"Order! Order!" - A Small Bear Goes to Parliament

 

As you may know, my friend Hanley Bear has appointed himself Small Furry Ambassador for the City of Stoke-on-Trent (The Best Place in the World), so when Polar said she could take one Small Bear with her on a visit to the Houses of Parliament, Hanley was very quick to volunteer.

They were travelling by coach with some people from the North Staffordshire Pensioners' Convention.  Hanley settled into the Bear Bag for the journey, wondering what he could do to speak up for Small Bears when he got to meet the Prime Minister, as he was sure he would be expected to as an Ambassador. 

But, when they stopped for a break (Polar ordered hot chocolate without cream, but Hanley asked the barista to add some!), Polar explained that the PM was very busy, but they were being met by some of the Stoke-on-Trent MPs.  "I'm sure there will be lots of questions from the pensioners," she explained.  "I don't think there will be chance for you to ask anything."

Hanley was very disappointed about this, because he wanted to tell the PM Stoke-on-Trent needed more investment and he should do more to help save the environment, so he saved the stirring stick from his drink and tore some card from an old theatre ticket in Polar's bag to make a placard!

"Votes for Small Bears!" he cried.  And he carried on chanting, "What do we want?  Votes for Small Bears!  When do we want them?  Now!" until Polar's friend Mrs Josie came round with some raffle tickets.  Hanley hoped he would win some biscuits, but he was unlucky this time.

When he got to London, Hanley Bear got his placard out again.  "Votes for Small Bears!" he cried, waving it at passers by.  Polar put him back in her bag and told him to be quiet, or he wouldn't be allowed through security - but it was Polar who was nearly in trouble, because she had forgotten she had a small pair of folding plant clippers in the bottom of her bag, which got confiscated!  Hanley Bear was allowed in!

Once they were inside Westminster Hall, Hanley was allowed out of the Bear Bag again.  He thought he saw the door of 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's house, and ran over to it with his placard, but it was only part of an exhibition.

He was pleased that the humans all wanted tea and cake after their long journey (he says the apple shortcake is very good!), but even happier when he found more Small Bears waiting in the gift shop.

"You should be in Parliament voting on important things, not sitting here waiting to be adopted by humans!" Hanley told them.  "Join the Bearvolution!"

But, despite his best efforts, he couldn't get any of them to join him in his "Bearvolution".

"Boooo!" he said to Polar, dropping his little placard back into the bag.  "Politics is harder than I thought!"

While they waited for their tour with the MPs, Polar gave Hanley a little booklet to read about Parliament and how it worked.  Hanley found it very interesting but also very complicated.  He wasn't sure he wanted to be an MP after all.

Hanley was very quiet and well-behaved on the tour, which went from Westminster Hall, into St Stephen's Hall and then into the House of Commons and House of Lords.  Photos were only allowed in the first two places.

Polar was busy looking at the wall paintings and the statues, when Hanley, who was leaning out of the bag looking at everything, started shouting and cheering.

"Look Polar!  Minton tiles!  All the way from Stoke-on-Trent!"

Of course, he was absolutely correct.  The floors in St Stephen's Hall, the central Lobby and other parts of the building were covered in the most glorious medieval-style tiles - but they weren't from the Middle Ages, they were made by craftspeople in Hanley's city in Victorian times.

Hanley was so interested in the tiles, he almost forgot to look at anything except the floors, although he did lean out of the bag to pretend to bite the ankles of a statue of one former PM he knew Polar particularly disliked.  Polar laughed, but wasn't allowed to take his picture, so you will just have to guess who it was.

"So the MPs and their staff and all their visitors are reminded of the Best Place in the World every day, thanks to those brilliant tiles," said Hanley.  "I hope our MPs remember to point them out to them!"

He need not have worried about that, because one of the MPs even called Stoke-on-Trent "the best place in the world" when they were talking to the pensioners and answering their questions, which made little Hanley very pleased indeed. 

Just as everyone was getting ready to go, Mr Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the House of Commons (Hanley says that's like the referee) came through Westminster Hall on his way out.  He was kind enough to stop for photographs with the pensioners, so Hanley got Polar to ask if he could get a picture too.

"Votes for Small Bears!" Hanley tried to shout, but he had been doing so much shouting and cheering by now that his voice was just a little squeak, and Mr Speaker couldn't hear him.  

"I bet he would have agreed with me," he whispered to Polar later.  "I bet he would join the Bearvolution!"

Everyone had enjoyed a very interesting day and had a lot to think about on the way home, including Hanley Bear, although he oon fell sound asleep in the Bear Bag dreaming of the Minton tiles in Parliament and his home town, the Best Place in the World.  

 

Hanley Bear's Centenary Adventures - Part 1: A View to a Kiln

If you have been following my blog posts, you will know that my friend Hanley Bear is very proud of his home city, Stoke-on-Trent, so you can imagine how excited he has been celebrating its 100th anniversary of becoming a city this year.

All year, he has pestered Polar and Grizzly to take him to special events and celebrations, sometimes with other members of the Hug and sometimes on his own, but his special mission has been to visit all of the surviving bottle kilns in The Potteries.

There are supposed to be forty-seven of them.  Luckily, the Potteries Heritage Society produce a map showing where they all are.  Hanley (and our humans) already knew where to find some of them, because they had passed them on the boat, or driven or walked past, but some are hidden away in back streets or parts of the city they hadn't been to before.

As there are so many and, according to Hanley, they are the most important buildings in the world, I am going to do more than one post about his adventures tracking them down.

Hanley started his mission on a very bright day at the end of February 2025, when we took our friends Milly the Mammoth and Blueberry Bear to the Middleport Pottery beside the Trent and Mersey Canal.  Middleport Pottery is famous for using the traditional Victorian decorating technique of printing patterns onto tissue paper which then has to be carefully sponged onto the plates, cups, teapots etc. 

There used to be eight bottle kilns here for firing pottery, but there is only one left - you can see Hanley with that one in the picture a little bit earlier.

Walking north along the towpath, they got a view of another bottle oven (see above).  This one is the only one remaining from the Price and Kensington teapot works.  The site has been bought by Mr Wayne Walker, who runs a wholesale meat shop nearby.  He has already cleaned it up and made some repairs to the buildings and hopes it will one day have new shops and businesses (we hope so too!), but there is a lot to do.

 

Going back down the towpath, south of Middleport is Oliver's Mill.  Hanley got a better view of this more recently, as it was open to visitors during the Heritage Open Days week in September, but from the canal you can see a tall, thin kiln.  We thought this was for firing pottery, as with the others, but actually it was for "calcinating" flint - heating the rock up so that it was made more brittle and easier to grind up for adding to clay to make whiter pottery.

The rectangular tower next to it is also a calcinating kiln - or rather two kilns inside a single outer shell.  Another group of good people are also trying to restore this site and want to make the main building a music venue, which we think would be great.  Hanley hopes they will have rock concerts and Northern Soul nights.

If you make your way up Newport Lane towards Burslem from the canal, there are two more bottle kilns at Furlong Mills, which were also calcinating kilns.  Although the works doesn't use the kilns any more, they do still process minerals for the pottery industry, and other businesses.

Hanley went up the hill from Furlong Mills to see the "Three Sisters", which are not far from Burslem Town Centre.  They have been cleaned up and repaired as they are in the middle of a site where new houses are being built, and are going to be a feature of the new estate.  Hanley Bear was very pleased to see them looking so good.

He thinks it's very cool to have a bottle kiln along your street and says the people who live in the new houses are very, very lucky!

Hanley's last Burslem visit was to Moorland Pottery in Moorland Road.  They make the famous "Stokie Ware" which is sold in gift shops all over the city, including the one at Trentham Gardens.  You can see Hanley posed next to a "Stokie Legend" mug of theirs at the start of this post - because he is a Stokie Legend!

So Hanley's kiln collecting was off to a very good start, but he had lots more to find.  Luckily, Polar had promised to take him to Longton for the Pig Walk Carnival a few weeks later, and I will tell you all about hat happened there in another post, hopefully quite soon.

Tunstall's Travels

One member of our Hug, Tunstall Bear, has been away from home for a very long time enjoying a very big adventure.

Tunstall is one of the Small Bears brought to live with us by Aunty Tina, who also rescued Hanley Bear.  Tunstall was called Tunstall because he was adopted from the Barnardo's shop in Tunstall, the most northerly of the Six Towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent.

Tunstall is dressed as an airline pilot and, inspired by his outfit, he has always wanted to fly in a plane to other countries and, two years ago, he got the chance to do exactly that.  One of our friends (Hattie the Otter) was going to California, and said that Tunstall could go with her!

 

Hanley Bear helped Tunstall prepare for his journey, taking a photo for his passport and helping him to choose special things from Stoke-on-Trent to take to the Bears and Humans he would meet when he was abroad.

 

In August 2023, I travelled down to Hampshire with him (and with Polar) to meet Hattie.  It was a difficult time for Polar, because Grandad Polar was very poorly in Southampton Hospital, so it was good for her to have something cheerful to do with Bear Friends.  

Tunstall had a lovely surprise when we met Hattie - a Tiny Bear called Amy, from the Berkshire Bears, was going to be travelling with him, as well as our friend Hattie.  Our great pal Little Brown Bear and some of his friends had come to see them off too.

Tunstall and Amy had some wonderful adventures in the USA with Hattie and her humans.  They travelled all over California and went to music gigs and festivals - including seeing K T Tunstall - and explored the landscape and National Parks.  And of course they enjoyed trying the local food and drink.

When it was time for Hattie and her humans to come home, however, Tunstall and Amy were travelling on because, by an amazing coincidence, another Bear Friend called Oliver Bear had been in California at the same time as Hattie and was on the way home from the same airport - to near Melbourne in Australia!  So Tunstall and Amy had another long flight and more tremendous adventures.

There were more trips into wild and spectacular landscapes, more wild creatures to see, visits to interesting cities and buildings, and there were music concerts too - including going to see Paul McCartney!  Oliver's Hug made them very welcome.

Tunstall and Amy enjoyed celebrating Christmas and New Year in the summer and stayed through the Australian autumn too.  We were wondering how to get them home again, when our friend Milly the Mammoth suggested that, if they could fly to Canada, she could collect them when her human guardian went to visit her mother there.  

So, after giving Oliver and the rest of his Hug their biggest and best hugs, Tunstall and Amy flew back across the Pacific Ocean to Canada.  There they had some adventures with Milly and her friend Blueberry Bear, including visits to Prince Edward Island and Toronto.  Of course, there was also plenty of good food to eat too.

Milly and Blueberry brought Tunstall and Amy home to England and we met them on Uppie last summer at Shugborough Hall.  However, Tunstall and Amy were soon on their travels again, going to Austria and Germany with Grizzly's son, Mr George, then to Switzerland where our Bear Friends the Swiss Pipe Bears met them.

The Swiss Pipe Bears and their humans looked after Tunstall and Amy very well - they even made Oatcakes for Tunstall in case he was feeling homesick.  And he had a special birthday cake too!

As well as sharing adventures in Switzerland, the Pipe Bears took Tunstall and Amy to Greece and, on the way back to Switzerland, he was allowed into the cockpit of the plane to see what it was like to be a real airline pilot!

Tunstall and Amy had another quick break in the UK when the Pipe Bears and their humans came over, and Tunstall could have come back to Stoke with us - or he could enjoy Christmas in Switzerland!  We all said he ought to go back to Switzerland and of course he agreed, so he and Amy went back with the Pipe Bears and they had a marvellous time.

They went hiking, they travelled on modern and steam trains, little boats on mountain lakes, chair lifts and cable cars, they visited Christmas markets and festivals and had lots of tasty treats too.  In fact, they were having so much fun that the time flew by and, before they realised, the summer had arrived and, finally, it was time to come home.

They had a little adventure in Liverpool with the Swiss Pipe Bears before catching the train to Stoke to meet us and our humans.  All of our Hug came downstairs to get ready for a tea party, although we had a day out with our friends first.  

We took the Pipe Bears to see Hanley Park - although Hanley Bear was at football with Grizzly - and then went to the Potteries Museum to meet more of our pals.  Then we helped the human guardians to decorate some plates and pots at the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke-on-Trent.  The Swiss Pipe Bears did special plates to remember their visit from Tunstall and Amy, as they were going to miss them.

Then it was time for Tunstall's Tea Party and a big welcome home from all of our Hug.  The next day, we showed the Swiss Pipe Bears some of our favourite places in North Staffordshire, including the Caldon Canal, the Churnet Valley Railway and the Roaches, and on the last day of their visit, we all had a little trip through Stoke-on-Trent on Uppie the Narrowboat.

Tunstall and Amy both cried when it was time for their friends to leave, as they had been so kind and generous to them during their visit.  But a little Swiss plane and Rhaetian Railway train have stayed with us, to remind them of their wonderful visit.

And they are off on more adventures very soon!