Ingestre

Ingestre Hall is a Grade II* 17th-century Jacobean mansion situated at Ingestre, near Stafford, Staffordshire, England. Formerly the seat of the Earls Talbot and then the Earls of Shrewsbury, the hall is now owned by Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and is in use as a residential arts and conference centre.

Ingestre and Weston railway station was a former British railway station to serve the village of Ingestre in Staffordshire.It was opened by the Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway in 1867. Originally called Ingestre it was actually much closer to Weston and was renamed (also Ingestre for Weston) in 1870 to avoid confusion with Weston and Ingestre on the North Staffordshire Railway. The Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway was purchased for £100,000 by the Great Northern Railway in July 1881 and the line subsequently passed into LNER ownership with Railway Grouping in 1923. Proceeding north west the line passed over the North Staffordshire Railway's main line from Stone to Colwich, the line climbed slightly towards Chartley and Stowe. Passenger services finished in 1939.

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.

Tixall is a small village and civil parish in the Stafford district, in the English county of Staffordshire lying on the western side of the Trent valley between Rugeley and Stone, Staffordshire and roughly 4 miles east of Stafford. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 239.The place-name 'Tixall' is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Ticheshale. Deriving from Old English, the name means 'the hollow of the goats'.It is a fairly elongated village lying to the west of Great Haywood and just north of the sprawling Shugborough estate, the River Sow forming the natural boundary between the two, which joins the Trent on the Shugborough estate a mile or so east of Tixall. The village has benefited substantially from its close proximity to such affluent estates as Shugborough to the south and Sandon Hall and Ingestre Hall to the north, homes of the Earl of Lichfield, the Earl of Harrowby and the Earl of Shrewsbury respectively. Also passing nearby to the east and through the Trent valley is the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, which expands into a body of water called Tixall Wide near to Tixall Gatehouse. Tixall Hall was the home of the Aston family, who held the title Lord Aston of Forfar. They were staunch Roman Catholics and Tixall was the centre of the local Catholic community. During the Popish Plot Tixall briefly became notorious as the centre of the alleged conspiracy to kill King Charles II, and many victims of the plot such as William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford were questioned intensively as to their actions while at Tixall.

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.

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.

Weston is a village and civil parish. within the English county of Staffordshire. The parish is in the local authority of Stafford (non-metropolitan district).

Weston and Ingestre railway station was a former British railway station opened by the North Staffordshire Railway to serve the village of Ingestre in Staffordshire in 1849. Nearby was the Ingestre and Weston station opened by the Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway in 1867. It closed in January 1947.

On 6 January 1968, a low-loader transporter carrying a 120-ton electrical transformer was struck by a British Rail express train on a recently installed automatic level crossing at Hixon, Staffordshire, England. The collision resulted in eleven deaths and 45 people injured, and led to improvements in signage around automatic level crossings.

Hixon railway station is a disused railway station in Staffordshire, England. The railway line between Stone and Colwich was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway (NSR) in 1849 A station was opened to serve the village of Hixon, the exact opening date of the station is not recorded but it first appeared in Bradshaw's Railway Guide in December 1864. 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. The station was renamed as Hixon Halt by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. 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 Hixon along with the neighbouring station, Great Haywood, closed.At the north end of the station was a level crossing and it was this crossing that was the scene of the Hixon rail crash in January 1968.

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.

Royal Air Force Hixon, or more simply RAF Hixon, was a Royal Air Force station located on the north western edge of the village of Hixon in Staffordshire, England. The airfield was 7.5 miles (12.1 km) east of Stafford and bounded at the west and north by railways. After opening in 1942, it served as a base for No. 30 Operational Training Unit and, after the OTU left up until its closure in 1957, it served as a satellite site for No. 16 Maintenance Unit based at RAF Stafford.