Tag: Cannock

August 18th – I passed through West Hill in Cannock on the way to Pye Green. I always come this way if I’m heading to the west of the Chase, but the hills are punishing. Today, I stopped to take a drink and noticed West Hill Primary School. What a fine bit of Victorian, municipal architecture it is. Huge windows, fantastically detailed in execution, the brickwork around the gables and eaves is a joy to behold, as are the decorative ironwork – just look at the floral finials. Good job they chose regular numbers and not Roman for the date inscription, that gable would have to have been a lot wider…

Then, as I moved on a little, I spotted what must have been the original school house; plainer, simpler, but again with lovely arched end windows and imposing chimneys. 

This is a fine school indeed. 

April 10th – I notice it’s still for sale, the old Veolia site in Lindon Road on the Walsall Wood/Brownhills border. This chemical waste disposal facility, an old pit shaft, was filled with industrial effluent in the 70s and 80s. When it was full,  the company kept their labs and offices here and moved the site to a different pit system at Stubbers Green, in Aldridge.

The company names operating this facility changed regularly; Effluent Disposal, Leigh Environmental, Sarp, Veolia.

The site is large, mostly empty, including the Victorian house out front used as offices for some years. There are only a skeleton staff here, as administration moved to shiny new offices up in Cannock a year or so ago, leaving this site mostly deserted. 

Whoever buys this will get a lot of land. But as a former mine, the land is contaminated from the colliery, let alone later uses. Any buyer will have to deal with the shaft itself, down which the poison was poured.

Don’t think about entering this place; the security is full on and tight, and there are still people here. I wonder what will become of this site, and the secrets it keeps.

October 7th – Bridgtown, in Cannock, is a quirky little place. In essence, a former mining community, it exists as a little island all on it’s own. Although it is part of the wider Cannock conurbation, it seems to be separate, and has idiosyncratic, brick-paved side streets full of great victorian terraces. It also a a very distinctive range of shops, and I’ve never worked out quite why. Here, you can buy vintage clothing, Landrover spares, traditional sweets, or a tarot reading. This is a great place, and I’ve never worked out why it’s so unique.

December 27th – Pritchard-tecture is a curse or a blessing in South Staffordshire, depending on your point of view. The Hednesford based developers have been responsible for much of the commercial redevelopment of brownfield sites around Cannock, Burntwood and Rugeley, often on former mining land. Such faith and confidence in the local economy is wonderful, but the buildings created are not to everyone’s taste. The curved, gaudy, glass and neon structures are certainly distinctive. Here at Great Wyrley, the futuristic buildings certainly improve on their background – the Poplars Landfill site. Give Mr. Pritchard a break, folks…

December 27th – I had some stuff to get from Maplin, on the Orbital Centre in Cannock. I hate cycling there – the ride is so very boring. I compensated myself by tearing up Brownhills Common first. After a run up the A5 to the Washbrook Lane junction, near the burnt-out Watermargin restaurant, I turned up the new road and over the M6 Toll flyover. They must have been having some kind of IT problem – the road wasn’t really that busy, yet there were queues at the toll gates. I’ve not seen that before. Good evening, lemmings…