Tag: Manor

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#365daysofbiking Solid air:

December 11th – Heading back to work after an errand into Walsall at lunchtime, the air was misty, smoggy and heavy and caught the weak sunlight in an unusual way.

I could feel the exhaust fumes trapped low to the ground, but the effect was quite beautiful.

Sad to see the old Workhouse Guardian’s Office, listed but still rotting and vacant, marooned before the monolithic Walsall Manor Hospital.

As far as I know its the only part of the Victorian municipal workhouse in Walsall to survive, and is a remarkable building. Cruelly stranded and ignored by the hospital redevelopment, it sits forlorn an lost, waiting for a use to emerge.

Even down on it’s uppers, it’s a gorgeous building still.

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#365daysofbiking Not forgotten:

December 6th – In an otherwise unremarkable, workaday wall  on a main road in Place, Walsall, one of the UK’s many hundreds of industrial memorials to the lost employees in the Great War.

The fourteen lost souls listed on the memorial worked for the Cyclops Foundry which was near where the plaque is now, and has long since passed into history – but the original memorial was saved and restored by the NHS, who operate Walsall Manor Hospital, opposite, not once, but twice: They refurbished the memorial in 1989, and replaced it totally in 2002.

I’m glad it survived and still stands today, bearing witness to those lives lost, and it’s good to see that 100 years on, people still place crosses here to remember them.

#365daysofbiking Wellness:

November 1st – I’m running behind at the moment, please bear with me. 

I had to go to the hospital for an appointment, and went from work mid morning. I was apprehensive, tense, and sad. I looked back down the Walsall Canal from where I came and noticed the curious, dull sunlight on the yellowing trees.

I felt the very chill of autumn in my bones there and then. However beautiful, autumn is always, always melancholy.

November 9th – Since it’s Remembrance, I thought I’d feature this little-noticed war memorial, which I pass often. It sits in an anonymous, unremarkable wall near shops and industrial units on the Pleck Road in Walsall, just opposite the Manor Hospital.

I know nothing at all about the Cyclops Iron Works, and must check it out, but it’s nice the memorial was restored and survived, unlike many other industrial plaques which were lost as factories closed.

I wonder how many pass this every day, and not realise what it is?

February 28th – Returning from work mid-afternoon, with shopping to fetch, I came through Aldridge. Just opposite the Manor House I spotted these rings of crocuses planted around young saplings, themselves strongly in blossom. The sight and intensity of the flowers was a tonic, and the blossom beautiful in its delicacy.

Spring? This’ll do. 

February 1st – I nipped into Aldridge for a change and some fresh air, at lunchtime before the weather broke again. It was very windy indeed, and cycling against it was hard; but I knew it would, at least, blow me home.

Sometimes the very art of cycling is to head off into the wind.

I took a look at Aldridge Manor House – once the home of Walsall Youth Services, and still location of a great youth club. This well-loved building and the services it hosts are hanging in limbo; Walsall Council spotted the monetary value of this listed building, and having little other family silver to sell, the million or so it may receive for a sordid development opportunity proved too much for burghers to resist.

Interestingly, closure dates have been continually exceeded and postponed as the Council seems unable to find a suitable location in which to host the displaced youth club, and buyers seem to be in no particular hurry.

I’ve got a piss-up I’d like organised. I figure a brewery might be a really good place to hold it. I don’t think I’ll ask the council to organise it – all evidence suggests they’re incapable of such a task.