Master Jonjon Tourist Videos

CROWD CONTROL. Our industrious duo returns in the most hidden corner you can find here– third floor, Birmingham Library. In my entire time only an elderly couple has come across my cameras. “Watt in the World: The Life and Legacy of James Watt, 1736-1819” (LIBRARY of BIRMINGHAM) THEMES. Watt and Boulton, the nerd and the salesman. To be sprinkled with their friendly circles and most notably, their philosophical friends from Lunar Society. With a few brushstrokes thrown on Watt’s tragic family background. Boulton’s famous “selling power” quote kicks start the narrative. You'll also find a few other side quests - not as relevant to steam engines (assuming it's what James Watt is all (?) about), but extra details less seen in other Watt attractions (still remember the  Soho House ?). Like what Watt’s son has done to preserve Aston Hall, and which I’m yet to visit some day. Clip: “Watt in the World: The Life and Legacy of James Watt, 1736-1819” (LIBRARY...

HISTORY. The museum was purpose-built to showcase a donation from Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Richards – a huge number of paintings. Opened 1891. Unfortunately many of these paintings were sold in the post-war period. The building was then a council office. WEDNESBURY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY COLLECTION. Works by local artists, a “60s room” (clip; with a copy of Daily Mirror from 1963!), an impressive room for pottery, and toys. The last category includes a Playstation, a Game Boy and a VHS. Feeling old, huh? So a Victorian a-bit-of-everything. (If you’re into these vintage gadgets, try the Portsmouth Museum (for consoles). Or in Europe: Vienna’s Technical Museum or Czech’s Technical Museum in Brno  both have a colossal collection.) Clip: WEDNESBURY MUSEUM & ART GALLERY LOCATION. If you come from Birmingham, the metro (e.g. from Grand Central New Street) is the fastest option. Get off at Wednesbury Great Western Street. Walk northwest to the traffic...

EXHIBITION TYPES. You’ll find a few Constable’s and Henry Moore’s, but besides these the whole four-storey building will be dedicated to temporary exhibitions. CHOICE OF CURATION. Works are gathered according to themes rather than artists. You’ll be surrounded in one room with animals and birds, and another one on religion, or work life, and so on. The New Art Gallery Walsall  GETTING UP. Two tiny staircases bring you to the third and fourth floors. If you can’t really find them (I spent a couple of minutes), the lift is always an option. Clip: The New Art Gallery Walsall  LOCATION. At the end of the Walsall Canal. A two-minute walk if you come from Walsall Station: walk north into Little Station Road and turn right into Marsh Street. The gallery will be to your left. FB chat for free advice on traveling plans. Time is asset: save it for better with 25-min museum tours . Or find yourself in my novel , check out the photo of the day and finish...

Let’s take a rest from Stafford and explore the smaller towns. Walsall. And it’s most unfortunate that the Walsall Museum has closed down and as library staff tells me – for three years now. But instead here is a Leather Museum that’s in every sense the museum of Walsall. Walsall Leather Museum (Walsall) START OF THE STORY. Before you're to enter the gallery the smell of wallets and purses is already filling up your senses. And here’s how the gallery entrance starts its narrative – that Walsall used to be the biggest leather making town in the entire Northern Europe. PERMANENT EXHIBITIONS. Creative use of leather – saddles, key fobs, even outfits for dogs. And they come from a variety of sources from pigs to snakes to anything less imaginable – like ostriches. (Meanwhile a display board tells you that many English traditional surnames get their roots from leather makers – Barker, Skinner, Tanner etc.} Upstairs a staffer will explain how saddles are made an...

What would it be like to bring a ruin to life? And by “ruin” I mean a stone structure without a roof or the upper floors, following a history of multiple misadventures, and once an urgent demolition. And now let’s remember the formula used by Stafford Castle: a bus route from city centre, a car park, a visitor centre with real exhibitions (and not just a money-sucking café disguised in name), and a trail with display boards all along the way showing you its history bit by bit. HERITAGE. The site started off as a timber motte and bailey castle in c. 1090. In 1348 it was mordernized into a keep, which was then largely destroyed by the parliamentarians in 1643. The current stone castle was built in the 1810s in Gothic revival style. STAFFORD CASTLE VIEWING ORDER. Before going straight up to the castle, remember to pay a visit to the visitor centre beside the car park. It has all the background info you’ll need before you’re to see the real thing. You can then fol...

HERITAGE. Built c. 1630 by J. Giffard. The house is most famous for being Charles II’s hiding place in September 1651. He stayed here briefly following his defeat to the parliamentarians in Worcester. He was then to flee to Bristol, Brighton, Shoreham and finally France. In the back of the house you can visit the replacement-replacement-replacement… oak tree, one of his hiding places according to legends. Warning: sheep roaming around tree. BOSCOBEL HOUSE (Staffordshire) HIDING PLACES. You’ll find a total of two “priest holes” around the house. As “priest hunters” operate in the area. These pits, concealed with a false wooden floor, allow Catholic priests to quickly conceal themselves during in-house services. RESTORATION. The garden has been restored to the 1650s with help from an engraving from the period. You can also see that much of the “timber beams” are actually bricks painted black. Only a small portion of the original beams is left. Clip: BOSCOBEL H...

TICKETING. Buy your ticket to the Shugborough Hall from the reception office (next to the car park). It will be needed to the Patrick Lichfield apartments - one of the wings of the hall. Entry time is divided into fifteen-minute intervals. Check your ticket for the time. Do allow another fifteen minute to walk there from the reception. If for any reason you’ve already arrived at the mansion without any tickets, ask the staffer there for help. This saves you from the jogging all the way back to the reception. The main attractions here are the hall (with Patrick Lichfield’s wing separately ticketed), the park farm, and the park itself with a few other buildings of interest. PATRICK LICHFIELD’s APARTMENT. The apartments will bring you back to the sixties with its décor and Paddy’s works all over the place. (It’s inevitable to only live in this wing. The costs of heating and cleaning would be unbearable had he decided to make use of the whole house, which he inherited as one of ...

This is the attraction of the city, located right in the middle of its high street. You’ll get to learn a bit about the city, both gossips and royal history. And it is also very casual. You can just walk in and wander around, no questions asked, no ticketing rituals. The church bells nearby (and they ring a lot, day and night) help give off a more immersive experience as you stroll across these uneven floor and tilted beams. Every room is period themed. So there you have the Civil War room, the Victorian room, and so on. And there’s no attempt in making a chronology out of the room sequence. You’ll have to figure out a visiting order yourself. But if you’re really in need of an introduction to the house first, head all the way to the second floor for the “Castle Room”. Museum of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, ANCIENT HIGH HOUSE (Stafford) CONSERVATION. As with many other restoration houses (most visibly in London: our Pitzhanger Manor or the  Whitehall Historic Hou...

After being greeted in a modern glassy entrance, throw away all hope. You’ll now to enter the actual gallery - a window-barred church, reek of moulds and dampness as if we’re back in the underground factories or the dungeons we’ve been so used to. The more you’re to realize it being a futuristic space station, the more you’re to take a sniff to a past of a future of a semi-functional, hard-wired, mystical, information, system. “Plastique Fantastique: Mars Year Zero” DILSTON GALLERY (Southwark Park, London) The fantastique tells the acrid tale of an imaginary survival set with imaginary metaphors involving imaginary golems and dragons. The two ends of the space are fitted with robots speaking with an eccentric grammatical system. As you can see, they’re really annoying. The cracking concrete and loveless panels add an extra layer of thematic décor to our dystopia. Clip: “Plastique Fantastique: Mars Year Zero” DILSTON GALLERY (Southwark Park, London) LOCATION....

LOCATION. This is the gallery of Southwark Park, marked simply as “Art Gallery” in the park’s maps. (Not to be confused with the neglected family child, “Dilston Gallery”.) Nearest station: Surrey Quays. As you exit the station, walk along Lower Road westbound for a minute and look for the entrance to the park. Get in and keep walking westward. Just as you're about to reach the only lake in the middle of the park, you’ll see the Lake Gallery on your right hand side. If you find yourself turning south with running tracks beside you – wrong way. “Re: A Bermondsey Artists’ Group Exhibition”, LAKE GALLERY (Southwark Park, London) EXHIBITION INFO. Get the booklet from the reception. It has all the captions you need. The works are numbered. “Re: A Bermondsey Artists’ Group Exhibition”, LAKE GALLERY (Southwark Park, London) NON-FORGETTABLES. Hilarious work: a couple attacked by a tapir and a fox and so on when nature takes its turn and “fights back”. (clip) Als...