From Henley to Hanley

In between writing my memoires and teaching Hanley how to be a Boat Bear, I've been learning more about my new home with the help of my human friends and my little bear buddy.

Hanley thought the best place to start teaching me about his home city was the town we named him after, so he asked Polar to put us in the Bear Bag and take us into the City Centre, where we started our exploration at the Potteries Art Gallery and Museum.

Here we are on the statues outside.  The man with the books and the moustache is a famous Potteries writer called Arnold Bennett.  He was very good with words and at making up memorable characters but I don't think he was as good at mathematics.  His most famous book is called Anna of the Five Towns but, as everybody here knows, there are six! 

Inside the museum are some of the cleverest and most beautiful things ever made by humans.  There are amazing gold items made more than a thousand years ago, which were found in a field by a clever and very honest man with a metal detector.  There is an aeroplane which helped to stop a very bad man called Hitler conquering all of Europe.  There are hundreds and hundreds of amazing pottery things too, from tiles, cups and saucers to huge vases and statues of birds, animals and people.  Humans in Stoke-on-Trent have been turning clay into clever things for hundreds of years, and they still do, as we saw at an exhibition in an old church called the Bethesda Chapel.

I thought Hanley said it was called the Bear-Thesda chapel.  I expected to find a bear called Thesda living there but there were no other bears.  Instead, there were some very nice and knowledgeable people who could tell us about the building and the art on show, and some other nice people who sang to us.
   
Hanley showed me the Town Hall too, and the office where Polar works when she isn't on Uppie or taking us out and about.

Hanley showed me that his town has lots of places to go to see live music, drama and dance, with the Regent Theatre, Victoria Hall and Mitchell Memorial Theatre. 

'That's why we're a City of Culture,' Hanley said.  'We're going to be the City of Culture soon!'

 

I think it might be very nice to see a play one day, even if it wasn't about bears.   

Hanley is very proud of his home town.  It isn't all as nice as the parts you can see in our photographs but it is home to my best bear buddy and lots of kind, friendly people who can make clever things like pots, art and oatcakes, so I am helping Hanley campaign for Stoke-on-Trent to be City of Culture in 2021. 

We'll be out and about in the other towns soon, so look out for us!