The Joy of Six 1441

"His central idea, as he has written before, is that people should own their data. Personal data is any data that can be linked to us, such as our purchasing habits, health information and political opinions." Alex Zarifis on Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the future of the internet.

Sarah Lyons on the ubiquity of violence towards women: "The one man present was in total shock, he had never heard women talk so candidly like this before, the way we talk amongst ourselves, and he genuinely could not comprehend how much violence we had all collectively endured He left that night visibly shaken, changed."

Niamh Gallagher reviews a history of the Great Famine: "There is no doubt that food was available in Ireland throughout the crisis – just not to those who needed it most. The year 1845 was a vintage one for oats; in 1846, 3.3 million acres were planted with grain, and Irish farms raised more than 2.5 million cattle, 2.2 million sheep and 600,000 pigs, most of which were exported to Britain." 

"For a man who said he hated politics, it is exactly his uncompromising sense of right and his engagement with the world that will make his legacy everlasting." Kenny Monrose pays tribute to Jimmy Cliff.

Jude Rogers says the Eighties television series Edge of Darkness speaks to the Britain of 2025: "As well as trusting its viewers with the complexity of its plot, much of the making of Edge Of Darkness was also audacious. It pioneered the use of Steadicam in its first episode, following Peck from his hotel room in the lift, through the foyer, down the stairs to a basement garage to meet shadowy government attaché Pendleton."

"Early 1645 Parliamentary forces seized Shrewsbury. In June 800 Parliamentarian men pushed south towards Ludlow, attacking Stokesay en route. The garrison were heavily outnumbered and defending what was now essentially an ornamental castle. A bit of back and forth parlay and the garrison surrendered." Keep Your Powder Dry has a survey of Civil War sites in Shropshire that confirms Stokesay Castle was built chiefly for show.

Stokesay Castle and the Church of St John the Baptist, Stokesay

Stokesay Castle dates from the late 13th century, when there was no longer a fear of attacks from Wales, so it was built for show rather than defence. The half-timbered gatehouse is 17th century, as (largely) is the church, which was badly damaged in a Civil War skirmish.

I have visited and photographed Stokesay many times - here are some pictures from my latest look round the site.

It used to be possible to have tea in the castle courtyard, where birds would steal crumbs from your table. These days there is a separate cafe at Stokesay. I'm not overimpressed by it, so if you want tea and cake I recommend the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre up the road in Craven Arms.

Shropshire: It's more like it was now than it was then

As my Twitter followers may have gathered, I've made it back to Shropshire for a few days.

Of course, there have been changes. The Plough at Wistanstow has closed. You can't have tea in the courtyard at Stokesay Castle any more. The Land of Lost Content museum at Craven Arms really has gone.

But then I decided I was looking at things the wrong way. My memories of exploring the Shropshire hills cover nearly 30 years from the late 1980s - I first encountered Snailbeach and the Stiperstones on the day we won an important qualifying-group game against Poland on our way to Italia 90.

As a result, what I have is a jumble of memories that I sometimes struggle to put together into a single holiday or even a single day. 

Where, for instance, was I walking to or from when I discovered the little Catholic chapel at Plowden? I think it was on a walk from Church Stretton to Bishop's Castle - the first time I saw the latter town - but I may well be wrong.

So I decided to stop hankering for a past that may never quite have been and make some new memories. I went to look for Halford church on the other side of the Onny from Craven Arms. 

Not only did I find the church, I also found an agricultural village that long predated the founding of the town. I won't share the photos with your today - this is, after all, meant to be a holiday - instead, the photo above shows the Plough in its pomp

I shall leave you with a thought from the Shropshire-based sitcom The Green Green Grass. In one episode, an American returned to the county, where he had been stationed in the Sixties, and wondered if it had changed.

"Oh no," a local reassured him, "It's not changed. If anything, it's more like it was now than it was then."

Stokesay Castle from the air in 1948

Taken in 1948, this aerial photograph shows Stokesay Castle, its half-timbered gatehouse and the church of St John the Baptist. Stokesay lies just to the south of Craven Arms in Shropshire.

St John the Baptist was substantially rebuilt in the 17th century after it suffered serious damage in a Civil War skirmish.

You can see more photos of Stokesay on this blog.

Shropshire in colour, 1960

Click on the still of Stokesay Castle above to view a film of Bridgnorth Camera Club's 1960 treasure hunt on the BFI's Britain on Film site.

Improvements completed at Stokesay Castle

I seem to have writer's block when it comes to politics at the moment, so here's some good news from the Shropshire Star:

A £620,000 project at one of Shropshire’s most popular historic attractions has been completed. 

English Heritage has spent the last few years on improvement works at Stokesay Castle, with the introduction of a tearoom and better interpretation within the castle, and has now completed the final stage – a refresh of the gardens. 

The Ghost of Jimi Hendrix at Stokesay Castle

Jimi Hendrix, aged only 27, died on this day in 1970.

Eighteen years later John James published a slim pamphlet of poems with the irresistible title The Ghost of Jimi Hendrix at Stokesay Castle.

Irresistible to me at least. I bought his Collected Poems just to get hold of the poems that pamphlet contained:

you can't believe everything you see & hear can you
the old heroes of desire sleeping where Handel slept
it's a long way from the surf
& the sign for victory equals peace
the River Onny & its mood of total calm 

when you're dead you're made for life

James may be the first poet since A,E. Housman to mention the River Onny. Unlike Housman, he spells it correctly.

Junior jousting live from Stokesay Castle

When I got to Stokesay Castle...

Yes, it's time for me to start sharing my snaps from my recent visit to Shropshire. You will find I have taken the precaution of locking the doors.

When I got to Stokesay Castle I found the interior was given over to vaguely medieval activities for children. They were presided over by a Muslim woman and youth.

A sword battle ensued. When the youth called out "Kill them!" to his team, and then put his hand over his mouth as if he had gone too far, I responded "That's the spirit!" in my best Lord Bonkers voice.

A Shropshire slideshow

Embed from Getty Images

Following Music in Leicester, here is another slideshow using a new Getty Images feature.

The Old Grammar School, Market Harborough, and Stokesay Castle

Market Harborough's Old Grammar School has emerged from its wrappings with a different colour scheme to the black-and-white one we are used to.

The new colours grow on me a little more every time I see them and I have worked out which building the Old Grammar School now reminds me of.

I have worked it out. It is the gatehouse at Stokesay Castle in Shropshire.

Stokesay Castle and its gatehouse

The medieval castle is in the foreground and the 17th-century gatehouse is in the background.

The oddness of Craven Arms

Craven Arms is an odd little 19th-century town in Shropshire. It came into being because of a railway junction, was named after a hotel and grew into a major centre for livestock auctions.

The livestock has gone and the railway station is not what it was. Today you will find a straggle of light industry and haulage depots, some modern building in the railway yard and opposite the Craven Arms hotel, and a little Victorian town centre just off the main road.

Most of the shops are in that town centre, along one side of Corvedale Road - the other side does not look as though it was developed until some time into the 20th century.

I have read that Market Street, which comes off it, was meant to be the main shopping street but somehow never took off. Certainly, there are plenty of houses along it that look as though they were built as shops or used to be shops.

It struck me when I was there that last week that one reason for the town's oddness is that it has no parish church. That is to be found nearly a mile away at Stokesay.

There are two tourist attractions in the town. The Secret Hills Discovery Centre is one of the Millennial Blairite projects that has struggled to generate enough income to stay open - it now closes on Mondays.

More flourishing is The Land of Lost Content, which claims to house the world's largest archive of 20th-century popular culture.

My latest column for the Leicester Mercury: Clegg will stay but things must change

Partly written at Stokesay Castle, this opinion piece was due to be published in Wednesday's Leicester Mercury. I cannot find it online, so here is the whole thing.

Time for the Liberal Democrats to reconnect with their voters

Nick Clegg will stay as Liberal Democrat leader. The only credible alternative was a Vince Cable caretaker leadership, but the events of last week have made that unlikely. And even without them, I suspect the opportunity came a couple of years too late for him.

But that does not mean Nick Clegg can carry on as if nothing has happened. The Liberal Democrats' results in the local and European elections were deeply disappointing. We lost 11 of our 12 MEPs and nearly 300 local councillors.

And it is not just this year's results. The loss of councillors has been going on for years. There are councils we used to run, or have hopes of running, where there is no Liberal Democrat left.

What has caused this slump in the party's fortunes? The easy answer is that the Liberal Democrats have become part of the government and done it at a time of great economic difficulty. But there is more to it than that.

Ever since the Coalition was formed, Nick Clegg's advisers have told us we must move from being a party of protest to being a party of government. But that phrase is not so impressive if you look at it closely.

We are not in government because Nick Clegg is a better leader than Charles Kennedy or Paddy Ashdown. We are in government because Labour and the Conservatives finished in a near tie and we held the balance of power as a result.

And being a party of government has been interpreted as meaning that we have to give up on the people who have voted for us in the past.

We know what a traditional Liberal Democrat voter looks like: they care about the environment, they believe in public services and do not want society to become too unequal. What no one knows is what the new Lib Dem voter will look like.

Yes, we deserve credit for cutting taxes for the low paid and for providing sound government so the recovery can take place. But there is no sign that this will be enough to recruit millions of new voters.

Nick Clegg needs to change. After four years in power in an age of austerity we can't expect him to be popular, but we should expect some grudging respect. And I do not sense that from enough voters.

So let's hear Nick talk more about what the Lib Dems want to do in the future and less about what he has stopped the Tories doing.

And let's not be afraid to appeal to our traditional voters. We will not thrive without them.

Old Bill: From Craven Arms to St John the Baptist, Stokesay

This is Old Bill, who was set up in the odd little Shropshire town of Craven Arms to be its war memorial. You can see him standing beside the main road in this old photograph.

At some point, because of a road-widening scheme, he was moved to a very different setting. Old Bill is now on parade in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Stokesay. This church, which stands next to Stokesay Castle, was partly destroyed in a Civil War skirmish and rebuilt later in the 17th century.

The lump you can see behind Old Bill in the photograph below turns out, very unexpectedly, to be a dolphin.

The birds of Stokesay Castle

Stokesay Castle is a fortified medieval manor house (fortified more for show than for defence) standing just to the south of the Shropshire town of Craven Arms. I have blogged about it before and will no doubt do so again.

I was there this afternoon, drinking tea, reading Jonathan Meades, writing a column for the Leicester Mercury and dodging the showers.

A primary school party turned up to draw and paint the castle, adding to the fun of the afternoon.

They were too well behaved to disrupt the local birdlife - swallows returning again and again to their nests through the lancet windows and sparrows waiting for cake crumbs.

Why village schools are threatened in Shropshire

Keith Barrow, leader of Conservative-run Shropshire, has spoken:

“There will be no council tax increases in Shropshire over the next two years and, in 2013, council tax will go down to the lowest level in Shropshire."

I'm not sure I understand the second half of that sentence, but then Mr Barrow seems to have problems with expressing himself. "I cannot understate the size of the journey we have in front of us, nor the hurdles that we will encounter along the way," he says later in the same press release.

What is clear is that Shropshire Tories' macho determination to freeze Council Tax is having serious effects on the quality of life in the county over and above the pressures caused by the cut in its grant from central government.

One example of this are the plans to close nine schools in the county - mainly village primary schools. The video above is the latest move in the campaign to save one of them: Stiperstones Primary School.

Peter Phillips is the Liberal Democrat councillor for Bishop's Castle  - I bought a book of his poems last time I was in his ward. He told the Shropshire Star:

Shropshire’s primary numbers bottom out this year and will then gently rise. It is difficult to understand why the myth of falling primary numbers has persisted — it is untrue.

“The savings are purely and demonstrably speculative. They remain unknown until a school has actually been closed, and there is a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that ‘collateral damage’ generates much additional cost not only to the council but to other public bodies and the community.”

The same newspaper story reports that  children from the threatened primary school at Onibury, which has been deemed to be satisfactory, are being offered places at Stokesay, which has been served with a notice to improve.

If all the Conservative talk of the Big Society and empowering local communities means anything, then the council will overturn this decision or the government will grant parents the powers to force them to overturn it. In many ways Shropshire is a litmus test of the sincerity of Cameroon Conservatism.

The Time Team at Hopton Castle

This afternoon's Time Team was fascinating - a dig at Hopton Castle, near Clun, in Shropshire. The Parliamentarian garrison of Hopton was massacred when it fell after a Royalist siege during the Civil War.

The massacre became notorious, at least in Parliamentarian propaganda. 17th Century Life and Times explains:

At Hopton castle in 1644 after repeated attacks the parliamentarian garrison of about 30 men finally surrendered. The prisoners where herded into the castle cellar, striped naked, beaten then taken to the moat where they were summarily executed by the by now drunken royalists.

For years after the parliamentarians would offer royalists troops "Hopton Quarter" only, in revenge, much like the "Madeburg Mercy" of the 30 years war.

As the Time Team dig made clear, Hopton was not really built for defence. It was a largely domestic, ornamental building that became the scene of real warfare. A less serious Civil War skirmish took place at the similar Stokesay Castle nearby.

And a report in the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser last year told of plans to preserve the ruins at Hopton:

Hopton Castle Preservation Trust has just signed a contract with Conservation Building Services Ltd for repair work which will turn it from a dangerous and inaccessible ruin into a safe and interesting destination for visitors.

Work, which will start this month, will take about a year and will include repairing stonework, supporting crumbling arches and making a level floor for visitors.

There will also be a new entrance and some information about the history of the castle, its owners and its place in history.