The Blackberry Walk

In retrospect, City Review wasn't the best name for this series, given that I'll be visiting towns as well as cities. Hey ho. A couple weeks ago now, I took the train to Stafford, the county town of Staffordshire. The journey was longer than my past adventures, owing to the fact that Stafford sits in the West Midlands rather than the East. My journey began with near calamity; the first train arrived late, with a change over of only five minutes. Tamworth station, the station at which I changed, was more maze-like than the size of the station let on, with two levels of tracks pointing perpendicularly to one another. With the help of the conductor, though, I managed to find the connecting train. Arriving at Stafford station, I was overcome by how hideous the concrete monstrosity was. Unlike the wonderful stations I'd been to so far, like Nottingham station and the Victorian red-brick Leicester station, Stafford was a breath of musty air stinking of the rot of 60s Brutalism. Outside the station, I waited for my friend who was late. I waited around for about ten minutes, after which I got bored and headed for a walk around Victoria park which lies just across the road. The park dates to the Edwardian era, and has plenty of charm points: one of those quaint Victorian bandstands (inevitably populated with chavs, however); the once navigable, pretty river Sow, which is a tributary of the Trent; along with a few aviaries with pointlessly thick metal gratings by the cricket pitch. Overall, a very pleasant park. At the park also, I bumped in to my friend, a local Staffordian, who was now looking for me. We greeted, and decided to head on next to the high street. The high street was living, just about - the scars of covid were evident with roughly a third of the shops shuttered; but the high street was busy and people were shopping. Few of the shops were very interesting though, most of them being the big 'high street brands'. One shop was an exception, however: a massive Tudor house stood proud of the other shops in the centre of the high street. Thinking the shop was a building of note, I asked my friend what it was, but he had no clue and had never been inside. Curious, we headed inside to discover the shop was in fact a museum, with the building dating back to Tudor times. Each room of the house was dressed and decorated in the decorum of an era in which the house was lived; so there was a Tudor room, a Georgian room, a Victorian room, etc. The house's claim to fame is the housing King Charles I for a night shortly after the beginning of the civil war. I thought this was really cool, but my friend replied, "there was a civil war in the UK?" I'll reserve my comments... In the attic was a military museum for the Stafford Yeomanry, housing many medals, uniforms and sabers. A good find, that museum was. After our museum visit, we got some lunch at Greggs, and walked about a little more to do some exploring. The high street felt like many a high street, but had a nice feel to it, even though a third of the shops were missing. At the top of the high street was the independent shopping centre, which we entered to have a look around. The inside was shocking. The shopping centre was dead; hardly a shop was open. If I recall 80-90% of all the shops had closed down, leaving just a hair salon, a nail bar, and a Boots. Looking at towns like Stafford, you can see it wasn't just people that covid killed - Nottingham has lost a few businesses, but being a big enough city, it's been able to survive and hopefully spring back in years to come. Smaller cities like Stafford simply can't compete with a half hour drive to Wolverhampton or Stoke-on-Trent. With the bigger shopping centre chains like Intu collapsing, who's going to buy up these failing malls? Do people want to go to these American-style malls anymore? In truth, I wouldn't be that sad if they disappeared, so long as the high streets live on and the buildings are repurposed. We then headed to the castle. On our walk, we first passed St. Chad's church, a very pretty, old Norman church built soon after the creation of the castle; then, we passed a massive housing development, filled with affluent-looking new-build houses. Many looked pristine and untouched; some looked like families had recently moved in; and others were in the process of being built. The question on my mind was, "can this town support so many new houses?" The town centre appears to be imploding post-covid, but all the while the outer rim of the town grows ever denser with houses: are these doughnut-shaped towns the towns of the future? Towns where people live far from the humdrum of large cities, but are close enough to fetch groceries? After walking for a while through a strip of woodland bordering a gold course, we came upon the slightly known Stafford castle. The castle unfortunately is a ruin; much like Nottingham castle, Stafford castle was owned by a Royalist and was wrecked after the Civil War. But what remains is rather pretty, in a melancholic yet picturesque way. You can mentally lay the stone and mortar of the missing portions of the castle and imagine the beauty of the castle's former glory. We wandered around for a little while, before heading back down the hill to the town centre. Then after being led on a tour of my friend's house, we visited a rather lovely pub which served a local ale for only two quid. Such prices are unthinkable in Nottingham, unless you're going to Spoons; but in the town of Stafford, pubs appear to be just cheaper. We sat for a chat in the September sun sipping our pints until it was time to head off: the train journey is rather long back to Nottingham. Overall, Stafford has quite a lot of charm as an old town: the area has a quaint feel whilst being a rather large and populated. And it seems many are enamoured by Stafford's charms, as shown by the housing boom on its outskirts which, from what I've seen at least, is far too many houses for the town to manage. Granted, I haven't seen Stafford at its healthiest with many of the shops closed; but will they be reborn? Or has internet shopping and a short drive to Wolverhampton nailed their coffins? Stafford might be on the road to becoming a commuter town for Birmingham and Wolverhampton - the main road was certainly busy enough. But the commuter is the death of the community; we'll have to see whether Stafford ends up as a doughnut town with no centre, or manages to regrow from the ashes of covid. 6/10