The Best Way to Get to Know Your own Town...

... is for someone to visit.

I've been very lucky recently in that I've met a wonderful lady (everybody say "awww") but she is not from my home town of Stoke-on-Trent so that gives me the opportunity to take her around Stoke and show her all the sights and sounds of the town. It's great because it means I have to actually look around the town and find out what attractions visitors have to choose from to see what Stoke is all about... but there's a problem.

There's not a whole lot of interesting things to see in Stoke. In fact, pretty much the only reason to visit Stoke is for pottery (if you're into that kind of thing) or oatcakes. Oatcakes are definitely worth the trip as they are awesome, but the pottery industry has mostly moved overseas although signs of our pottery-creating past still scatter the Stoke landscape.

So, I thought to myself. Where can we visit? The first and most obvious local choice was Hanley museum. After all, it is a museum so it must have lots of interesting local things in it, right? Well.... sort of.

Part of the Staffordshire Saxon Hoard

We have part of the Staffordshire hoard of Saxon gold which is pretty impressive and is such an important exhibit it has a rather awkward-looking lady standing near it to with the important task of ensuring kids don't lean on the glass and people know how to use the magnifying glass provided. Here is what happened last time I visited the exhibit:

"Why was the Saxon hoard left in Staffordshire?" an eager child asks.
"Well, it was shared between a museum in Birmingham and one in Stoke." she replied, with a helpful smile.
"No, he wanted to know why it was originally left in Staffordshire. Who buried it?" intervened the child's father.
"Oh. Well, we think it was some Saxons who looted the gold and then buried it for safekeeping." The lady replied.
The father looks at the huge sign above the exhibit saying: 'Saxon Hoard of Gold Found Buried in Field'. I can see he's thinking the same thing as me: This clever lady is just reciting what it says on the sign directly above her. "Right," he says, "so why was it buried? Why did the person who buried it not come back to collect it?"
"Oh," she replies, "we suspect that he was either killed or forgot where he buried it. That's why it wasn't found until recently."
I stifle a snigger and I think the father sees me laugh. I can't help it. The lady is clearly a master detective.

But the great thing with Hanley museum is that there are so many other things to see. Like the dead cat.

Yup, you heard me. The dead cat. No, not a cat that has been stuffed and put in the taxidermy section, it's just a dead cat sitting in a glass case. It's not in any way preserved, it's not a rare species, it's just a dead tabby cat which looks suspiciously like roadkill. I'm convinced that if you lifted it's head, it would have a name tag and an address attached to it. I have no idea what it is doing in the museum but its clear that one day, a (presumably drug-induced) person came into the museum carrying the dead cat (I'll assume in a black bin liner) and said, "Are you a museum?" To which the museum staff would've replied, "Yes, we are sir. How can I help?" The male would've then shuffled, opened the bin bag and said, "Do you want a dead cat?"

Now, in a normal museum in a normal town the staff would've said, "No sir, and we don't like your type around here. We have plenty of historical exhibits here, the last thing we need is roadkill." But, in Stoke, the person must have said, "A dead cat? That would be great! We have an empty case that needs filling and who wouldn't enjoy looking at a dead cat?"

In addition to the dead cat and the gold, we have a transect of what a pond in Stoke looks like. Well, ok, I don't know if that's what it's meant to demonstrate, but it's a pool of murky water filled with trash with a clear screen to look through. Perhaps it's meant to demonstrate how long it takes for rubbish to decompose, but the bottom line is it is a pool of murky water filled with trash.

Thankfully the Supermarine Spitfire exhibit on the bottom floor pretty much saves the museum. It commemorates one of our proudest historical figures: Reginald Mitchell. His aeroplane design helped save Britain from invasion during the Second World War. The fact that he came from Stoke means that we can be forgiven for unleashing Robbie Williams and Edward Smith on the world .

"Who is Edward Smith?" I hear you say.

Oh, he was the captain of the Titanic. Yup. The Titanic sank because a man from Stoke-on-Trent was at the helm.

Edward Smith, Stokie, and proud sinker of the RMS. Titanic

Of course Lemmy (of Motorhead) helps to cancel out that little disaster because everyone loves Lemmy and he is from Stoke.

So, after visiting Hanley museum and seeing the dead cat and the pool of rubbish, where is the next place in Stoke to visit? Well, we've got Ford Green Hall and Little Moreton Hall. Both of them are old wattle and daub houses. Wattle and daub, for those of you who are unaware, is basically cow shit mixed with straw and a bit of clay. So if you really fancy a wonderful day out with the family you can go and spend the day in a house that is literally made of shit.

Another fun place is Gladstone Working Pottery Museum. There, you can laugh at old job titles like 'saggar-maker's bottom-knocker' and you can try to make the people in the period costumes break character. That is a difficult task and I can vouch for that first hand because I did my school work experience at Gladstone and had the wonderful task of dressing up in an itchy old schoolboy's costume and maintaining character... upon pain of death. The lady who instructed me utterly refused to break character, even when there was nobody around. It was ridiculous. She kept calling me 'Stan' and then got frustrated when I didn't answer her. I was punished by having to hoover a 100 year old bottle kiln which was full of 100 years of dust and muck.

Gladstone Working Pottery Museum, Photo credit to Val Vennet

So, after thinking of all these places to visit I decided I would instead take my lovely lady to Trentham Gardens and we did have a great day. In the end walking through nice Italian gardens was probably a little more relaxed and romantic than looking at a dead cat, walking around a shit house or standing in a dusty factory. But it goes to show that you really don't know your town until someone comes to visit.