Popping up on eBay, the programme for the Arthur Berry play Dr. Fergo’s Last Passion (aka Doctor Fergo’s Last Passion) from 1979, later followed by Dr. Fergo Rides Again in 1982. New to me. Described as “a rude ballad opera” with comedic songs, by a snippet from one old paywalled newspaper review. It has a local Potteries setting.

Regrettably there never seems to have been a recording or a radio version. Presumably the scripts and staging directions are still available. Might it then be revived? Possibly it would be too bawdy and ‘incorrect’ for our censorious times, but perhaps it could be done as a full-cast audio-only recording?

A major new book on Potteries poet and artist Arthur Berry is to be released in time for Christmas. Arthur Berry: A Ragged Richness is by art historian Peter Davies. The book launch will be followed by a large exhibition of Berry’s work in Newcastle-under-Lyme, during Jan 2022.

New on Hathi and possibly of interest to Tolkien researchers, hundreds of newly Google-scanned items from the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Including many books and documents on and from the Library itself.

“Our release has over 250 collection guides, catalogues, exhibition books, and histories to which the Bodleian Libraries are rights holders.”

From The Bodleian Library in photographs.

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.