Centre stage
Telegraph 'English escapes' supplement
Published on Saturday April 21, 2007
On a trip to England’s industrial heartland, Chris Alden discovers world-famous ceramics, Cold War memorabilia – and some cheeky monkeys.
I have to hand it to my girlfriend. When I tell her we’re spending her romantic birthday weekend in the industrial heartland of England, she doesn’t react, as feared, by telling me where to shove my stovepipe. But then, she’s from the heart of England herself – so she knows the Staffordshire and Shropshire countryside is a green land of canals, rivers and manor houses, long since recovered from the legacy of Victorian industry – and well worth visiting in its own right.
It’s only when I mention our hotel is in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, that she begins to worry – but she needn’t have feared. Arriving at New Hall on the Friday night, we find it’s the oldest moated manor in England, decorated in contemporary rustic style, with a tot of sherry in each room and top-notch service. We’ve learned the first lesson about travel in these parts: don’t knock anything till you’ve tried it.
And that’s just the attitude that finds me standing over a Wedgwood potter’s wheel, next morning, re-enacting the Patrick Swayze scene from Ghost – assisted by a man in an apron and a beard.
“If you fight it, it will fight back,” advises Paul, a master potter, holding my hands in the correct position to control my revolving blob. “Use small pressure points, and coax it into shape.” Slowly, a Grecian urn is appearing between my palms, and I can’t believe it has much to do with me.
Here at the Wedgwood visitor centre near Stoke we’ve learned how 18th-century potters made fortunes by taking advantage of two trends: neoclassicist art, and the arrival of tea from India. Their urns and pots were transported by canal to London and beyond, and soon the area was overrun with the distinctive brick bottle-kilns of the Potteries.
The traditional kilns have mostly gone, but visitors to Wedgwood’s modern factory can not only make pots, but try out enamelling, hand-painting, lithography, casting and flower-making.
A few miles away is Trentham, an estate that, by the end of the 19th century, had borne the brunt of industrial pollution from the Potteries. Its house and gardens, designed by Capability Brown, were abandoned because of the polluted Trent; but these days, the watchword is conservation. The Italianate gardens have been recreated, new pleasure gardens are being built, and a mile-long lake has been restored to its former glory.
A short boat trip away, you’ll even find Trentham’s “monkey forest” – a 60-acre enclosure home to some 140 Barbary macaque monkeys.
When we arrive, we narrowly avoid being defecated upon by a primate in a tree, but after that we get drawn into the process of persuading the spunkier creatures to pose for photos.
My girlfriend becomes transfixed by a monkey sitting on its haunches, shoving seeds into its mouth as quickly as it can with alternate arms, stopping only to scratch an armpit with its back leg. It’s a yogic pose that a Spice Girl could only dream of – but when I get out my camera, the monkey lopes off.
We soon notice how macaques use the threat of violence rather than violence itself to resolve conflicts. Males jump on the backs of other males, simulating sex to assert dominance. When I get too close to one, it shakes its fist in cartoon fashion before running away.
It’s a moment that comes to mind next day as we visit the newest attraction of the area: the Cold War exhibition at RAF Cosford, Shropshire.
The museum’s curators have turned what might have been a geek’s guide to military hardware into an intelligent guide to mutually assured destruction, housed in a giant hangar. As well as seeing just how small a Sidewinder missile is, you’ll read Einstein’s remark that whatever weapons world war three might be fought with, “world war four will be fought with sticks and stones”. It’s unsettling and instructive at the same time.
But if they want to learn how to move from pre-industrialism to the atomic age in double-quick time, scientists of the future might do well to come to Ironbridge, on the banks of the river Severn.
The gorge is home to a series of museums which explain how on this spot, the Victorians mined coal and iron ore, producing first pig-iron and then wrought iron, to fuel the industrial revolution.
One of the museums, Blists Hill, is a recreated 19th-century town, complete with pub, foundry, Victorian school – even a working replica of the first steam ever engine.
We finish our weekend by visiting the modern town’s main landmark, the bridge itself – a 300-ton iron monster that opened in 1781 as a symbol of England’s industrial might. These days it’s a place to stroll along the riverbank, drink tea at the tea emporium, and take photos of something inanimate as the shadows lengthen. It’s not something you can fight.
• A shorter version of this article appeared in the Daily Telegraph’s ‘English escapes’ supplement
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