Do you remember March 1991?

• Good news for the local economy was the confirmation of a new headquarters for the Irish dairy company Kerrygold at Barnfield which would safeguard the future for the concern in Leek, along with the jobs of the 300 workforce. The cost of the undertaking was £7.5 million. The headquarters was opened by the European Commissioner for Agriculture Ray McSharry, assisting him chairman of the Irish Dairy Board Dr Noel Cawley- no relation. The new facility would have the facility to supply 25% of the UK market for pre packed hard cheese and 15% of processed cheese and be ideally placed for good access to retail outlets in the UK and Europe.

• Other good news was news of a major contract to wire the Channel Tunnel won by Thomas Bolton of Froghall. An order for £1.5 million had been placed by the French Government and had been won by the Staffordshire company beating off stiff competition from others including a French company. The contract required Bolton's to supply the cable by the autumn. Work on the tunnel had begun in 1988 with the work competed in 1994. It cost £4.6 billion to build an over run of 80% in the amount originally budgeted. At the peak of construction over 15,000 were employed on the Tunnel. It should be noted that Bolton's involvement in this project completed a notable double as the company had supplied the copper cable for the laying of transatlantic telegraphy cable in the previous century.

• Leek's last foundry closed in March 1991 Sneyd Engineering based in Sneyd Street. The firm specialised in non ferrous castings having been founded as Goodwin Brothers early in the century. It became Sneyd Engineering just before the Second World War. The demise of the company prompted one correspondent to refer back to the War in a subsequent letter “ The war brought a great increase in business, at one period it seemed that half of Leek's skilled machinists were making bronze bearings for the Bailey Bridges, whilst the other half were making gun barrels up at the “Daimler”

• A Tudor Hall long thought to be demolished many years before was rediscovered in the structure of the Red Lion Inn in Market Square. Workmen carrying out repairs found the remnants of Leek Hall. The Red Lion was established as a coaching Inn in 1767 when the incorporation of the early structure into the Inn must have taken place. Chief conservation officer John Leech considered the discovery one of the most important archaeological finds in Leek. It appears that the front of the hall was removed when the Red Lion was built and a second floor added with a flat roof. It had been long thought that the hall built by William Jollife in 1627 had been demolished to make way for the coaching Inn

• The year had begun with the successful prosecution of the First Gulf War when the army of Saddam Hussain had been ejected from Kuwait and pursued back across the Iraq border. A local soldier Steven Tatlow in the 1^st Staffords visited a local school -Valley Primary in Oakamoor- to thank the children for writing. He had received many letters from the kids which had very helpful to him and his colleagues whilst waiting for the final assault and during the days of conflict. Of course no one knew that the second Iraq conflict would occur exactly 12 years later

• For the past year Mr Terence Howell of Hill Top Farm, Brown Edge had been battling to win the right to sleep with his chickens. There had been complaints of the mess that littered the site, but Farmer Howell was determined to assert the right to live by his “feathered friends” “ If I lived on the site it could be tidied up, but if the Council wants war then war it shall have”, he added belligerently 

The Grey and the Red

My daughter Phoebe is in something of a dilemma . “I like the Grey because we see them on the way to school, but the Red reminds me of a visit to Formby Point”. She was talking, of course, about squirrels. The introduction of the Grey, some say, has proved a disaster for the native Red and a species that was wide spread at the beginning of the 20^th century is now confined to the fringes. I have seen the Red Squirrel at the National Trust reserve near Southport myself and they are attractive critters rendered tame by the high numbers of visitors to Formby Point. The Red or to give it its Latin name Scirus Vulgaris was plentiful once, but a combination of disease, a major epidemic destroyed many between 1910-20. the destruction of its habitat have undermined the species. It is likely that the Grey- a Northern American native- first introduced on the Duke of Bedford's Woburn estate quickly spread northwards and were better equipped to take advantage of the changes.

A Guardian report of 1912 referred to “large numbers of these grey squirrels have managed to escape or have been allowed to run loose from and in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, and others have been turned down on various estates. A friend who lives on the edge of a Cheshire woodland not far from Manchester tells me that a large grey squirrel, which looks to him very like the squirrels he has seen in Regent's Park, has paid visits with other squirrels in his garden” .

I don't know when the Red Squirrel became extinct in the Staffordshire Moorlands, but I would have thought some of the woodland around Oakamoor would make an ideal habitat should they return.

Another introduced animal which has also devastating implications for a native species is the American Mink, many have been released into the wild by animal liberationists. In the late 90s over a 1,000 escaped from a fur farm at Onneley. A resident of Denford told me with some bitterness that a colony of water voles locally had been eliminated a fact that she blamed on the mink. I saw a mink once by the River Wye feasting on an elver. These voracious animals are blamed for the 90% reduction in the water vole population.

Two pieces of Victorian engineering

I visited the Eiffel Tower recently. It was my first visit. I was staggered by this wonderful piece of 19th century engineering. The design is truly iconic but strangely was deeply unpopular when first erected. However its status is beyond question. Over 200 million people have visited since it was opened in 1889. Closer to home there is an engineering triumph of the period equally as impressive as M Eiffel construction and its birthplace was Oakamoor.

In the Victorian period Thomas Bolton’s of Oakamoor manufactured submarine telegraph cables. During the 1850s they were involved in several schemes but the greatest engineering challenge was to lay a transatlantic cable. The Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed to lay a cable from North America to Europe by 1862. And Bolton’s who were contracted to quickly produce the copper cable needed.

The first cable was produced at Oakamoor works in 1856. Over 108 tons of copper was used to produce 20,000 miles of cable within 5 months. It was eventually laid and connected and a message between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan of the US was transmitted on 17 August 1858.  However technical difficulties such as poor conductivity led to only intermittent use.

Undaunted, Bolton’s continued to perfect there manufacturing techniques. In September 1863 a new order for 200 tons of copper wire was placed for a second Atlantic cable. Brunel’s Great Eastern ship was hired to lay the cable and on 27 July 1866 the laying was completed.

Almost immediately, the cable opened for business but only the rich could afford it -- the initial rates were a startling 10 shillings a letter at a time that a monthly wage for a labourer was a few £s

As with the overland cables, undersea cables were laid rapidly. Within 20 years there were 107,000 miles of undersea cables linking in the first global communication. The original cables stopped working in the 1870s but by this time four other cables were laid. It is interesting to note that even though later cables could carry large numbers of signals at the same time, it was not until the 1960s that the first communication satellites offered a serious alternative to the cable the development of which owes something to the workers of Oakamoor