The Distancing Diaries - 9th & 10th April, 2021

On Friday I did a load of washing and, as it was raining, hung it in the utility room to dry then booked our next National Trust outing. We'll be revisiting a favourite property which, much to our utter delight, we've discovered it was the ancestral home of Jon's 9x great grandmother (genealogy, the gift that keeps on giving!). After my Wii Fit workout, I caught up with blogland before joining Jon in the kitchen for breakfast. 

Jon did the supermarket run and popped round to Tony's who, after almost four months on furlough, returns to work on Monday when non-essential shops are allowed to reopen. I gave the bathroom a thorough clean before settling down to a bit more ancestry.

My beloved Grandpa (Mum's father), Reginald William Harris (1913 - 1980), bought Stonecroft in 1952. Like generations of his family before him, Reg grew up in Stone in Staffordshire (twenty-seven miles up the road from Walsall), the area is known as The Potteries, so-called as it was the centre of ceramic production from the early 17th century due to the local availability of clay, salt, lead and coal. When his aunt Phyllis (his mother's sister) researched the family tree she followed her father Thomas's branch so I decided to investigate his mother Alice's heritage. Once I'd found her grandmother I noticed that the family members were listed as residing in very grand-sounding houses such as Byrches Head Manor, Fenton Hall and Bucknall Hall. What on earth was going on? Once I got to my 8 x great grandfather, Edward Adams of Bank House, Bagnall (1661 -1727) I discovered why. My family was one of Staffordshire's great pottery dynasties, The Adamses. I didn't have a clue!

Edward Adams of Bank House, Bagnall (1621 - 1727)

Bank House, Bagnall, Staffordshire

My six times great-grandfather, William Adams of Bank House, Bagnall and Cobridge Gate (1702 - 1775) was, like his father and grandfather before him, a master potter. He was one of three North Staffordshire William Adams potters working around this time, all cousins. The Adams's founded the Greengates Pottery, producing fine jasperware table sets, plaques, medallions and other products stamped Adams & Co. One of the cousins was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood where the master noted that he was my favourite pupil. They remained lifelong friends and the family leased their Brickhouse Pottery to Josiah Wedgwood until 1772 when he moved to his premises in Etruria. Greengates Pottery was absorbed into the Wedgwood group in 1966.

Greengates Pottery, circa 1780

I knew there was a reason why I love The Great Pottery Throwdown! 

Greengates bottle kilns (circa 1880)

To further add to my excitement, Izzy the postman arrived with two parcels, one containing another Gujarati kediya - this one a traditional hand-embroidered Rabari piece that had been listed as a boho blouse. I was the only bidder.

 The other was a box packed with some fabulous goodies from my lovely friend Lynn who'd been having a clearout and had thought of the Kinky rails as well as some veg seeds donated by her wonderful mum. That silk Johnny Was dress is already hanging in my wardrobe!

After lunch, Jon and I braved the rain and walked into town. The last time we'd visited Wilko they had some raspberry bushes for £2.99 but as we were already loaded down with shopping we didn't get one. Typically they'd sold out since then so we compensated by buying a few packets of seeds instead.

Back at home we had a cup of tea and learnt that Prince Phillip had died. We watched the news for a bit before planting our new seeds.

A lady shouted I love your look, bab! as we walked into town. I'm wearing my Anokhi riding coat (Jaipur, 2019), a vintage hand-painted maxi dress by Kate Beaver (99p, charity shop, 2014),my Mexican tooled leather bag (eBay. 2019), my trusty alpaca wool beer mittens (End of the Road festival, 2015) and a me-made pompom hat.

After sag aloo sausages, mashed potato, peas and home-grown purple sprouting broccoli we watched Gardening with Carol Klein as the BBC had cancelled Gardener's World to show extended footage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death. We also watched Waking The Dead and drank rum but I was sent to bed at 10pm as I kept nodding off  (I'd been awake since 5am). 

On Saturday morning Jon was up first, made tea and brought it back to bed where we lay and read until 8am. Leaving Jon on plant duty, I stripped & changed the bed, cleaned the bedroom, loaded the washing machine and pegged the washing out we had pain au chocolat for breakfast. 

As it was dry, we spent the day outside. I repotted our four olive trees and a few houseplants and potted up some of the many sempervivums into the teeny antique terracotta pots I'd rescued from the parental home before I sold it. Jon started off by resiting the gazebo ready for planting up (he's treated us to a climbing rose) and then went completely mad, hacking away at the wilderness beyond the pond. The garden is double the size now!

After a break for a cheese, potato and onion pasty, we watched some of the Duke of Edinburgh's 41-gun salute then we continued with the gardening until mid-afternoon when the sky went a very ominous shade of grey. We'd just put all the tools away it started to snow - as we'd been working flat-out all day we hadn't even noticed it was cold!

Tea was Jon's homemade vegetable tikka with masala chips, half a naan and some coriander freshly cut from the new herb bed. Tonight we'll be drinking rum and watching last night's postponed Gardener's World, although judging by the state of Jon I think he'll be asleep even earlier than I was last night.

See you soon!