From the Chair
I present this report almost at the end of my first year as chairman. I believe the Society has had a good year and this is due to the hard work of my fellow committee members, who seem to be possessed of limitless energy and enthusiasm. Last winter’s programme of evening speakers was excellent with topics as diverse as the history of pantomime and the art and history of thatching. This was followed by a series of summer visits, starting with a tour of the Ideal Standard works in Armitage, followed by a visit to the Fisherwick estate to see the impressive walled garden. Finally, a large group of us visited the ancient village of Barton-under-Needwood, where we all learned a great deal about its history and buildings. In July, our Society played host to the Staffordshire Heritage Group who promote local history in the county through groups like ours. There was a good attendance and visitors were shown around Hamstall Ridware church and village before gathering in the Shoulder of Mutton for refreshments. So, all in all a good year for our Society when we have also been pleased to welcome new members to what is already a healthy membership total. However, we would also love to welcome new members onto the committee. This would help to keep the Society fresh and continuing to thrive. Please contact a committee member if you are interested in helping.
Roy Fallows
Visit to Armitage Potbank 21 May 2024
On Tuesday, 21 May, a group of 18 turned up at the Ideal Standard works in Old Road, Armitage, for a conducted tour of the works.
Gathering in the reception area we had ample time to admire the impressive mosaics and tile decor. We were told that the works kept on producing ware right through the pandemic and supplied the temporary Nightingale wards with sanitary ware. The factory, which has recently been bought by a German company, produces 1.6 million pieces annually.
We set off in two groups led by Bob and Nicole. On the way to the production area, we were shown a display detailing the history of pottery manufacture in the village from the 18th century to modern times.
The moulding is done by two different methods, the first using a plaster of paris mould where the wet clay, or slip, is poured in and the plaster absorbs the water leaving the clay behind. This method costs a few hundred pounds to make the mould which can be used only a few times. The second method is that of pressure moulding, where the mould forces the water out of the slip under huge pressure. The moulds will produce several thousand pieces, but each mould costs about £5,000. After some 12 hours of drying, the piece goes for inspection and repair.
Several robots are used for spraying on glaze and other parts of the process. Vitreous clay and fireclay are used to make the product, the fireclay being the most stable. The clay is sourced from Cornwall, France and Germany.
Before firing, 70% will be perfect, 20% can be repaired and 10% will be recycled for later moulding. The company will make about £20 profit on a single basin. As each piece progresses along the line, they are given different names (like green, when it isn’t actually green), similar to wines as they age.
After a total of 28 hours of drying, to stabilise the clay product, it makes its way on carriages into a tunnel kiln where it is fired at 1,200 degrees for 17 hours. It requires many more hours to cool down before final inspection. Any rejects at that stage are smashed and sent to landfill.
We all then walked up several flights of stairs to a massive top floor of the factory. Until the widespread adoption of the pressure moulding system, this floor would be full of (mainly) men hand making plaster moulds for individual products. There are now just a couple of skilled workers doing the job, including local man Neil Carter. Neil gave an interesting demonstration of this method of casting and illustrated how quickly the plaster absorbed water from the clay slip. He showed us the different steps taken to produce the moulds and the product using small demonstration pieces.
Each month, the factory uses £300,000 worth of gas. Armitage has two gas mains into the village. One for domestic use, and the other just for the factory. Each month they use £9,000 worth of water. Surplus heat from the firing process is used to heat offices, etc., during the winter.
All in all, an excellent experience to visit such an historic local manufacturer.
We finished our visit with an excellent buffet, kindly supplied by the company. It was a visit to remember and it was nice to meet new members and guests who had joined us.
Roy Fallows
Visit to Woodhouse Farm, Fisherwick
On a gloriously sunny June evening, 15 members of RHS visited the 22-acre Woodhouse Farm and Walled Garden, which was once part of an estate that had been owned by Arthur Chichester, Earl of Donegal, and then the Howard family of Elford. It was Robert B. Howard who had Fisherwick Hall demolished c.1814. The estate was split up, the remnants of which are scattered across Fisherwick and Tamhorn.
The farm Is situated four miles east of Lichfield, nestled about ¾ mile off the road down a ‘tricky’ farm track. The approach to the farm was lined with trees and fields, one of which had cattle in and in another, two very large Gloucester Old Spot pigs.
We were met by our hosts for the evening, the tenants, Annamarie and Andrew Stone. Andrew explained that the cattle we had passed were Irish Moiled cattle, a very rare breed with only about 350 cattle in the UK, 900 worldwide. He has begun to show his animals at places such as the Stafford County, the Shropshire and The Three Counties agricultural shows, with great success, helping to promote the breed.
As we began our walk, Annamarie talked a little about the history of the Fisherwick Hall Estate, pointing out where features such as the orangery, the ha-ha and the hall would have been before the estate was split up c.1818. It is all now obscured by rampant mother nature.
We then entered the 3½ acre walled garden, the main focus of our visit. It wasn’t a well-manicured formal garden, as one sees at stately homes, but a productive fruit and vegetable garden. In 2009, when Andrew and Annamarie embarked on the restoration project, Annamarie said that if it hadn’t been for the wall, one would have never known the garden was there, it was so overgrown with pernicious weeds, such as brambles, docks, thistles and nettles. So, the hard work began. After removing all the top growth, Andrew set to work with his trusty 50-year-old Massey Ferguson (which, incidentally, is still going strong), and his one-furrow plough, to till the unproductive earth – well, only unproductive for edible crops! He then set to work improving the soil by incorporating their own farmyard manure. They also use their pigs to rootle about in areas of the garden when not under cultivation, moving them from place to place, thus keeping down weeds and muck spreading. The 100-plus flock of free roaming hens of varying breeds also help in this regard. Andrew and Annamarie do the vast majority of work themselves with about 12 volunteers who offer their time when they can.
Annamarie explained that the garden was not in fact rectangular, as it appeared, but rather a fan shape, with the south-facing wall longer than the colder north-facing wall, thus providing a larger area of heat-retaining wall. She also explained the wall was hollow and of a honeycomb construction, again to help with heat retention. Another aid which improved heat conductivity was the fact that the walls were curved, where there would normally have been sharp right-angled corners, allowing for uninterrupted heat flow. A final aid to keeping a wall warm was the use of fire boys who lit and kept fires burning by the walls when necessary. A trick for maintaining the garden’s microclimate in the winter was the frost-door, which is in the north-facing wall. The cold air that creates frost is most concentrated where it sinks towards the lowest point of a garden, so the door would be opened to release these pockets of cold air when necessary.
On the south-facing wall there were cordoned apple, pear, almond, apricot and cherry trees and on the north-facing wall hardier fruit tree varieties of damsons, plums and cherries. In the main body of the garden there were gooseberry, blackcurrant, redcurrant, Tayberry and jostaberry bushes galore. Vegetables of every kind were either growing in the ground or in the greenhouses.
The Woodhouse farm belongs to Birmingham Council and the Stones operate under the umbrella organisation, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). It is a partnership between farmer and consumer in which the responsibilities, risks and rewards of farming are shared.
Farmers receive a more stable, secure income and closer connection with their community, while consumers benefit by eating healthy, local food, feeling more connected to the land where their food is grown and have opportunities to learn new skills. They arrange monthly work days and activities include onion planting, potato harvesting and apple pressing. They also encourage community groups, such as the scouts and guides or local schools to come and participate in hands-on activities.
Woodhouse tries to sell most of its fruit and vegetables through a CSA arrangement with members of the community, be it a weekly or fortnightly share, which for a small extra cost can be delivered.
We finished the evening with light refreshments, including Annamarie’s wonderful home- made Victoria sponge filled with cream and her own delicious damson jam.
The farm is open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays. There is a café where Annamarie’s home-made produce – cakes, jams, pork pies, sausage rolls, etc. – are served or are on sale. It is well worth a visit.
Helen Sharp
A visit to Barton-under-Needwood on 24 July
Steve Gardener gave a group of around 20 of us a fascinating visit to Barton-under-Needwood. Barton is situated just north of the old Ryknild Street, now the A38. The original settlement was by the river, near the present Barton Turns, dating from the 6th century, with people mainly of Danish origin. They moved to the present site in the forest of Needwood around 900AD, due to flooding and attacks by Vikings: the present site being much more secure. Barton was on the intersection of two main routes: the dry route running roughly east-west and the wet route running roughly north-south. Several taverns were amongst the early buildings and in the Domesday book the town was described as Bertum. It was renamed in 1327 as Barton-under- Needwood as so many other Bartons (literally ‘farms’) existed in the country.
Points of interest included a two-wheeled mill that ceased to operate in 1850 and was demolished around 1970. This was also the largest wild boar chase area in England. Barton Polo Club was started by John Reid Walker, of the famous brewing family, Peter Walker’s Brewery. John lived at the Knoll House, a hunting lodge at the top end of Barton. Barton had lots of retired and associated senior military officers, and they too had played polo a lot in the Forces. They formed a polo club and played on the land where the John Taylor School stands today. Barton Polo Club played at the highest level and enjoyed great success. The pinnacle was winning the National Polo Club Championships. After about 10 years the polo fields became for a while a golf course.
Famous families include the (De) Hollands, who later divided into two separate lineages, one at each end of the village. Another famous character was a Mr Taylor. He had triplet boys. One day he found a lost stranger who he welcomed into his house. The next morning the stranger introduced himself as the king, who had become separated from his companions. Out of gratitude for the hospitality offered, he arranged to educate all three boys in Italy and in France. They all went on to prosper and one of the lads, John Taylor, who was born in 1498, went on to build the first church in 1530. There have been three subsequent churches at or near the same site. The current church has six bells, four cast in Barton in 1847 at the site of the current Middle Bell. Another famous Barton inhabitant was Thomas Russell, member of the Company of Drapers. He established a school in 1595; it was rebuilt 300 years later.
Barton was a fashionable place for army officers and brewery owners and with the railway station, it was a commuter village before its time. In Victorian times those living in the village lived at one of the four ‘Ends’ of Barton:
- Moor End: Station Road leading out of the village towards Barton Turns, the A38 and the railway station. The land on the river valley is flat, like moorland.
- Nottle End (a corruption of Nuttall House): Leading out from the village centre towards Dunstall. Nuttall House was a large and important seat of the Sanders Family in the1500s.
- Wales End: From Main Street leading down Wales Lane, towards the oldest building once occupied by Johannes De Walesend in 1509.
- Forest End (or Wood End): leading out of the village towards the forest, past the tollgate cottage to get access to the forest.
In its heyday Barton hosted 16 pubs (mainly drinking houses).
The Trent and Mersey Canal was built in 1777 by James Brindley. Navvies were not allowed into the village, so they formed the settlement that has since become Barton Turns. in 1839 the Derby to Birmingham railway opened with a railway station at Barton Turn. It was subsequently closed by Beeching in 1957.
As we went round the village, we were shown the parish rooms which were originally stables for the minister at the church. Nearby formerly stood the oldest building in the village, the stonemason’s cottage dating from the 1300s which was pulled down in 1950. On the site of the present war memorial until the early 1900s was a large fairground where there were especially frequent horse fairs. There had been four blacksmiths in Barton. One was at Blacksmith’s Corner, later relocating to the Three Horseshoes pub. Barton sported a famous cricket team consisting mainly of the Whites and the Palmers: The Palmers being the local doctors. They were in time visited both by W.G. Grace and by King Edward VII. Peel Cottage is the site of the old police station. One famous resident, Sam Colson, was the owner of a large brickworks and managed to arrange for many of the older cottages in Barton to be faced with bricks, hence their current appearance.
The Cottage Hospital was in Short Lane, which in Victorian times was called Hospital Lane! It was built by William Sharpe of the well-known family of builders who had a builder’s yard in Main Street. It opened in 1879 with six beds.
It was unusual for a small community to have its own workhouse for the poor, but the Overseers to the Poor (two people elected annually to look after the needs of Barton’s poor) bought a piece of land in Wales Lane from Collinsons Brewery to build a workhouse. It was built in 1784 to look after their own who had fallen on hard times. It remained in use until 1836 when it was closed and the inmates were transferred to the Burton Union Workhouse, where the regime was run on strict utilitarian lines, treating them more like criminals. The building continued to be used as a children’s home and was being used as such into the early 1900s. The complex had an adjoining policeman’s office and cell, a ‘prisoners lock up’, and a building where the horse-drawn fire engine was kept. Barton’s fire engine and brigade were in existence from 1820 onwards.
Steve told us many amusing anecdotes, including that of a drunken singer who having seen the local milkman fall into a freshly prepared grave was convinced he had seen a ghost. There was a more recent resident who spent much of his life claiming to tell stories of his escape from the sinking Titanic, when records show he almost certainly was on different vessel at the time.
Paul Carter
A Date for Your Diary
RHS Open Afternoon in Mavesyn Ridware Village Hall in Hill Ridware, WS15 3RJ on Saturday 14 September between 2pm and 4pm.
We will be displaying photographs and documents that have accumulated from research projects undertaken by members of the group including the history of the Ridware schools, the local pubs, St Nicholas Church, Mavesyn Ridware, WW1 soldiers of the Ridwares and Armitage, memories of some local residents, notable buildings and the pottery at Armitage to name but a few.
The Hamstall Ridware Tapestry, which was created to celebrate the 900 year old church of St Michael and All Angels, will be on display along with items from our archives concerning the three Ridwares.