I was delighted to take part in the debate in Westminster Hall yesterday on the 'Cultural contribution of Staffordshire'. It was great to be able to speak about our very special Staffordshire Moorlands ahead of Staffordshire Day on May 1st.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) on securing this important debate in the week of Staffordshire Day. As a proud resident of Arnold Bennett’s Axe and the representative of the head of the River Trent, which gives my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) and others such wonderful beer, it is an honour to take part in the debate.
I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who I will call my hon. Friend, talk about the contribution of the Minton tiles to Parliament, but I want to mention two other contributions that Staffordshire Moorlands has made to this Parliament. The first is a very obvious one: a big family that lives in Staffordshire Moorlands, the Talbots—including the Earl of Shrewsbury—had this very nice house at Alton Towers, and they had a house architect called Augustus Pugin, who designed and created many buildings in that area that are still standing today, including schools and the marvellous St Giles church in Cheadle. Anyone who visits them can see that they are the forerunners for what we see in Central Lobby and across Parliament.
Perhaps slightly lesser known is that Richard Norman Shaw—we know that name—is an architect who also operated in Staffordshire Moorlands. He was the architect of the All Saints church, Spout Hall on St Edward Street and, as we all know, Norman Shaw North and Norman Shaw South. We can all celebrate the fact that Staffordshire Moorlands, and Staffordshire, have played such an important role.
Staffordshire Moorlands also contributed to much of our décor. The arts and crafts movement started at Leek college. William Morris lived and studied in Leek, and came up with many of his original designs there. We have the canals, because James Brindley, the creator and architect of the canals, was a resident of Leek, and it was the canals that allowed our pottery to get to market. If pots are put on the back of a horse and cart, quite a lot of them break, but the canals allow them to be transported to market. The very fine quality pottery that Staffordshire is famous for was possible only because of the canals that James Brindley created.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge said, three minutes is simply not enough time to talk about the whole of the cultural impact that Staffordshire Moorlands and Staffordshire have had in the United Kingdom. Culture is so important. I was a big advocate for Stoke-on-Trent when it was running to be the capital of culture, and it was a great disappointment to me that it was not chosen. I had to recuse myself from the decision. I was then the Minister who would have taken the decision, so I had to step aside and allow my deputy to take it.
I hope we can come together and build something more around culture. The cultural heritage and the feeling of place and belonging are incredibly important to us. That is why I was really pleased last year to run a year of reasons to visit Staffordshire Moorlands—not just Alton Towers, the biggest tourist attraction outside London, or the Peak Wildlife Park, with our fantastic polar bear residents, but the many artists, writers, food producers and others who contribute so much to our fantastic culture. That is why on 1 June I will be starting a year of the Moorlands village. I will not be doing 52 reasons; I will be focusing on a village and a parish every week. This week alone, I visited the Scrumbles cake shop up in Brown Edge, and then went up to one of our nature reserves. I went to see St Luke’s church in Endon, which has an incredible Burne-Jones stained glass window—a source of light of a kind that would not be seen elsewhere. We have so much to offer, and I want everyone to come and visit, not just to go on our rollercoasters, but to see the fantastic industrial heritage and the cultural impact that Staffordshire Moorlands has had. Happy Staffordshire Day.
To read the whole debate please see: Staffordshire: Cultural Contribution - Hansard - UK Parliament
