In his latest Sentinel column, historian Fred Hughes reveals the existence of a long-running illustrated publication titled the Burslem Bulletin…

Doulton’s contribution to Burslem’s prosperity was palpable. And the relationship between town and factory was richly featured in its house magazine, Burslem Bulletin. First published in 1947 as an irregular publicity journal, it quickly grew into an illustrated monthly newsletter promoting the activities and social life Doulton employees, most of whom were Burslem residents arriving here straight from school and remaining until old age retirement eased them out. […] I have a full set of these monthly publications telling the story of Burslem more comprehensively than any established social history book I have in my library. The whole is an archive of information that shows how well the workplace and social life blended together to make an organic community.

Sounds like a job for a crowd-funder on IndieGoGo or suchlike, to get this scanned and onto Archive.org. Otherwise there may be a risk that things like this will go into the Keele local archives and never be catalogued for decades let alone scanned and made public. For instance, look at the fate of the Proceedings of the North Staffordshire Field Club and similar local journals.

The Potteries Post – From the city of Stoke-on-Trent and beyond, news you can use.

It seems I’m not the only one to be abruptly blocked on Facebook. Birmingham Live (The Birmingham Post & Mail) reports Facebook deletes ELO rock legend Bev Bevan’s account…

He is the fourth person to have contacted BirminghamLive after accounts have been blocked, including Tamworth show-home furniture businesswoman, Gemma Pountney, grieving Birmingham mum, Alison Cope, and cafe owner Sarah Exall.

Coverage in America also complains of abrupt blocking of accounts of those deemed ‘too popular’. It’s very probably just some stupid mis-management decision cascading down the system, although Putin must be happy that management dunderheads and their drones are effectively doing his work for him.

Well sod ’em, I’m gone now. There were only four Groups of interest there, other than mine, and three of them were only sporadic and weren’t all that useful. Indeed one Group, run as a front for the local Socialist Workers Party (or whatever they call themselves now) was only visited for a chuckle.

Now that Elon Musk is set on buying Twitter and restoring free-speech, I might even get an account over there at last… when he takes over there. For re-posting blog-posts only.

On now at nearby Shrewsbury, “The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists”, until early June 2022.

An unusual one, new and free on Librivox: Oscar Wilde: The Complete Interviews. 221 of them, all read aloud by Rob Marland.

A new photo of the topiary ‘Egyptian Temple’ at Biddulph Grange, as it was in the first half of the 1920s. The card is “postally used in 1925”. The temple can be seen in the background.

It’s distant, but clear enough that one can make out the four sphinx at the entrance and see how the topiary work and formation was being done in the early 1920s.

My Tentaclii blog on H.P. Lovecraft is now back, more or less, at the new domain of https://www.jurn.link/tentaclii/

Hopefully it’ll be there to stay, this time.

The Potteries Post

Hathi now has online, in full-view, a scan of The Natural History of Tutbury. It’s not currently findable via Google Search. Appears to have come online in 2020.

Interesting bird-eye map of Middleport, from The Burslem Port Trust. I just couldn’t figure it out, until I realised it’s not now or the future. It must show Middleport way back when the Trent & Mersey Canal Arm (‘Burslem Port’) was still flooded. Which would put it at the 1940s, and with the map presumably being drawn from the late-1940s RAF pictures of Stoke-on-Trent. The allotments above Rogerson’s Meadow are in ‘full spread’. A large chunk of them were fallow when I lived there. Interesting that the Meadow may once have had a shallow pool in the centre of it (seen on the far left of the picture). It always was a bit damp.

Re-Form Heritage is now calling for Middleport memories and objects, for their refurbished terraces in Harper Street. Especially “those authentic items that would have been in the house – ordinary items small or large”. These can be donated or given on-loan.

The Potteries Post

My musings on The “Man in the Moon” lyric from the Harley MS. 2253, and a suggested translation for-sense and a version with staging directions, is now in version 3.0 with notes. Wording of the modern English slightly improved, along with the staging directions.

Download: man_in_the_moon_mar_2022.pdf