Poetry by Staffordshire’s Poet Laureate (2013-14), Tom Wyre, has been met with international interest and acclaim by being featured in Levure Litteraire. Tom was commissioned to create poetry for the public, including contemporary new Great War based poetry for the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, performed as part of a national remembrance event on the evening of Friday 11th…
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For part of the Great War poet, Richard Aldington, was based at Brocton Camp in Staffordshire whilst he was assessed for officer training. Associated with the imagist group and prolific figures of the day he produced work reflecting the mood of the era. A new book about his early life by Vivien Whelpton has been published.
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The Beautiful Game. My interests in the ceramic artefacts of The Great War and the moving and inspirational stories behind the Christmas Truce have come together in a new piece of work, currently on temporary display in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. The Beautiful Game is inspired by the events of Christmas 1914…
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Colonel Ralph Sneyd inherited Keele Hall from his father Walter. Although he spent very little time there, especially in his later life when he went to live in the south of England. He served as a Colonel of the Staffordshire Yeomanry. During World War 1 he arrested the exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari for…
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Rev Maurice Peel, a vicar at St Editha’s Church in Tamworth, served in the trenches, going over the top on more than one occasion carrying nothing more than a walking stick. He was the grandson of prime minister Sir Robert Peel, who helped create the modern police force. After being shot once, Maurice chose to…
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Bruce Bairnsfather and the Christmas Truce, 1914. Visiting the ceramic archives at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, my eye was taken by a small group of pieces decorated with cartoons by Bruce Bairnsfather. Whilst serving with the BEF on the Western Front in1914, Lieutenant Bruce Bairnsfather of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment gained fame and…
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Over Christmas 1914, seventeen year old Princess Mary wanted to send a Christmas present to every soldier fighting at the front. She organised a public appeal to raise funds and to create brass boxes for over 2 million service men and women. The boxes were all embossed with the princess herself in profile and the…
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Zeppelin L32. This week’s object is a model of a Zeppelin, one of several crested china pieces in the Great War collection at the Staffordshire County Museum in Shugborough. This type of cheap, mass-produced souvenir ware was produced in Staffordshire from the mid 1880’s to just after 1930, and was at the height of its…
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The Condensery was built by the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company at Marston Old Lane, Hatton, Derbyshire, in 1901, where it produced tinned condensed milk. In 1905 the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company merged with the Henri Nestle Company, to form the Nestle Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company. Many of the men who worked at the factory were…
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The story of the memorial lych gate at St Mary’s Church is one of the Great War stories told in a new publication – A Parish Remembers – by R.H. Darlington and R. Sherratt. The book is dedicated to the memory of all the men from the Hilton, Marston-on-Dove and Hoon who gave their lives…
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