Shugborough Hall

Staffordshire County Museum is housed in the Servants' Quarters of Shugborough Hall, Milford, near Stafford, Staffordshire, England. The museum features a restored Victorian kitchen, laundry and brewhouse as well as permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions.In November 2016, the management of the Shugborough Estate was returned to the National Trust and the museum at Shugborough was closed to the public. In March 2017, the estate was reopened by the National Trust including some of the displays which were part of the County Museum in the servants' quarters and farm. Staffordshire County Council intends in the future to move the County Museum Service to the planned new Staffordshire History Centre on the site of the Staffordshire Record Office.

The Shugborough Inscription is a sequence of letters – O U O S V A V V, between the letters D M on a lower plane – carved on the 18th-century Shepherd's Monument in the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, below a mirror image of Nicolas Poussin's painting the Shepherds of Arcadia. It has never been satisfactorily explained, and has been called one of the world's top uncracked ciphertexts.In 1982, the authors of the pseudohistorical The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail suggested that Poussin was a member of the Priory of Sion, and that his Shepherds of Arcadia contained hidden meanings of great esoteric significance. The book makes a passing reference to the Shepherd's monument and the inscription, but offers no solution. In 2003, Dan Brown copied many elements of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in his bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, but made no mention of the Shugborough inscription. However, the book led to renewed interest in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. In 2004, Richard Kemp, the then general manager of the Shugborough Estate, launched a promotional campaign with the Bletchley Park Museum and two former Bletchley Park employees, Shiela Lawn and Oliver Lawn. The promotion of the event included repeated references to the idea that there could be a connection between the monument and the Holy Grail, based on the brief reference made to the monument in the pseudohistorical The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Despite the fact that organisers of the event had their own favoured theories, no conclusive answer emerged.

The River Sow is a tributary of the River Trent in Staffordshire, England, and is the river that flows through Stafford.

Essex Bridge (grid reference SJ995225) is a Grade I listed packhorse bridge over the River Trent near Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England. Spanning the Trent 100 metres downstream of its confluence with the River Sow, it was built in the late sixteenth century by the Earl of Essex a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. The Earl lived nearby at Chartley Castle. It is now the longest remaining packhorse bridge in England with fourteen of its original forty round span arches left,: 129  and has been described as "perhaps the least altered old bridge in the county"The bridge carries the long-distance footpath The Staffordshire Way over the River Trent, linking the Trent and Mersey Canal tow-path with the bridleway through the Shugborough estate to Cannock Chase. The bridge is also a scheduled monument.

Haywood Junction (grid reference SJ994229), or Great Haywood Junction, is the name of the canal junction where the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal terminates and meets the Trent and Mersey Canal near to the village of Great Haywood, Staffordshire, England.

The Black Country Ring is a UK canal ring composed of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, Birmingham Main Line, Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, Coventry Canal and Trent and Mersey Canal.

Great Haywood railway station is a disused railway station in Staffordshire, England. The railway line between Stone and Colwich, England, was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway (NSR) in 1849 but a station to serve the village of Great Haywood was not opened until 1887. Although the line was a busy route for the NSR for traffic to and from Birmingham and the south; the amount of local traffic carried was low and passenger services were never intensive. Passenger services on the line were, as a wartime measure, reduced in 1941 to a single train per day from Stoke which had no corresponding return journey. In 1947 all stopping passenger services between Stone and Colwich were withdrawn and Great Haywood along with the neighbouring station, Hixon, closed.

The Way for the Millennium is a 41-mile-long (66 km) east–west route across Staffordshire, deliberately designed for easy walking, using towpaths, old railway lines and footpaths and visiting attractive countryside and green spaces.

Tixall Wide, also known as Tixall Broad or The Broad Water, is a body of water that forms part of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal near Tixall in Staffordshire, England, to the south of the former Tixall Hall.The lake was probably created during the construction of the canal in 1771. At that time, the hall was owned by Thomas Clifford, the fourth son of Hugh Clifford, 3rd Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, and the grounds had been designed on the advice of the landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown. It is said Clifford "gave permission for the canal to pass through his land on the condition that it was made ... wide enough to look like a lake from the house". and thus in order not to spoil the view.The towpath is a very popular overnight mooring spot. Boaters moored here, or just passing through, have an excellent view of the magnificent Elizabethan gatehouse that is the only remaining part of Tixall Hall. It has also been suggested that the canal was routed to utilise a lake that already existed, in which the angler and writer Izaak Walton had learned to fish.

Great Haywood is a village in central Staffordshire, England, just off the A51 and about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) northwest of Rugeley and 7.1 miles (11.4 km) southeast of the county town of Stafford. Population details taken at the 2011 census can be found under Colwich. Haywood lies on the River Trent, where the Trent is met by its tributary, the River Sow. The village is also the site of a significant junction of the English inland canal network, Haywood Junction, where the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal meets the Trent and Mersey Canal. The waters around the village are widely regarded by guidebooks as some of the most attractive on the network.There are two churches, each of which has an attached school. St. John's RC School was classed as 'Good' in their most recent Ofsted inspection, and Anson CE School was deemed to be 'Outstanding' in December 2011.St. Stephen's Church was designed by Thomas Trubshaw, and became the centre of a parish in 1854. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Earl of Lichfield and other members of the Anson family of Shugborough Hall are buried in the churchyard of St Stephen's.St. John the Baptist's Catholic church was originally built in Tixall, about three miles (5 km) away, as a private chapel to Tixall Hall, which was owned by the Aston family. When the estate was sold to Earl Talbot, the church was dismantled and rebuilt with a few alterations in Great Haywood. The marks made on the blocks to allow reassembly can still be seen inside the church. There was originally a mill and a brewery in the village, but both have been closed down and demolished, commemorated by the names of the roads where they once stood (Mill Lane and Brewery Lane). Following a fatal automobile accident in 1905, the mill pond was drained and the road straightened. Samuel Peploe Wood (1827–1873) was an English sculptor and painter who was born in the village. He undertook work on many Staffordshire buildings, including the reredos at All Angels' Church, Colwich; corbels and bosses at St. Stephen's Church, Great Haywood and an oak lectern for Stowe by Lichfield. The Stone to Colwich railway line passes through Great Haywood, and the village was served by a railway station which was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway on 6 June 1887 and closed in 1957. The Great Haywood bypass opened 24 April 1964.In August 2002 advertisements were placed in the national press for a "hermit" to take up residence on the Great Haywood Cliffs above the nearby Shugborough estate, ancestral home of Lord Lichfield. Fifty-five people applied, and Ansuman Biswas was chosen as hermit. Shugborough also serves as the headquarters of Staffordshire's arts management team. The village was home to the newly married Edith Tolkien, wife of famous author J. R. R. Tolkien, from March 1916 to February 1917. She moved to the village to be close to his camp on Cannock Chase. J. R. R. Tolkien himself lived in Great Haywood in the winter of 1916–17.Great Haywood is the site of Essex Bridge, one of the largest surviving packhorse bridges in the country which stands over the River Trent near Shugborough Hall. It borders Cannock Chase, designated an area of outstanding natural beauty since 1958. Chaserider bus service 828 links Great Haywood with Stafford and Lichfield on an hourly basis 6 days a week. The former service 825 operated by Arriva ran 7 days a week up to half hourly.

The Shugborough Tunnel is a 777-yard (710 m) railway tunnel on the Trent Valley line running under part of the Shugborough Estate in Colwich, Staffordshire, England. It was constructed in 1846 by the Trent Valley Railway (later the London and North Western Railway) and is located between Stafford station and Colwich Junction. Both portals, which were designed by John Livock, are grade II listed.The tunnel was built to hide the line at the insistence of Thomas Anson, 1st Earl of Lichfield, the landowner of the Shugborough Estate through which it passes, after negotiations with the railway company with options for diversion were also discussed. Shugborough Tunnel is the largest engineering work on the line.

Tixall Gatehouse is a 16th-century gatehouse situated at Tixall, near Stafford, Staffordshire and is all that remains of Tixall Hall which was demolished in 1927. The gatehouse is a Grade I listed building. Tixall was used as a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots for two weeks in 1586.