For plenty of family fun, cut to the Chase
IT CAN take years to create a reputation which can then be lost overnight.
And so it is even with a natural marvel like Cannock Chase.
Millions of years of heat and ice formations have played their part in creating Britain’s smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, currently celebrating its 50th anniversary since official designation on September 16, 1958.
Yet every time I hear it mentioned there’s only one subject which springs to mind.
The car park antics of shamed soccer star Stanley Victor Collymore in the spring of 2004.
Funny that. Every time I drove past a car park in one of England’s most beautiful spots, it was impossible not to think of the former Villa player doing the area a greater disservice than anyone in history. It’s a sorry episode that you certainly won’t find noted at the splendid, family-friendly Museum of Cannock Chase.
Set to celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, the museum resembles a mini, indoor version of the Black Country Living Museum and comes complete with school holiday art workshops.
It certainly lives up to a promise to give both local residents and visitors a ‘sense of place and the opportunity to actively partake in the preservation and exploration of the area’s cultural heritage’.
The ground floor features a pleasant shop stocked with books and items of local interest as well as a small cafe serving hot and cold drinks as well as snacks.
There’s also testimony to the importance that coal mining played in the development of the wider area, including the chance to walk through a coal face model upstairs.
As good as it was unexpected, the terrific toy museum upstairs brought back lots of memories when I found ‘my’ old plastic cash register with till receipts.
The history of toys throughout the 20th century is depicted on the walls and the cabinets include early examples of Sooty, Sweep and Soo.
Still featuring a giant pit wheel at the front door, the museum site is at the gateway to the Hednesford Hills Nature Reserve.
Recently closed for a six-month, Heritage Lottery Funded refurbishment, the building was once the corn store of the Valley Colliery, a training pit for the thousands of men who would earn their living digging out the black stuff.
Temporary displays compliment the permanent exhibits.
Until October 12, Changing Landscapes is a collection of images from a national survey of the coal industry in the 1980s.
From October 20-November 14, there will be a series of pop art portraits by Pete Mason, using postage stamp collage to portray politicians, sports personalities and royalty.
From November 24-December 19, Behind the Lens will showcase some local Press photographers.
After spending an enjoyable couple of hours here, we drove to the visitor centre at Cannock Chase itself. A disappointingly nondescript building on the outside, it’s a room of two halves on the inside.
Displays illustrating the local natural history of Cannock Chase reminded me of Sutton Park’s visitor centre.
There’s also a cafe, where a substantial and delicious slice of homemade walnut cake with a pot of good, afternoon tea was a £2.20 component in a £6 bill which also included a large and small ice lolly, a fruit drink and another cup of tea.
Having been indoors or in the car for much of the day, our three children were delighted to let off steam for an hour on the wooden adventure playground, as well as booting our ball around the open grassland.
The Chase is still 40 per cent woodland and, thanks to last weekend’s large forestry exhibition causing a fair amount of traffic congestion, we ended up not venturing further afield to see what still includes the Midlands’ largest area of precious, lowland heathland.
Nor did we see any of the wild Red, Fallow and Muntjac deer which are thought to have been introduced in Norman times for hunting purposes.
But our appetites have been whetted for an area which also includes military cemeteries, war memorials, dry pits, a glacial boulder from Scotland, a Castle Ring and views over Staffordshire’s Vale of Trent from Brereton Spurs Picnic Place. .(take Stile Cop Road off the A460).
We’ll be back!
* Visitor Info
* Museum of Cannock Chase, Valley Road,Hednesford, Cannock Telephone: 01543 877666
Website: www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk/museum
Open: daily from 11am-5pm from Easter to the end of September and from 11am- 4pm Monday to Friday from this October to Good Friday, 2009.
* Cannock Chase Visitor Centre, Marquis Drive, Cannock Chase, Hednesford, Cannock, Staffordshire WS12 4PW.
Telephone: 01543 876741
Open: from 10am till 5pm from Good Friday to August Bank Holiday and during the rest of the year from 11am- 3pm Monday to Friday and from 10am-4pm at weekends.
