To the Spitfire

Recently we ventured up to the city centre to visit the Spitfire Gallery at the museum.  The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery can be found in what is signposted along all routes into the centre as The Cultural Quarter.  We also wanted to see the new library which had moved from its old 1960s building into one of the new buildings on the Smithfield site, an area where there used to be a pottery factory.

Before we went into the Museum we wandered around the newer buildings.

The new library opened at Two Smithfield last week.  It is quite spacious inside, fiction and children's books downstairs and non fiction on the upper level. There are lots of computer points and tables on both levels.  The archives part of the old library building will now be housed within the museum, opening in Spring next year.

 

Opposite the new library is the Mitchell Arts Centre.  Local man Reginald Mitchell (1895 - 1937) was the designer of the Spitfire hence the name of the cafe there.

 

Further along the road is the Regent Theatre.  Behind it is Victoria Hall a largish but not huge concert venue. I have to admit I've only been inside the Victoria Hall once when we went to see Simon Callow's one man show on Charles Dickens.   We've been to the Regent Theatre a few times but not recently.

 

Back on Smithfield - a new hotel.

 

One Smithfield was inspired by the designs of local potter and ceramic designer Clarice Cliff.  Talking of Clarice Cliff we recently saw the film 'The Colour Room' about her early years in the pottery industry.  I really enjoyed it.  Lots of it was filmed locally.

 

A small fragment of what is left of the old Smithfield Factory one of the city's most iconic shapes.  The bottle oven or pot bank.

 

The back of the Potteries Museum - the Spitfire is behind the large window.

By now it was well past 10a.m. and the Museum was open.

 

The Spitfire has been decorated with over a thousand poppies made by the 'Let's Make Jam' Women's Institue.

The WI have made the poppies from  wool, felt and paracord.

 

The poppies are sewn onto cargo netting except for the wreath.

The poppies will be on display until Sunday 12th November.

All for now.
 

 

Five for Remembrance

The City of Stoke-on-Trent was created in 1910 to include six well known pottery towns.  Last year each town had a steel sculpture to commemorate the end of WW1.  I managed to take photos of five of them, Hanley, which is now the city centre, is missing. Each of these sculptures tells the story of a local man or woman in their own words or from letters home.

 Longton - remembers the million and more horses and mules taken to the front by the army over 400,000 of them died in battle, many more from exhaustion or illness.

 Fenton - remembers the men and boys who lied about their age so they could serve in the war and fight for their country not wanting to be told they were too young or too old.

Stoke - celebrates the return home of the soldiers and particularly those who had been prisoners of war.

 Burslem - remembers the story told of Christmas Day 1914 when troops from both sides climbed out of their trenches and met in no man's land to shake hands and for a while forget the war.

 Tunstall - commemorates the nurses who served in makeshift hospitals close to the front lines in France assisting doctors and bringing kind words and comfort to those in distress.

These photos I took last year and I don't know if all the sculptures are still in situ.  I know the Longton one is as I pass it often.  I hope the others are still on display too.

Armistice

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. 

Wilfred Owen  1893 - 1918

Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry, Shropshire in 1893 the eldest of the four children of  Tom and Susan Owen. The family later moved to Shrewsbury.  He was killed in action whilst leading his men over the Sambre-Oise canal in Northern France, a week before the end of the war.   The telegram from the War Office announcing his death arrived at his family home as the church bells were ringing  out across the town to celebrate the signing of the Armistice which signalled the end of  hostilities.

Remembrance

Vera Brittain was born in nearby Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1893 the only daughter of a weathly family who owned paper mills in Hanley and Cheddleton. When she was a child her family moved to Macclesfield and then to Buxton. At the outbreak of WW1 she was an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford. Both her fiance Roland Leighton and her brother Edward Brittain joined the British Army; wanting to aid the war effort herself she left her studies and joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment and served in Malta, France and England. In her autobiographical work 'Testament of Youth' she writes about her experiences of the war and her work treating the badly wounded soliders and prisoners of war. Roland Leighton was killed in France in December 1915 and her brother Edward who, in 1916, was wounded at the Battle of the Somme and awarded a Military Cross, was killed in Italy in 1918. After a few weeks working as a VAD she wrote:-

‘It was very hard to believe that not far away men were being slain ruthlessly.... The destruction of men, as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation.’

'Testament of Youth' was written both as a memoir of her wartime nursing experiences and as a literary memorial to Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain and their many friends who were killed or injured during the war - just a few of the thousands who became the lost generation.

At the Eleventh hour, on the Eleventh Day, of the Eleventh month - we will remember them