From an old copy of Country Life, and just about readable. The Dove forms the boundary between mid Staffordshire and the Derbyshire Peak.

Update: on WordPress you may now need to click twice on a picture to see it full-size. Click once, load and see in on white with ads, go back, then click again and see it on black full-size. Then click the magnifying class with the + icon.

A new name to me, Leonard Griffith Brammer (1906-1994). Depressive socialist agitprop stuff, but at the same time an undeniably stylish b&w take on his native Potteries…

Some archaeological pictures extracted from Memorials of Old Staffordshire.

New Burslem School Board buildings, 1903. New shop in Queen Street, 1909. The Town Hall at the opening of the Wedgwood Institute, spring 1869.

“June 2017 – Last year in September, we took on Bidston Observatory in order to re-establish the site as one of artistic research.”

It’s not that far away by train, on the Wirral, and may be of interest to those who connect often with Liverpool.

Old map of Staffordshire, Britannia (1586) by William Camden.

This is looking rather tasty: the new revised and edition of the Tolkien Companion / Guide / Chronology three-volume set has been dated on Amazon UK. It’s pre-ordering now for delivery in November. Better, there’s to be a keyword-searchable Kindle edition, offering all three huge volumes for a fairly modest and piracy-busting £24.

I’ve recent acquired Tolkien’s Gedling and the two J. S. Ryan books Tolkien’s View and In the Nameless Wood, and hope to be reviewing them here soon.

Photographs by Nigel Henderson: various Stoke pictures.

As well as visiting the steel works and the Stoke City F.C. parking ground, it appears he also got on a bus and went to Cobridge for some reason, presumably to try to photograph Arnold Bennett’s home at No. 205. But he only photographed the Stag Inn at No. 114 – he was perhaps thinking that that was the pub where the young Bennett would have supped? Or was No. 205 nearby, on the side of the road on which he stood?

Photograph showing three workmen working Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Two pictures (from a stopped bus?) of lads playing lunchtime football at a pot-bank.

Photograph showing lads playing football at Stoke-on-Trent potteries Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

A nice bit of pavement edging that caught his eye.

Photograph showing decorative street tiles Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

I think he probably made this picture just as an interesting composition. Looks like a water-tank building for a small works, perhaps part of an abandoned pot-bank he ventured into?

Photograph showing part of unidentified building Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph possibly showing Stoke-on-Trent potteries Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

More photographs of Stoke by Nigel Henderson, this time of the Stoke F.C. parking grounds at Stoke on the Whieldon Road, before the A500. I’m not sure why he went there in particular. Perhaps a friend in London, who had gone to a Stoke match, told him he would get good wide views of the Boothen End stand from there? But the stand and its floodlights appear to be some way away, beyond the chain-link fence and gas-holders. Or did something of importance once stand on those parking grounds, perhaps a factory that someone in his family-tree once worked in, or their house? I’ve also tacked on a low-res Potteries.org photo (end) showing the canal directly opposite the entrance to the parking grounds. Doulton Sanitary Potteries Ltd has since been demolished. Apparently it supplied the ceramics for the movie Carry On at Your Convenience, and is credited in the film’s titles, though the movie wasn’t filmed there and I’m fairly sure didn’t even appear fleetingly in any establishing shots.

Photograph showing an unidentified boy next to entrance to Stoke Football Club car park

Photograph showing a cyclist Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing a wire fence in front of two gas holders

Photograph showing a pylon Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing a man on motorcycle, Doulton Sanitary Potteries Ltd in the background

Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing entrance to Stoke Football Club car park Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Additional context:

Photographs by Nigel Henderson of a steel works at Stoke, which must have been Shelton. The older damaged photo of an interior with large pipes looks like his re-photographing of a Victorian or Edwardian photo, perhaps held in the works archives and brought out to show visitors on a tour. It obviously wasn’t made with the same sharp lens which he’s using for the other pictures. The same might be true of the double-exposure interior with the wheels.

Photograph showing interior of a steel works Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph of two unidentified men with Eduardo Paolozzi Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph of industrial machinery [1949-54] Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Photograph showing industrial machinery Nigel Henderson 1917-1985

Looks like he’s using a square-format Rolleiflex newspaperman’s camera.

This was too nice a view of old Burslem for me not to have go at colorising it. Probably around 1901-05, something like that…