Staffordshire

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/17734829

For residents of the Bentilee housing estate in Stoke-on-Trent, once one of the largest in Europe and made up almost entirely of social housing, life had undoubtedly been tough.

But for a brief few moments, during one night more than 50 years ago, local people on the sprawling complex of semi-detached houses and cottage flats were “sprinkled with stardust” when dozens witnessed bright lights in the sky and what they believed to be a UFO landing in a nearby field.

The encounter on 2 September 1967, considered to be one of the UK’s greatest urban mysteries, is now being turned into a stage play by the dramatist and former Coronation Street actor Deborah McAndrew.

“When I first saw the archive news footage about the landing of a spaceship on the far fringe of this vast estate, I thought it was a spoof, but it’s not,” McAndrew said.

The playwright, who runs the company Claybody Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent with her husband, Conrad Nelson, has spoken to several eyewitnesses and former residents.

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Those she spoke to included an amateur astronomer called Tony Pace, who, with a colleague, self-published a report at the time entitled “Flying Saucer Report: UFOs, unidentified, undeniable”.

“In it they had details of 70 sightings, with photographs, maps, illustrations, and the reaction of the public, the police and the Ministry of Defence. Tony Pace is now well in his 80s. I’ve created a character that was inspired by him.”

She also spoke to three eyewitnesses, including Dave, a boy at the time of the encounter. “He was sure what he saw wasn’t human or man-made,” McAndrew said. “These are not fanciful or sensational people; he’s not made anything of it. I tracked him down to Peterborough. He just knows what he saw and described it to me.”

So what did he describe? “He said the object was about the size of a car, and that it was red and coloured, like everyone says, and that there was no sound. Then it disappeared.

“By this point there was a lot of excitement. People had run out of their houses because they’d seen this very bright thing from their windows or from the street. Someone fetched the police, and they walked the fields for ages but couldn’t find the object.

“And then all of a sudden, it lifted out of the field, this time white – Dave said it was the brightest thing he’s ever seen. And then it went out like a lightbulb, and everyone was in darkness.”

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Bright Lights Over Bentilee runs at the Dipping House, Spode Works, Stoke-on-Trent from 27 September to 12 October

Period news report

The Headless Horseman of the Staffordshire Moorlands is one of the best known pieces of folklore in the region, but where did it come from? Tracing the story of the horseman back through 650 years of local history, we uncover the shocking true story of medieval murder that lies at the heart of the spectre’s inspiration.

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These are stories that may initially present themselves in such a fantastically supernatural light that the idea of them belonging to actual history at first appears incredulous, and yet upon closer inspection, we may well discover that the details contained within them are so remarkably local that they conspire to suggest signs of something else entirely; the remnants of long-lost folk memories.

I believe that one such tale, and one that has captivated me ever since I first heard it in the Roebuck pub in Leek in late 2006, is that of the Headless Horseman of Butterton; the spectral, if somewhat sinister, jewel in the crown of Staffordshire Moorlands folklore.

Plans to erect a statue of Motörhead frontman Lemmy in the town where he was born have been approved by Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

The 2.2 metre statue will be erected in the market place of Burslem, the town where Lemmy – real name Ian Fraser Kilmister – was born before his family moved to Newcastle-under-Lyme. The majority of the singer’s childhood was spent in Wales before founding Motörhead in 1975.

The statue is estimated to cost about £50,000 and a fundraising campaign has been launched to raise the necessary funds. Once the project has obtained funding, the statue will be made from Staffordshire clay by local sculptor Andy Edwards, the same artist who created the world-famous Beatles statue on Liverpool’s waterfront.

There had been concern from police that the statue would attract “good-natured but potentially incident generating attention”, but Edwards agreed to increase the height of the plinth from 2.5m to 3m to get around this.

This won’t be the only statue of Lemmy to exist. In 2016, a year after the singer and bassist passed away from prostate cancer aged 70, a statue of him was erected at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles.