widowinde (‘Bindweed’). Published out of Leek in North Staffordshire as a membership magazine for The English Companions. The cover typography might be improved, but the contents look fabulous. There’s an index to the first 199 issues. Annual members (£20+) can “purchase a full set”, presumably in PDF, but the cost of this extra purchase is not stated.
New on Archive.org, the vintage spoken-word LPs Owd Grandad Piggott: Stories in Potteries Dialect (1977) and Mower Owd Grandad Piggott (1983).
Other new items on Archive.org of local interest:
North Staffordshire Music (1977).
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.”
