George Eliot and Staffordshire

Warwickshire has claim as the home of Mary Ann Evans better known to posterity as George Eliot. She took a male name because she remained very sensitive to criticism. She was anxious to avoid being patronised as a woman writer and followed the example of the Bronte’s in using a male pseudonym.

 Her family roots however lie in Warwickshire and particularly Nuneaton her birthplace and Coventry which had a strong impact on her early development, but it is Ellastone on the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire which proved the inspiration for her first novel Adam Bede published in 1859. The village and the association with someone who has a very strong claim as Britain’s first modern novelist has proved popular with the tourist board covering the Peak Park Authority who is strongly promoting the link. Ellastone is beautifully situated under the brow of the Weaver Hills and the attractiveness of the countryside captivated the novelist who gave the name of Hayslope to Ellastone.

The rich undulating district of Loamshire(Staffordshire) to which Hayslope belonged lies close to the grim outskirts of Stoneyshire (Derbyshire) overlooked by barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother; and in two hours ride the traveller might exchange a bleak treeless region, intersected by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the shelter of woods, or up swelling hills, muffled with hedgerows and long-meadow grass and thick corn; and where at every turn he came past fine old country seats nestled in the valley or crowning the slope.

Adam Bede is a country novel which chronicles the lives of villagers in the North Midlands at the beginning of the 19th century, a way of life which would rapidly disappear. The principle character Bede is a carpenter based on Eliot’s own father a highly principled individual who is in love with Hetty Sorrel the high spirited niece of Farmer Poyser. She is seduced by the young squire and becomes pregnant. The young woman is abandoned and hurriedly leaves the area. Hetty is later charged with the murder of the child. The young Methodist preacher Dinah Morris spends a great deal of time at Hetty’s side as she is convicted and sentenced to death. Hetty is reprieved and transported to Australia while Adam forges a new relationship with Dinah.

The central figure is the carpenter who is based on Robert Evans the father of the novelist who had a strong sense of honour and work ethic. He remained an unwavering Tory throughout his life and his strong personality would later clash with her equally strong willed daughter. She was full of admiration for him

He had large knowledge of building, of mines, of plantations, of various branches of valuation and measurement, of all that is essential to the management of large estates.

 She clearly showed an interest in his work as the scene in the carpenters was always admired as being an accurate portrayal of the profession. The central theme of the novel the fate of Hetty was a result of a conversation that Eliot had with her Aunt a Methodist preacher Elizabeth Tomlinson who ministered to and befriended a young woman Mary Voce who murdered her illegitimate child and was hanged in Nottingham in 1804.

 The fate of young working class women who bore children out of wedlock was frequently a grim one as they faced the opprobrium of a moralising society.

   The judgement of society is something that women who found themselves in this situation continued to face throughout the 19th century. In the decade of Eliot’s death in 1886 there is a report in a local paper of a young woman in Sheen Mary Lomas a domestic servant who died after an attempt to conceal a pregnancy neither mother or child survived. Earlier in the century in 1859 Sarah Middleton of Flash dies in a field in an advanced state of pregnancy. The voice of the working class woman who is suffering from poverty is rarely heard ,but occasionally it comes through.

 There exists an unusual archive of a series of letters written by Ellen Parker born in 1790 in Alton a pauper who wrote to the authorities in Staffordshire as she was bringing up a number of children following the death of her husband, The response of authority is at first caring but when she becomes pregnant with a sixth child following a brief relationship the attitude to her shifts. She moves from the category of deserving poor into the category of undeserving. The pressure and obloquy that women who were in this situation faced caused some to resort to desperate measures which was the case with Voce.

Elizabeth Tomlinson appears from biographies of Eliot to be saintly women who preached throughout Staffordshire and Derbyshire and it is thought that she preached in the open air on the green at Ellastone. Her fame travelled far and Queen Victoria had a picture of Tomlinson wearing a distinctive Quaker bonnet.

 Many of Eliot’s family lie buried in the area. Her grandparents lie in Norbury Church over the River Dove. The church is said to contain examples of woodwork by Robert Evans who learnt his trade in the area. She was taken to the area on several occasions by her father and a lengthy visit happened in 1839/40 where she gathered information which she used in her book twenty years later. A letter published in an 1888 biography of Eliot sets out a journey that Eliot made in 1839 when she was staying with her Staffordshire relatives.

Ashbourne Church, the finest mere parish church in the kingdom- in the interior; of Alton Gardens where I saw actually what I had often seen mentally- the bread fruit- in the interior; of the fan palm and the papyrus; and of last Lichfield cathedral.

In the novel Eliot also uses local names such as Poyser a number of who still appear in the Staffs Moorlands telephone directory and Maskery. She describes with a great deal of detail the lives of the peasantry knowing that the country in the period that the novel was set was poised on the brink of great change.

Those old women scraping carrots with their work worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dinghy pot house, those round backs and stupid weather beaten faces that have bent over a spade and done the rough work of the world- those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their cluster of onions. 

A one point in the narrative even oatcakes are mentioned

When she published the novel she was criticised for including the dialect and accent of Staffordshire and it was suggested that she change it along with the distasteful scene and for its time revolutionary of Hetty giving birth in a field should be changed.

I would rather have my teeth drawn than part with either.

She also alters the names of local place names in the book so that The Weaver Hills become the Binton Hills, Eagledale is Dovedale, Oakthorpe became Ashbourne and Wotton Park Donnithorne Chase. Local characters also appear in the novel a well remembered and loved Vicar George Hake becomes Aldophous Irwine in the novel.

The book was published in 1859 and was well received right from the beginning the write Charles Reade called it the “finest thing since Shakespeare”. Charles Dickens equally was enthusiastic Adam Bede has taken its place among the actual experiences of my life. In Russia Tolstoy approved of the novel. 1859 was a bumper year as far as publications of ground breaking books was concerned apart from “Adam Bede, it was the year of the publication of John Stuart Mills On Liberty and another book with strong Staffordshire connections The Origin of Species. Eliot had a strong interest in the natural sciences and was aware that the old certainties of faith were under strain an assertion that is reflected in her work especially in  her first novel.

But in Adam Bede Eliot portrayed men and women with their struggles and sufferings. The characters are rooted in a time and in a place in Staffordshire which provided of one of the finest novels of the Victorian period.

Madame Melbourne

I went to see a medium once. I went with a friend of my partners in a sceptical humour. I had been a psychic fair once before where a speaker believed that my natural suspicion was down to the fact I had been a Rabbi in a previous life. I presumed that the audience would be mainly female and elderly. I was wrong on the second count, as the audience of around 120 was primarily young women. There were 5 men. I wondered at the time why are women more likely to be interested in this sort of thing? It seems always to be the case.

I found an amusing case from a 1908 edition of the Leek Times. It concerned a fraudster who set herself up as a fortune-teller operating from 6 Cromwell Terrace. Madame Melbourne announced her business by means of a card she put in the house window. It read Madame Melbourne- Australian and scientific palmist. Her real name was the prosaic May Tunnicliffe when she appeared before local magistrates on a charge of using palmistry to deceive. The paper reported that she was “ showily dressed and wearing a quantity of jewellery”

The three principal witnesses were the wives of policemen. Mrs Ewell of Wetton and Mrs Salter and Frost of Waterhouses all had availed themselves of her services. Madame Melbourne was firm in her conclusions and usually wrong. She told a bemused Mrs Salter that she had 5 children. She was mistaken, but gamely Madame struggled on “ You have 4 children” again wrong. She seemed to have little luck with Mrs Frost either. Madame Melbourne went on  “ In 3 years time you will marry an old man (great laughter) who would love the very ground you walk on and give you everything that you want”.

Madame Melbourne informed the court that she had read the hand of the Chairman of Stafford bench, but local magistrates were less good-natured. The palmist did have supporters in Marie Hall and Mary Harlow two silk hands who believed the fortune-teller. The bench were unmoved and they fined her. I wonder if May Tunnicliffe saw that coming?

Ghosts

Ghosts prefer their own company. Apart from battlefield ghosts they raely make a collective apperance. They are also usually seen by individuaks. Rarely do people see ghists at the same time. This is a key argument against there reality. According to folk tradition the inabilty to see ghosts is down to the time that you are born.

As far as the genda of ghosts is concerned. In medievel  times most were male ans were most of the viewers of ghosts. This has changed in more modrn times more women appear as ghosts and women in the 19th century were in the fore front of folklorists and mediums and they formed the back ground of the SPR.

Rarley are the ghosts of children seen in the UK even though the mortality of children in the 19th century in the UK was extremely high yet the experience translate into spiritual manifestation. I was told the story of a child haunting featuring a terraced street in Leek although such stories are rare. This does not seem to be the case in other cultures where Scandanavian and Baltic countries have a tradition of child ghosts.

There are however a number of intriguing references to ghosts of adults appearing in the guise of children. It has been suggested that the 17th century examples reflect the long tradition of souls ascending into heaven in the form of children as a represenation of purity

Haunting times

Hallowtide the brace of days around Halloween is particularly linked with the appearnce of ghosts. Significantlt Hamlet’s fathers ghost appears on the 2nd November. In Catholic tradition  this is the brief period when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its most porous. In medieval England the religious observance around these days usually included the ringing of a bell. This observance seems to have been the most stubborn of Catholic practices with the Elizabethan church authorities pursuing prosecutions up and down the country.

Nowadays Halloween most associated with the imitation of ghosts rathers than concerns with their actuall appearance. As I will show people have been donning white sheets and roaming the streets in an attempt to frighten people for centuries.

Ghosts are noctural creatures although some have been seen in daylight. The night was a popular time in folklore for fairies, devils and evil spirits to be abroad. To early Christain if the God and the angels were cast in radiant light it naturally followed that darkness was the space in which the ungodly and the damned operated. Most ghosts were not considered evil. In the eyes of most people in the 16th century and again there are a number of examples from Shakespeare they returned to help the living, to right wrongs  and reveal injustice. As one 18th century sceptic observed in common reason, have no more to do with the night than day-light, and if the information was really providentially intended by them, day light and public places would be the properest for their appairation

In 16th century England esp aftre the reformation other excuses were required and the appearance of ghsosts was framed in demonic or psychological terms. Ghosts were dellusions which could be demonic in origin and as God allocated the night as the Devil’s kingdom it stood tio reason that the ungodly would be abroad at night

With the development of the enlightenment the considered view that ghosts were the product of an over active imagination started to prevail

MATERIALISATION

A friend of the Cornish historian Joseph Hammond described how the ghost of a miner appeard in front of him as a puff of smole/. Surprise turned to terror as the smoke asumed the shape of the dead miner.

Most accounts of ghosts have little time about the manner in which they appear as most would be a little stunned by the apperance

More detail is forthcoming about how they disappeared. In 1662 a ghost was described as “ gliding away without the motion of steps” An old labouerer in Cumbria recalled how in 1813 he saw  the ghost of a woman move away dressed well in an old fashioned way sudddenly leave the highway and rapidly ascend into the air. Ghsost unlike the theatrical ones do not sink into the ground and rarely walk through wall. Ghosts evidently respect physical entrances such as doors and passageways

Over the centuries ghosts are report to glow. An account form Wales describes a blue light that followed the corpse.

Many accounts that concern the existence of lights have long been acquainted with blue lights  known as will of the wisp. Jack Lanterns emanating from boggy places although there was an awareness the existence of such phenomina had a natural cause.

The poet John Clare had seen so many will of the wisps and considered them no more than bog vapours until one night he and a companion were entranced at seeing lights seemingly playing with each other

It robbed me of a little philosophical reasoning which I Had, he confessed, about them I now believe in spirits

Dress

In hios survey of folklore in the 18th century Francis Grose remarked that Ghosts commonly appear in the same dress they usually wore when living, although they are sometimes cloathed in white, but that is churchyard ghosts

White sheeted figures were sometimes seen on the strrets John Clare again recalled an incident in his Northampton shire village of the ghost of a widow recenlty drowned in a well who appeared in large white winding sheet. He and a neighbour investiageted but found nothing. Up to the 19th century it was common  for the poor to bury their dead in such winding sheets or shrouds. Only the wealthy could afford a wooden coffin

The sheet had been traditional been made of linen but a law of 1666 ordered that shrouds be made of wool to give a boost to the wollen trade

Because of the image that ghosts were swathed in white fabric the wearing of white clothes such as smocks could be a risky business on dark nights

It was reported that in 1851 a couple living in Alum St Ancoats Manchester were returning home from the market when the wife saw a figure in white in a alleyway which frightened her. She clung to her husband and exclaimed that there was a ghost. The husband pusued the figure was a young their called John Devine who had swathed himself in white calico cloth that he has stolen from a local mill. He was later prosecuted.

In another less staisfactory intervention a spooky white figure was seen in Hampstead in Nov 1836. Several people had seen a figure that seemed to swoop down . A young woman named Williams was so alarmed by the figure that she ran shrieking to PC Simmons who happened to be patrolling the area. They apprehenxed a pale figure who happened to be a solicitor called Sutton who had a percant for white clothing

There is a distinct tradition of the White lady. The folklore source There is a woman in white who frequents Westwood Hall in Leek. A Shropshire folkloist knew of several white ladies in the county

The sightings of naked ghosts are extremely rare. Therev are a few medieval examples such as the Rochester priest whose shivering naked appearance was symbolic of the way in which his estate had been denuded by executors

A more flesh and bllod example was the relative local experience of George Barlow a flashing Primitive Metodist fom winsford who was sentenced to three months hard labour in 1834. For three years a boggart appeared on roads around the town. The boggart took the form of a of a naked man causing much alarm to the local populace. The Macclesfield Courier reported that woman were frightened to venture out at night for fea of the obscene spirit. The boggart was  eventually laid after it appeared in front of a pub one january night scaring a female cleaner working inside the pub. Her screams alerted the pub landlod who maganed to overpower the naked Barlow.

Headless

The headless ghost is one of the classic ghost stereotypes present in folk tradition throughout Europe. It has been suggested that it is a shorthand way of talking about apparitions, like ghosts being dressed in white or rattling chains. It is a curiosity because death by decapitation was a rare form of punishment from the Middle Ages onwards and it was a fate usually reserved for the aristocracy as readers of the “Orrible History” series will no doubt remember. Such stories however do crop up throughout the country and for some authorities it was believed that they were often used to keep people off the streets so that criminals could engage in their nefarious activities. In 1804 a correspondent in the Morning Chronicle noted that a smuggling gang operating along the Pembrokeshire coast travelled in a hearse drawn by the imitation ghosts of six headless white horses in order to frighten off custom officers. 

Others have proposed that the preponderance of “headless” ghost sightings in the west of the country is that it is an echo of pre Christian beliefs. The Celts practised a cult of collecting heads as they believed that the soul was located there and at death the head is separated from the body as the soul departs. The severed head was a powerful symbol from them as indicated in the medieval Welsh tale of Bendigeidfran or Bran the Blessed whose head lies buried in the foundations of the Tower of London as a palladium against foreign invasion or the decapitation of the Green Knight in the poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” the climax of which is played out some experts believe at Ludschurch in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

Tales of headless ghosts often crop up all over the country and Staffordshire Moorlands has its own examples of such a phenomena which panicked the people of the area over hundred years ago. One winter’s night in the 1900s an Onecote farmer was returning from Leek market. He had a successful day at market and did not notice the sound of thundering hooves on that lonely moor coming up fast behind him. Suddenly, he was picked up and found himself seated on horse back behind a headless horseman. The horse galloped over hedges and through fields clearing obstacles effortlessly. Eventually the farmer was thrown from the horse dazed and injured near to his home, and shortly afterwards he died. Another local shortly afterwards encountered the dreadful spectre and survived the experience, but his horse and dog both died of fright.

Seven clergyman were got together to exorcize the spectre and managed to compel it to speak. The horseman told them that he was one of four evil spirits that were compelled to wander the earth until the end of time. A writer recording in the 1940s added two other elements to the story. It was suggested that it was the ghost of a peddler murdered by robbers who as a macabre joke cut off his head and set the headless body on a horse; or it was the ghost of a knight killed in the wars with the Scots whose horse was bringing his master home to the Moorlands.

I can well imagine on a dark night people in the remote country areas listening out in a state of fear for the sound of a neighing house and the clatter of galloping hooves on ice hardened ground thinking that the phantom was in the area.

Another headless ghost on a white horse and clad in armour is also alleged to hunt the lanes between Farley and Alton and in the neighbouring county of Derbyshire a lane between Great Longstone and Ashford in the water is said to be haunted by a procession of 12 men carrying an empty coffin thought by a folklorist to be a death omen. Isab

Invisable ghosts

Many repoted ghosts ove the centuries were not visable there existence was evealed by other senses than sight. There are many examples of people sensing something usually followed by a drop in tempreture..

 Such a visitation is reported in the Leek Post and Times in 1979 at the Red Lion. The landlord at the time Patrick Lister called in the Rector of Leek John Crowe after claiming that strange goings on were happening. The experiences included balls of blue light and drops in tempreture in certain rooms in the pub.

The idea that animals have a greater sensitivity is also widespread. Thee are numerous examples in English folklore.

The great gossip and the collector of tales John Aubrey  recorded a appiration near Circenster in 1670  and asked whether it was a good or bad spirit returned no answer but disappeared with a curious perfume and a melidious twang

The rustle of silk was a frequently reported auditoy sign of the existence of a ghost and defines a gender and a social standing as the poor could not afford silk.

An account of a haunting of an inn in Buckinghamshire

After a troubled night he told the landlord that he had bolted the room shut, and satisfied himself there was no entrance. He soon fell asleep, but was woken by a sound like a light footstep, accompanied by the rustle of a silk dress. He sprang out of bed, but there was nothing to be seen as his door was still locked. Returning to bed he fell asleep and again was awoken by the rustling sound of a stiff silken dress. Darting forward he tried to grab the intruder, but his hand closed on empty air. The noise passed through the door and there was silence

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In April  the Daily Mail reported on a case of poltergeist activity in the West Midlands. The case followed the classic type 

of poltergeist activity pots and pans thrown around the kitchen, blinds moving up and down, lights going on and off, doors locking themselves, chairs flying across the room, and cupboard doors opening and banging shut before being ripped off their hinges among other phenomena. The strange occurrences started a couple of weeks after Mrs Manning and her children moved into the Coventry council house. The disturbances became more malevolent when the poltergeist pushed the family's two dogs down the stairs resulting in horrific injuries to one of the pets, which resulted in it having to be put down. A chair moving across the floor on its own was also captured on film. The housing association who owns the property sent a priest who blessed the house and the phenomena temporarily abated for a couple of weeks before starting up again. Derek Ancora the medium was then called in who identified the source of the problem as Jim who died in 1900 at the age of 58 of a heart attack. Ancora exorcised the spirit.

The first poltergeist case identified in the UK was the Tedworth Drummer of Wiltshire. A sudden case of drumming began in the home of a local magistrate called Mompesson in the spring of 1662. Activity increased children were lifted into the air, shoes flung at a person’s head, chamber pots emptied on a bed and the leg of a horse forced into its mouth. The events were linked to an itinerant conjuror and drummer William Drury who had been arrested for trying to obtain money with forged documents. He was brought before Mompesson who let him off with a warning and confiscated his drum and told him to leave the district. The drumming started soon afterwards. There were reports that the drum was lifted by unseen hands and gave off booming hands. After several nights the sleepless magistrate had the drum destroyed but the noises continued. At this point the other strange manifestation began to be witnessed. Drury was suspected but this line of enquiry ended when it was found that Drury was in jail in Gloucester many miles away. A committee w set up by King Charles II concluded that no human agency could be deduced.

The Moorlands has its own case of poltergeist activity. In July 1877 the village of Butterton was subject to a bizarre occurrence a humble cottage in Back Lane and dating from 1617 the former home of Hannah Gould was subject to periods of sustained noise and thumping which struck terror into the hearts of the villagers. Hannah had died the previous February at the age of 80 and locals assumed that it was her ghost that was causing the commotion. Anxious villagers consulted with church elders. They contacted the old women’s son who was reluctant to become involved and still the noise was heard constantly and the local vicar Mr Cantrell who lived close by Back Lane. The next Sunday villagers gathered in old Hannah’s house where it is reported that the rapping continued and furniture rocked. Eventually suspicion fell upon a serving girl in the village who is thought to have engineered the event to gain access to the property.

What causes poltergeist activity? Aside from accusations of hoax and exaggeration, which although applicable to a number of cases by no means apply to them all, the most popular theory is that the poltergeist is caused unwittingly by a human agent, usually a teenage girl. Researchers believe that a troubled adolescent unconsciously manipulates objects using psychokinesis (PK), a type of energy generated in the brain. According to researchers at the Rhine Research Center Institute for Parapsychology at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, poltergeist activity is the physical expression of psychological trauma. However, more natural explanations are often the cause of what appears to be a poltergeist disturbance.  

Perhaps this might help to cast light on some poltergeist cases . However, this does not explain how enough power is generated to move objects such as heavy pieces of furniture, or to shower a room with stones, make objects appear from nowhere, or start fires, if accounts of such phenomena can be trusted. 

There are also a number of poltergeist cases where the people involved have no psychological problems at all, and where there are no adolescents in the household.

 How can we explain these?

 A further point is that there are millions of troubled teenagers all over the world, but the vast majority do not cause poltergeist activity to occur. Other researchers have suggested that 'spirit entities' are responsible for the phenomena, perhaps generating the power by attaching themselves to suitably disturbed teenagers. But the very nature of these hypothetical 'spirits' means that scientifically at least, they cannot be properly investigated. . However, if accounts of the more extreme unexplained occurrences alleged to be caused by poltergeist activity are themselves exaggerated, or even completely unreliable, which is entirely possible in older cases, then no further explanation is required.

Nevertheless, the inability to find a convincing explanation for the phenomenon, the significant amount of  cases exhibiting similar characteristics occurring over a long period of time in widely different cultures, and the bizarre but somehow consistent nature of the phenomena, make the poltergeist perhaps the most baffling and enduring of unexplained mysteries. 

Ghosts with no soul

The fact that ghosts appeared in clothing was taken by the rationalists of the proof of their no existence

In 1762 the autho of Anti Canidia an attack on superstitious belief 

How is the spirit , in it self immaterial and invisable, to become the object of human sight. How is to acquire the appearance of dress?

Animals

Only a few hauntings reported were of animals. Most reported concerend dogs and cats which is not surprising considering their claose associations with humans.

I understand that the present owners have also discerned the unmistakeable smell of wet dog in certain areas of the pub. My source thinks she knows the source of the smell. Many years ago the family had a gundog, a Springer Spaniel, which was kept because her grandfather enjoyed shooting. Unfortunately, the dog was terrified of guns and proved useless for the purpose for which it was bought. It did enjoy water- a fact that readers who are owners of Springer Spaniels will know. The dog used to enjoy jumping into a stone trough which was placed to slake the thirst of dray horses which at that time delivered the beer. Perhaps in death the dog is still searching for its master?

 In British folklore there are many stories relating to spectral dogs. There is a story of a dog that runs through a Devon village dragging a rattling chain as it heads for his master’s home in the hills

Arnold Bennett, HG Wells- a friendship formed in N Staffs

2008  saw  the 100th anniversary of the publication of Arnold Bennett’s finest novel “Old Wives Tale”. Its publication date quickly follows that of Bennett’s great friend and rival HG Wells book “In the Days of the Comet” which was written in 1906. What links these two pieces of Edwardian fiction? They both have a Leek connection.

 Bennett knew the Staffordshire Moorlands and while the main setting of his books remained Stoke, Leek especially crops up in various guises in his work. In first appears as “Axe” or “Manifold” in one of his earliest novels “Anna of the Five Towns” published in 1902 and again in his collection of short stories “ Tales of the Five Towns (1905) and “The Grim Smile of the Five Towns” which have Leek and Rudyard Lake settings. This is especially the case in the later collection in the story “ Death of Simon Fuge” his short story on the artistic life and pretensions of Burslem in the 1890s. Rudyard Lake was a popular venue for a young man from the Potteries to visit in that decade with frequent train from Stoke.

  The Moorland connection is continued in Old Wives Tale. Sam walks to Axe (Leek) to tell his mother in law that he is become a father. Leek also played a role in perhaps his most popular literary creation Denry Machin in the “Card”. The character on which the novel is based HK Hales once in the 1890s cycled on a penny-farthing for a bet against a horseman to get from Burslem to Leek in the shortest time. Hales won.

Wells, who lived in North Staffordshire for several months in 1888, used  his experience of living in the area in a number of his novels and short stories prior to his “Comet” novel. The short story Cone with its gristly ending of a character falling into a furnace was based at Shelton Bar Steel Works.

 North Staffordshire with its industrial and squalid landscape had a profound impact upon his work, which stayed with him throughout his life.

But it came to me then, I am sure, for the first time how promiscuous, how higgledy piggedy was that jumble of mines and homes, collieries and pot banks, railway yards, canals, schools, forges and blast furnaces, churches, chapels, allotments hovels a vast irregular agglomeration of ugly smoking accidents in which men lived as happily as frogs in a dustbin.

I get the impression that Wells used the surrounding countryside to contrast with the hideousness of the industrial landscape which he experienced in his stay in Basford.

But back to the North Staffordshire based Bennett who was born in Hanley in September 1867 to lower middle class parents. Bennett professed to be a radical, and he remained throughout his life a hater of injustice, but his own belief system marked him out as a child of nonconformist certainties. He had a belief in industry, patriotism and thrift. He was of a class and from a geographical area. He soaked up every detail of the people and character of North Staffordshire. He was a laureate to the lower middle class and the provincial.

He regarded writing as a trade and at each year’s end would note the amount of words that he had written that year and how much he had been paid. One critic unkindly suggested that a sign should be erected outside his study “Articles written to order”



If he took a workingman’s approach to his craft he still remained a bourgeois and a little tyrant as well especially in his relationship with women, something that he shared in common with Wells. He was easily bored- he tired of his home, his car, his yacht and of his wife. He certainly recoiled from the area that has provided the source of his material. On his last visit through North Staffordshire he is alleged to have shuddered and pulled the blind of his railway carriage down. But behind his heavy set figure with his showy clothes, his heavy lidded eyes, his half open mouth and his slight speech impediment, was a shy man.

But he never wrote of a dull character and he made the ordinary interesting chronicling the lives of a stoical and defiant people. North Staffordshire belongs to him as Wessex belongs to Hardy or Haworth to the Bronte’s

His greatest novel was the Old Wives Tale. It also celebrates the commonplace although never in a dull way. It is the story of two women Constance and Sophia Baines who have different destinies. It charters their progress from running a drapers shop to old age. It contrasts the stay at home Constance who marries Sam Povey with the spirited Sophia who elopes with the dashing but wastrel Gerald Scales. It proved to be the most critically acclaimed of his books.

One of the admirers of Old Wives Tales was Wells who wrote to Bennett praising him for his efforts.

No further question of First Rank. A great book and a big one.

Wells came to live in the area following an accident he suffered as a schoolteacher when working at a school in Wrexham. The accident damaged his lungs and he went to convalesce with an old College friend John Burton, originally from Manchester, who was working at Wedgwood at the time. (It does seem odd that you would choose to stay in Stoke of the late 1880s with its appalling atmospheric pollution to recuperate from a lung injury!)  He went to live with the Burton’s at their house in Basford. He proved to be a very difficult lodger. He was fractious, touchy, quarrelsome, impatient and without much control. He behaved like Kevin the Teenager. In later life Wells did apologies for behaviour that he felt was very immature. But he did spend his time in the area in a productive way and it allowed him to explore the local scenery. He used this experience to colour descriptive passages on industrial landscape and as a metaphor for the hell of modern life. Although Bennett was living only 2 miles away: they never met in 1888.

Bennett wrote to Wells after the publication of the Invisible Man enclosing a review he had written and enquiring whether Wells time in North Staffordshire had an impact upon his writing. Wells reply was genial and a friendship developed which lasted until Bennett’s death in 1931. The men were of the same age, their social class was similar, and their writing practices were very alike to be bracketed together.

Wells was full of praise and acknowledgement of Bennett’s support

Arnold, you are a dear. The best friend I’ve ever had

Bennett however had the measure of Wells when he wrote following the publication of In the Days of the Comet

“You aren’t an artist insofar as you make use of your art for your reforming ends; you are simply a reformer. Like all great reformers you are inhumane, and scornful of everything that does not interest you

In the Days of the Comet is formed by Wells political belief. He had become a member of the socialist group the Fabian Society in 1903, which included Bernard Shaw the Irish playwright another writer who was well known in North Staffordshire.
In the novel Willie Leadford is a socialist smitten with a young woman Nettie. England is a war with Germany. As the story unfolds a comet has been observed on collision course with Earth. Willie has other concerns as Nettie has left him for a wealthy man named Verrall. Willie swears revenge a buys a revolver with the intention of shooting them. He goes after Nettie and Verrall. The Comet smashes into the earth and releases a green gas, which puts everyone asleep. Humanity has been changed and a socialist view prevails. War is over, the slums are torn down, and everyone is equal thanks to the effects of the Comet.

Willie practises with his gun on land near the road between Leek and Stafford, which suggests the Leek or Cheddleton area.

I had walked out with it four or five miles across a piece of moorland and down to a secluded coppice full of bluebells, half way along the high road between Leet and Stafford.

Wells changes slightly the name of the town.

The two men’s reputation has suffered but the anniversary of Bennett’s greatest novel next year should ensure that his reputation continues high and Wells experience of life in the area while convalescing during several months in 1888 had an impact upon his political beliefs for years afterwards.

WH Auden and a visit to Froghall 1925

“He would have liked the area. It would have had the sort of landscape that he enjoyed” a biographer of the poet Wystan Hugh Auden told me when I asked about a visit he made to the area as a young man of 18 in 1925. This year sees the 100th anniversary of his birth and certainly the anniversary has lead to an assessment of the man and his work. Auden is now considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and twice since his death in 1973 he has resonated posthumously in the public mind. Firstly, when in the 90s film “ Four Weddings and a Funeral” John Hanman reads “ Funeral Blues” “Stop all the clocks” over the coffin of Simon Callow. And again in 2001 he became the unofficial Poet Laureate of New York after the 9/11 attacks in his poem September 1st 1939 “ the unmentionable odour of death, offends the September night” and ending “ we must love each other or die” became a focus for communal grief.

 I have always been interested in his work. I found his work intellectual as well as accessible. An anthology of Auden was the first poetry book that I bought as a teenager. I was particularly impressed by the poem “Shield of Achilles” which details the powerlessness of an onlooker in a totalitarian regime I still have a copy of the book.  It has a picture of him as an old man staring out with the heavily wrinkled face that he described as looking like a “wedding cake left out in the rain”

 Although he was born in Yorkshire Auden had many links with the Midlands. He moved to Birmingham at the age of 2 when his father became the Director of Public Health in Schools. Auden’s unusual first name derives from a 9th century Shropshire born Prince who was later canonised. St Wystan’s empty tomb is in the Anglo Saxon crypt of Repton church in Derbyshire. His father went to the school in the town and his grandmother lived in the village of Horninglow on the Staffordshire/ Derbyshire border. Auden visited her regularly up to the time of her death in December 1925. He visited earlier in the year, which lead him to explore the rail system of the Moorlands.

At the age of 15 he decided to be a poet although his family were keen that he become an engineer and for the next 6 years he wrote 200 hundred. His style was often in imitation of poets that he admired such as TS Eliot, Thomas Hardy and the First World War poet Edward Thomas. The influence of Thomas is particularly marked in the poems that he wrote will visiting the area in the summer of 1925. The early poems“ The Canal, Froghall and “Flowers and the Stationmaster” were written while visiting the area. The later poem mentions Waterhouses.

He was drawn to a type of landscape especially mines and quarries. His vision of paradise was “ In my Eden we have a few beam engines, saddle tank locomotives, overshot waterwheels and other pieces of obsolete machinery to play with”. He was associated with the area around Alston in Cumbria- the abandoned lead mines in the area full of the archaic machinery that he craved. In fact the clue that Auden wrote poems about this area came from a book “ WH Auden, Pennine Poet by Alan Myers and Robert Forsythe published by North Pennine Heritage Trust.




The Froghall Wharf that he visited that summer would still have been busy but the truth was that it was entering into a period of decline. The limestone quarries had been in operation since the 18th century and a canal to take advantage the industry was opened in the 1777. The connection between the quarry and the canal was by a primitive rail system the first built in the 18th century. The limestone quarried was found to be particularly good in the smelting of iron ore and increasingly large amount were transported to the ironworks of the Black Country. The 15,000 tons of rock that was being shifted in the late 19th century had increased to 200,000 during the First World War. The stone was also used in agriculture and for the developing chemical industry especially after 1890. In 1885 there were over 100 men listed as working at the wharf. A photograph from 1905 portrays a very harsh environment with steam billowing and obscuring the landscape. It is bustling scene with men active and filling the view. Limestone is burnt and loaded on to the barges owned by Brunner Mold & Co.

 A newspaper account from 1936 reported that “ Some 50 years ago the basin was a scene of bustling activity with limestone being broken into ballast grades by large groups of men: limestone was burned into agricultural lime. On the other side of the canal brick making was practised and further into the valley coal was mined from galleries running into the valley sides”

 The company that quarried the stone Thorley and Bowers was owned and managed by the curiously named Primrose Thorley. He is in a photograph of 1912 tall and moustached with his boots caked with lime. His dog Sappho used to run alongside the carriage between Cheadle and Froghall. However, the peak of production at Froghall Wharf was brief. After the War the area went into decline following a landslip in the early 20s made access difficult to the quarries, which coupled with a decision, by the Cheshire based ICI which was created out of Brunner Mond to develop their own quarries effectively doomed the industry. The poem “The Canal, Froghall” begins:

“There are no roads except the towpath through the valley” and everyone who knows the area will recognise the remoteness. The canal follows through attractively quite countryside " winding in and out among the hill ribs and hollows”, There is a rich wildlife in this secluded spot but the peace is disturbed. A barge is pulled by an old horse and walking beside the animal walks an old man humming to himself and puffing on a clay pipe

“All unaware of what is scattered by their coming.
They go their way and ripples are the only traces
Until the calm returns which everything effaces
And images of trees resume their standing places”

In October 1925 Auden started his degree originally in Biology before changing to English. An interest in landscape and industrial heritage stayed with him throughout his life. In the 1930s he famously collaborated with the composer Benjamin Britten in the 1935 documentary film Night Mail and continued this fascination right to the publication of Lullaby the year before his death unlike many writers his reputation has not diminished since his death in 1973.

1960s and North Staffs

The mood at the beginning of the decade was cautiously optimistic. A Sentinel editorial ran;

“The Nation depends on food we import and the goods we export. Six years of a Socialist Government produced the welfare state and nearly brought us to our knees. But we can look to the future with a measure of confidence, which would have been considered imprudent at any other age in our history”.

The “Beat generation” caused some concern. Local Churchmen worried that religion held no interest. One such young man might be Stephen Seadon of Bentilee aged 14 who went missing was later discovered working as a fairground attendant at Rhyl with “Mother 1960” tattooed on his arms.

There was a problem recruiting GPs to the area-an issue highlighted by City Coroner Hails was the high number of industrial related dust deaths.

A wallaby which had escaped from the Roaches was caught in Penfleet Ave Meir.

In August the National Waterway Conference was held in Stoke. As a 5-year-old one of the first things I can recall was the brightly decorated barges.


1961

 Education radically changed in City Schools. Blurton and Willfield schools were set to become the first comprehensives. The Chairman of the City Councils Education Committee Bob Cant said “ One cannot bind any future committee for all time but as far as the future is concerned we do not propose to change these timetables.


In Newcastle the jobless figures continued to fall and labour shortages existed in the mining and building industry. Full employment was a characteristic of the period.

The major decision made by the City Council in April 1961 was the Longton development reputed to cost £500,000. There was some controversy. Mr Cornes a local businessmen believed that the Council had acted suspiciously. He felt that they’d rejected a stronger business application and forced through a dubious one. Leader of the Council Albert Bennett refuted these claims arguing that Longton had an excellent deal.

A new Medical Centre was planned for Hartshill.

1962

Lewis’s new Store opened in Hanley but the iconic statue  “Man of Fire” was erected the following year. There was a concerted effort throughout this time to make Hanley the regional shopping centre.

Housing remained problematic. Tunstall couple Mr and Mrs Cox of Pittshill were eager to swap their purchased house in which they lived with their 3 small children for a council house in Fegg Hayes.

Racial discrimination sometimes flared up. Crewe landlord Mr Bramhall of the Chetwode Arms barred coloured people. Fortunately the towns people backed a campaign by West Indian born Ephraim Brown to reverse the ban.

October 9th 1962 was a prestigious day as the Victoria Theatre opened in an old cinema in Hartshill. The first play was “The birds and the well wisher” by William Norfolk. The company was helped on its way by a £50 cheque from actress Hermione Gingold.

In October Little Richard played to enthusiastic crowds at Trentham Gardens.

The month was nearly the last for humanity as the Soviet Union and the United States almost went to war over the siting of soviet missiles on Cuba. President Kennedy issued a series of ultimatums to Soviet President Kruschev. October the 24th was the peak of the crisis. The Soviets relented and the possibility of a nuclear war passed.

AE Glaze of Burslem used the Sentinel Letters page to state that  “ October 24th was the blackest day in the annals of the human race, and by an unimaginable divine miracle a nuclear holocaust was avoided. Certainly the narrowest of squeaks closely avoided. Let us pray”

On a lighter note Mrs Shenton’s budgie went missing in late September from its Blurton home. Mrs Shenton was originally from Athens and the bird spoke Greek, a favourite phrase being” It always rains in England”.

1963

The winter of 1962 –3 was the second worst of the 20th century. Heavy snowfalls in January ensured hardship for many people in the area. Tean suffered black outs, Bradnop farmer Mr Chadwick of Birch Lea Farm assisted 25 travellers caught in a heavy snow storm on the Ashbourne Rd. Trentham Lake was iced over and locals enjoyed the floodlit skating. The canals were ice bound and children fed the swans at Whieldon Rd- I was one of them.

Saturday January 26th 1963 was an ordinary day as far the Sentinel was concerned. The Old Nortonians held their AGM, Biddulph Allotment Growers held a social event and the annual dinner dance of the Assistant Colliery Managers was held at the North Stafford Hotel. However a few yards away The Beatles were playing the in the area for the first time. It went unnoticed.

Backstage at the King's Hall after the gig Lennon and McCartney began writing Misery, which would subsequently appear on The Beatles' debut Please Please Me.

The Rolling Stones also played in North Staffs and appeared at Leek Town Hall on Christmas Eve.

It was a good year for Stoke City who won promotion to the First Division propelled by the 48-year-old maestro Stanley Matthews.

Politicians believed that Britain had to keep ahead of competitors with technology. In June 1963 Sir John Cockcroft the creator of the hovercraft opened a science wing at North Staffs College of Technology in Shelton.

On 22nd November 1963 the news of President Kennedy’s assassination reached the UK. The murder and the televised shooting of Lee Havey Oswald the following Sunday shocked the British public.

A sensational local murder occurred in 1963 when a well known operatic singer beat to death the wife of her lover. The body of Mary Walton was dumped in the back of her car at Mow Cop. However the murder had been committed at the Rudyard home of Gwen Massey- a strikingly attractive 34-year-old brunette. Massey met Frank Walton a well-known singer at a concert in Congleton and this liaison was to have fatal consequences. Mary Walton and Gwen Massey met at the Plough in Endon and later drove to Massey’s.



1964

Port Vale’s attendance record was shattered by the 40,000 plus crowd that watched the FA Cup replay in late January 1964 against Liverpool. The Merseysiders won a pulsating match.

A period came to an end on 4th March when the Loop line carried its last passenger. The railway was a splendid manifestation of Victorian engineering. Men who had worked for the railway for years were interviewed. Harry Cooper of Porthill who had worked at local stations since 1911 recalled Mr Cratchley at Tunstall Railway station with his tailcoat and his fresh red carnation.

 The M6 reached North Staffordshire. The link was opened in May.

It was a glorious period for club cricket in North Staffs. The West Indian stars Gary Sobers and Wes Hall played for Norton.

This year was an Election year when a resurgent Labour party led by Harold Wilson narrowly beat a Tory Government beset by scandal. The election was fought in a spirited fashion. Keele University students heckled Tory Home Secretary Henry Brooke. Local politicians made promises. Labour candidate in Stoke South Ellis Smith campaigned for Ford to open a factory locally. As a 9 year old I did my bit for Labour’s cause by delivering leaflets for Barnett Stross in Old Mill St, Stoke.

1965

The Torch opened in Tunstall. A reviewer drooled that the young people “ in gay clusters admired the polished golden parquetry of the dance floor which was soon to feel their leather”.

April and a testimonial game for Stanley Matthews. I went to the game and recall Matthews being carried off by enthusiastic colleagues to the music of the Dagenham Girl Pipers.
Newcastle born Jackie Trent had a Number 1 hit with “Where are you now?” in May.


There was an unusual event in July when the antics of Leek MP Harold Davies was the subject of a question at a US Presidential Press Conference. The President was Lyndon Johnson, and the extraordinary incident was a secret peace mission to war torn North Vietnam undertaken by Davies, an expert on the politics of the area at the behest of Harold Wilson.

It was a busy period for shopping centres. The Bennett Precinct in Longton, a controversial development was opened. The Sentinel believed that this visionary project was a “challenge to the long hampered trading instincts of a town that refused to be vanquished”

Education was felt to be vital but one young Shelton’s resident enthusiastic study backfired literally. Safebreaker Eric Dwyne got 8 years following an aborted raid on Twyford’s Factory. According to the police he learned to make explosives from books borrowed from local libraries.

1966

Not everyone felt optimistic about the Potteries. Richard Crossman, Housing Minister in the re-elected Labour Government wrote” if we spent billions on this ghastly collection of slag heaps, pools of water, old potteries, deserted coal mines there would be nothing to show for the money”

It was also the year that Clayton schoolgirl appeared on ITV’s Opportunity Knocks compered by Hughie Green. The 14-year-old singer, a pupil of Seabridge School had already tasted fame by coming 3rd in Keele University Rag Queen competition. She was introduced on the show by Bill Morris of the Place. She hoped to emulate Julie Andrews.

If 1966 is known for one thing it is England’s World Cup triumph. However what is apparent is how low key the event is reported in the local media. The sports pages of the Sentinel had greater coverage of the Test series against the West Indies than they did of the progress of the national football team. One football related event that did make the front page was Sir Stanley Matthews’s narrow escape. Sir Stan, knighted the previous year, crashed into a lorry at Brown Edge. Fellow passenger, former Stoke City player Jackie Mudie had to crawl through the rear window of the car. Sir Stan watched the final from a hospital bed at the NSRI.

 Holidaymakers paused their outward journeys to watch the game as the AA reported light traffic.  The Sentinel showed a group of pensioners about to catch a coach to the North Wales coast at the fully operational new Hanley Bus Station.

In Smallthorne the pub “La Verdo Stelo” (Esperanto for Green Star) was opened. A strong advocate for the language Alderman Horace Barks was present. In the pub helpful Esperanto phrases were available including “ I’ll have a pint of Bass”.

1967

An important event of the year was the electrification of the main line railway completed in March. A new route was blasted through the rock for the Harecastle Tunnel. Over 18,000 lbs. of gelignite was used in the process. A new signal box was built and £41,000 spent on refurbishment.

On 2nd April the Prime Minster Harold Wilson gave an address to party loyalists at the Victoria Hall. I was present and cannot recall anything about the speech. I do recall the cigarette smoke and the hecklers carrying placards against the Vietnam War. Wilson spoke about the slums of the city “ What is the answer to our Coronation St houses that lack basic amenities”?

A bizarre event was witnessed in Bentilee in early September. Several saw an orange disc with bright red glowing dome as it flew low overhead and apparently landed in a nearby field. No sound was heard, but one witness felt "wind" as the UFO passed overhead. A fiery glow was seen in a field- the apparent landing site. Police were called, but the light disappeared. Witnesses saw a luminous object rise from the field, hover, and then disappear "in a fraction of a second.”

A grim event hit many farmers in North Staffordshire in November. The foot and mouth outbreak badly impacted on the area. Farms in the Staffordshire Moorlands were particularly affected and 91 cows were killed at Bagnall.

1968

Radio Stoke, one of the first BBC local radio stations, began in early March. The opening jingle was the clinking of a cup and plate. Most of the staff including John Abberley were locally born. The BBC were rather wary of the first community radio stations and they refused to underwrite it. The City Council paid the running costs of the station for its first two years. Stoke Council felt it was an excellent medium to promote the City. The station broadcast for 4 hours only.

Immigration was a major issue with the arrival in the country of Asians who were thrown out of Kenya. The influx of citizens from the New Commonwealth caused concern expressed in the Letter Pages.
“Immigration should not be curbed but stopped altogether”, wrote Worried of Harpfields.

New estates flourished in the late 60s with private housing being built in many areas. In Stoke large estates were built in Trentham and elsewhere and in the Moorlands Wimpey houses were built in Tean and the large Westwood development completed in Leek. In Cheddleton a buyer could get a 95% mortgage and a 3-bedded new house could be had for £3000.

The effect of the breathalyser introduced at the end of 1967 had an instantaneous impact on road accidents. They fell by 20%.

The late 60s were a time for people who did not want to end up in little boxes. The alternative culture even spread to North Staffordshire. In the summer the Leek Post and Times carried a story of three people moving through the area who were keen to live a more natural life free from the stresses of modern technology. Robert Lewis from Suffolk 22, Vashti Bunyan 23, from London and To Copnall 20, lived in a horse drawn bread van that had been painted green and yellow. They and their horse Bess and a collie dog lived for a time in the Combe Valley. Their ultimate aim was to settle in the Highlands. One of the company, Vashti was a musician who since that year has achieved cult status and is still producing acclaimed records.

The new permissiveness did not please everyone. Leek Council took against a film version of the James Joyce novel “Ulysses”. Councillors condemned it and one Cllr Fisher complained “ If I used the words from Ulysses and shouted them in Derby St. I would be arrested and rightly so”. A sprightly correspondence developed in the letter pages of the paper although perhaps the most insightful comment came from Enid Clews of Onecote who thought that the film was “ boring and a waste of 2/6”.

1969

 Stoke on Trent had the greatest area of derelict land in the country and the plans to redress this problem led to highly imaginatively schemes. Ministers were taken on a tour of the proposed developments at Hanley Forest Park, Westport Lake, Berryhill and Fenton.

Moonscape perhaps adequately describes the industrial scenery of urban North Staffordshire. The real thing dominated the world media in July when Neil Armstong set foot on the lunar surface. No one who witnessed this could fail to appreciate the significance of this epoch making event.

The need for a trained young work force was one of the recurring themes of the decade. Northern College in Burslem was opened by 1967 to be followed 2 years later by an expanded Elms College at Shelton . The college had all the modern conveniences and a catering and hairdressing salon gave students practical experience. The opportunity to be trained and earning a living was an attractive proposition for youngsters. The provision of post 16 education was completed with the opening by Prime Minster Harold Wilson of the Sixth Form College in Fenton the following year.

It was not all progress. On July 17th 1969, in the same week of the Moon landing, more than 100 Mods and Rockers clashed in Cobridge and Burslem. Surprisingly no one was hurt. The Mods assembled by ABC Cinebowl in Hanley. Meanwhile the Rockers were outside a café in Burslem. The Rockers marched down Waterloo Rd. The police had a difficult time keeping the gangs apart. The police who at one point threatened to be overwhelmed drew truncheons. At some point dogs were called in. The Mods with mini skirted girls in tow moved to Vale Place where the police stopped them. Magistrates who met the following day took a dim view and heavy fines were administered on 6 young men from Blurton, Abbey Hulton and Bentilee.

The abiding concern for the Sentinel in the closing months of the decade was the tension between capital and labour. I witnessed this myself. In the summer of 1969 the Post Office Engineering Union went on strike. It was the first time the union had taken industrial action- the consequence of a pay dispute. The strike was unanimous in the Potteries and all 700 staff were out. The telephone service was 99% unionised and the union organiser was my father who spent part of the holiday co-ordinating the action. The conflict between authority and the unions was to take centre stage in the coming decade.

Yes play Victoria Ground 1975

The people who lived around the Victoria Ground were used to incidents of mayhem in 1975. The decade was well known for football violence. However some felt that they faced a new threat on 17th May 1975 when a rock festival was held at the ground. Before the festival, which was headlined by Yes, was promoted residents wanted to know what they could expect. They feared the worst, especially if they read the tabloids with lurid accounts of festivals. People expected a weekend of Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll. As it turned out they were to be disappointed.

The first festivalgoers arrived a day before the festival began. In  local language they were definitely “fribs”. But first a classification: youth tended to be divided into groups. In 1975 the Stoke tribes were “grebos/greasers in other words rockers, fribos who would go to a Yes gig, and skins/suede’s who evolved from Mods. Punk rock was a year or so away. The uniform of “fribs” so clearly shown in the newspapers was desert boots, loon pants, cheesecloth shirts Afghan coats and headbands. It has to be said that there were not many “fribs” on the streets of Abbey Hulton. In truth, anyone seen wearing an Afghan coat was likely to have half a brick heaved at them.

Yes topped the bill. I’d seen them before in 1973 play their album            “ Tales from a Topographical Ocean” at Trentham Gardens. I’d found it overblown and pompous and walked out. They were still very popular and the festival well attended. Another band who appeared was the Sensation Alex Harvey Band. The band did a cover of “Delilah” the old Tom Jones song. It’s probably the first time it was heard at a Stoke City ground. The newspaper reported that a fight broke out and Alex Harvey a ferocious Glasweigen used choice language to end it.

Yes played but unfortunately a heavy rainstorm cut short their gig as they feared electrocution.

Another band Gryphon who played medieval music did get into a spot of bother later when they caused a disturbance at a local hotel when they drank too much mead and smashed glasses.

However the event passed off peacefully and apart from a mountain of rubbish there was little for local residents to grumble about