We took a short cruise this morning, less than half a mile, but we went down three locks, and stopped to fill the tank with diesel. We are now moored closer to the town center so we explored the main street. The town was having a “seaside” celebration with a sand pit, donkey rides, a small fun fair, and even a Punch and Judy show. Punch and Judy puppet shows date back to the 17th century. They have changed over…
We bid a fond farewell to the Potteries, past the Etruria Industrial Museum that is never open when we are there… … past the lurid street art… … past Jones and Shufflebottom, bathroom specialists… … and past the canal boat with parking for a scooter, and a roof garden. We returned to Stone, and spent the afternoon doing projects on the boat. We treated ourselves to dinner out in a nice local bistro. Portrait of a cow and a sheep…
This morning I headed out to The Potteries Museum. I’ve already written about this collection here and here, but there’s lots of other fun stuff there. Let’s look at some iron age, Roman, and Saxon gold before we get on to the pottery. The spitfire plane has been taken to bits for refurbishment, so let’s go upstairs to the china collection. Shakespeare’s drunks were always calling for a jug of sack. This is what it looked like. Also from the…
Just outside Stoke-on-Trent was the stately home of Trentham. The mansion was abandoned and partially demolished in 1912, when the toffs who lived there could not take the air and water pollution any more and moved to one of their other mansions. The poor sods working in the factories that were creating the pollution had no choice but to stay. The gardens, including an ornamental lake designed by Capability Brown, fell into disrepair over the course of the 20th century….
At one point there were four thousand bottle kilns like this around the Stoke area. Now there are 47 left, illegal to use since the clean air act of 1968, but given Grade II listed status to preserve them as a reminder of our past. We are moored right next the these two, and I can see them as I write, so I thought that was worth a rare selfie. A single firing of a bottle kiln released over fifty…
With the Froghall end of the Caldon canal closed we took the narrow, twisting, and overgrown Leek branch of the canal. We were rewarded with views of some lovely waterside houses and gardens… … and pretty woodland making navigation difficult. The Leek branch seems to specialize in sharp turns just as you are approaching narrow bridges, so in a couple of cases we did not so much glide through the bridge as clunk through. Sadly the canal no longer goes…
Though we are starting to get some rain again, the impact of the long, dry summer is still being felt on the canal system. The Canal and River Trust is being forced to shut down some canals due to lack of water. The Middlewich Branch is closed due to a massive breach in an embankment at the start of the year, and the Macclesfield Canal closes tomorrow due to lack of water. This means the Trent and Mersey is the…
It took four years of research for Josiah Wedgwood to come up with the formula for jasper ware and even then it didn’t always work. This blistered pot is one of his failed attempts to copy the Portland Vase, a famous piece of Roman glassware now in the British Museum. In the end, or course, he succeeded. His copies were so perfect that when the original was damaged, they could be used as a model for the restoration. The Wedgwood…
Sometimes the explanation for English town names is quite simple. In the 7th century somebody built a pile of stones to make a grave here and the town has been called Stone ever since. The motto of the town is Sit Saxum Firmum or in English… According to the promotional leaflet the town has a chic and almost Mediterranean feel, and the shops ooze class and individuality. Judge for yourselves. I was always taught that if you have class, the…
As Andrew’s just noted, this is the blog’s third year at Shugborough, so I’m going to assume you’ve either done your assigned preparatory reading on the 2016 and 2017 prequels, or have decided it wouldn’t leave you any the wiser. But for Margaret & me it’s our first visit, and we get two days and nights here before we chug on to Stone tomorrow where we jump ship. We arrived shortly after midday yesterday, which was the last day of…