Christmas Lights in Stafford

Christmas lights. Yes I know it’s only November. But putting that perennial debate aside I took the dog for a walk and took a few snaps of Stafford town centre yesterday evening.

I like the lights in town.

The lights were switched on by the Mayor of Stafford on Saturday after some fireworks and karaoke and carols. The 1990s heyday of celebs turning on lights is long gone. Those heady days when Midlands market towns bankrupted themselves or cancelled gritting roads or collecting bins so they could get Wolf from Gladiators or Bouncer from Neighbours to pull down the Christmas lights lever alas are no more.

Merry Christmas Stafford!

After Saturday’s frivolities Town was quiet except for a few wandering drunks and a fella talking to a postbox.

The Swan, Greengate Street

The Swan has a rich history, visited for dinner by Charles Dickens who enjoyed his grub but was unimpressed by the fading decor. Dickens described my hometown ‘as dull and dead a town as anyone could desire not to see.’ Ouch. I know it’s the fashion to cancel artists with unappealing viewpoints (step forward Ian Brown and Steven Patrick Morrissey) but I’m not going to stop reading Dickens because he thought Stafford a one-horse town.

Nativity at St Chad’s

St Chad’s is a beautiful 11th century church and this nativity is always out front. It’s the oldest building in town, dating to the 1100s and has wonderful stone carvings inside.

The kind of door you’d knock with a sword pommel

Gaol Square Christmas tree

I like the Gaol Square tree. I like that everyone under 30 spells it Goal Square – even the council on a road sign – as gaols are universally jails these days. If Dickens had visited Stafford for his steak dinner (very Del Boy) a few years later he’d have seen that my hometown certainly knows how to turn out for a proper bash. Around 30,000 squabbled over the best vantage points for the hanging of the Rugeley Poisoner Dr William Palmer. This was in 1856 outside Stafford Goal. Sorry Gaol. I mean jail.

Greengate St from Market Square

Deserted except for me and Bruce…Dickens must’ve visited when Greggs was shut too.

Market Square

Sadly, our Shire Hall is empty. But very pretty. A use needs to be found for this building described to me by my eldest as ‘like the one with the clock in Back to the Future.’ I had to explain in Clarkson tones that the original Shire Hall was older than the country that spawned Marty McFly and Doc Brown.

Finally, I wonder if the days of silver/white decs may be over. There are at last a few glimpses of colour again. White and silver is so sterile. I long for the greens and yellows and blues and reds of the 80s, twinkling beneath a sheen of tugged and stretched angel fur. With some crepe (yes crepe) handmade decs tacked to the coving.

Hunting mice at the Ancient High House, Stafford

Ancient High House

I didn’t expect to be hunting mice in Stafford’s Ancient High House, but spent the afternoon doing just that. As a half-term diversion mice were hidden in holes around the famous old house and we had the job of finding them.

I’ve lived in Staffordshire for many years, but like many perhaps take the Ancient High House for granted. It’s a wonderful timber building made from oaks cut down in nearby Doxey Wood in 1593. The house was built for a rich merchant and his family and must have been very impressive in the last years of the 16th century.

Even today the house is a striking sight in Stafford. There are many floors and rooms to explore. There is wallpaper from the 1700s (a wallpaper room), the Stuart bedroom where Charles I stayed en route to Shrewsbury after raising the Royal Standard in Nottingham.

There is an exhibitions room, a grocery store (the High House was a grocer’s in late Victorian times) and a military museum in the attic.

The huge stone fireplaces are wonderful and it’s a fascinating thought to touch those ancient oak beams and imagine who ate and slept and was born under them. There are many great stories associated with the old house.

Stuarts entertaining, Ancient High House

My favourite concerns the dashing Prince Rupert who led the assault on Parliamentary forces at Lichfield Cathedral (some 16 miles away). Prince Rupert slept in the High House and apparently indulged in some target practice with his cavalry pistol shooting at the weathervane on St Mary’s church.

You can read more about the Ancient High House here.

Incidentally we found all the mice…