David Barker organised an outing to Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and Blue John Cavern on April 25th. 2018.

 Please click on individual photos to enlarge

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet is a unique eighteenth century industrial works. Catch a glimpse of life at home and at work at a rural scythe and steelworks dating back to the 18th century.

Abbeydale Works was once a producer of agricultural tools and the largest water-powered industrial site on the River Sheaf. It is now a group of Grade I and Grade II listed buildings and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

See the Manager’s House and Worker’s Cottage, waterwheels, workshops, tilt hammers, a grinding hull, steam engine and the last complete surviving crucible steel furnance in the UK!

Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet has been restored and transformed following a 3 year £1million Heritage Lottery Funded restoration project completed in 2016.

The new gallery tells the story behind the works, its people and their working lives.

The world famous Blue John Cavern in Castleton in the  Peak District has been said to be the finest that can be seen by the general public in Western Europe.

Chenies Manor House and Gardens, Buckinghamshire

• Sunday July 15th. 2018
• Cost: £30.00 to include tour of the house, gardens, displays bu nurseries and return coach travel

Full details and booking slip are included in the FEBRUARY edition of your PHOENIX Newsletter

This outing was led by David Wilkinson who is the retired Stafford Borough archaeologist and who used to live and work in Cirencester, known as the capital of the Cotswolds.

Janet arranged an outing to Rode Hall, one of Cheshire’s most exquisite country houses.  Discover more about its rich heritage and how the Baker Wilbraham family who have owned it for approaching three hundred and fifty years, have contended with the challenges of social change and architectural trends through to its ongoing conservation and restoration today.

Rode’s Grade II listed park and gardens are amongst the finest in Cheshire.  A seventeenth-century survey described ‘orchards, gardens and courts within the Greene before ye hall’ but there are no further records of the grounds until 1790 when Richard Wilbraham Bootle commissioned a ‘Red Book’ from the landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752 – 1818).

https://www.britishironworkcentre.co.uk/

Pat Wilkinson wrote the following letter after the visit to the British Ironwork Centre

Dear Sarah,

I am so sorry we didn’t report as you suggested at reception . I simply had not read your letter, however I have to thank you and tell you how much we enjoyed it.

You will be pleased to know the coach driver was also most impressed and is going to recommend a visit by his coach company .

My son who recommended it to me in the first instance, has promised me he will visit after getting a resounding praise from various members of the group.. We shall certainly put it on the group itinery for a visit in the future.

Many thanks for a successful visit

Sincerely

Pat Wilkinson