Park Hall Country Park is one of the city's most important natural sites. It was declared as Stoke-on-Trent's only National Nature Reserve in 2002, and the sandstone canyons are a Site of Special Scientific Interest for their geology. Its major sandstone ridge is 250 million years old and includes the highest point in Stoke-on-Trent - at 813 feet. In WWII there was a Secret QL Site on the top of Park Hall Hills, which was used as a night-time decoy for the nearby Meir Aerodrome and aircraft factories. (
visit link)
"Park Hall Country Park covers an area of over 135 hectares and has a varied landscape of sandstone canyons, open heathland, hay meadows, deciduous and coniferous woodland and wetland areas.
Just under one third of the Country Park is designated as a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest and National Nature Reserve, which is known as Hulme Quarry.
The whole site is owned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council and managed by the City Council’s countryside staff."
The site is 'open access' on foot to all and is a popular site with dog walkers and cyclists. There are numerous waymarked paths and trails across the site, that offer both easy and more challenging walks. Source: (
visit link)
Park Hall Country Park is recorded as a manor in the Domesday Book, 1086, as Westone, part of the lands of Robert de Stafford and held by Ernulf de Hesding. During the Middle Ages the manor was held by the Coyney family. There was an extensive mediaeval deer park, created out of the woodland, and which is now absorbed into Park Hall Country Park. (
visit link) (
visit link)
The plaque is mounted on a stone block and is inscribed with green lettering and reads as follows;
'PARK HALL COUNTRY PARK
DEVELOPED JOINTLY BY
STAFFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL AND STOKE ON TRENT CITY COUNCIL
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT AND COUNTRYSIDE COMMISSION
OPENED ON 10TH APRIL 1981
DEREK BARBER, ESQ., CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNTRYSIDE COMMISSION
To the left at the bottom of the plaque
Staffordshire County Council Coat of Arms
STAFFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL
A.G.WARD,ESQ, J.P, CHAIRMAN
W. BOWEN ESQ, CHAIRMAN COUNTRYSIDE SUB COMMITTEE
To the right at the bottom of the plaque
Stoke on Trent City Council Coat of Arms
L.G. WALLIS ESQ, CHAIRMAN LAND RECLAMATION COMMITTEE'
Derek Barber Esq
Derek Coates Barber, Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, farmer, public servant and conservationist, born 17 June 1918; died 21 November 2017
Lord Barber of Tewkesbury obituary - written by Adrian Phillips on 3rd December 2017, for the Guardian online.
"Derek Barber, Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, who has died aged 99, spent much of his long career in public life trying to bridge the gap between modern farming and the conservation of wildlife and landscape. He was chairman of the Countryside Commission from 1981 to 1991 and few people can claim to have left such an imprint on British rural life.
His leadership was marked by numerous initiatives – Groundwork (now a national movement to encourage communities to improve their local environments), the National Forest (a new forested area in the Midlands), the reinvigoration of rights of way and the independent national parks – that have become established parts of the environmental scene in England and Wales.
Barber was born and brought up near Manchester. His father, Thomas Smith-Barber, and uncle ran their own firm of commodity brokers, mainly importing butter from the Netherlands; his mother, Elsie (nee Coates), taught the piano before she married. Derek was educated at Manchester grammar school and at the Royal Agricultural College (now University), Cirencester.
Invalided out of the army in 1942, he became a “war-ag” official in Gloucestershire, helping to wring as much food as possible from the land for the second world war (and postwar) effort. As the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries district adviser (1946-57) and then county agricultural officer (1957-72), he was the driving force behind the transition to continuous cereal growing in the Cotswolds.
Barber’s influence began to be felt more widely as he pioneered the case for harnessing business skills to farming. He wrote Farming for Profits (with Keith Dexter) in 1961; it was an immensely influential book, which set out the principles for modern farm management. In 1965, he was awarded the Bledisloe gold medal by the Royal Agricultural Society of England in recognition of his services to agriculture.
His strong advocacy for modern farming went alongside a great love of the countryside and a deep knowledge of birds. For a time he saw no conflict between these enthusiasms. But then, in his own words, the scales were chipped from his eyes in a dramatic way. While looking for Caspian terns, he fell into the river Alde, in Suffolk, and was rescued by a former farmer who took him home and lectured him on the damage done by modern farming.
With a convert’s passion, Barber took up the cause of conservation, but as a friend of farmers, not as their opponent. In 1969, together with his old “war-ag” colleague Eric Carter, he organised the Silsoe conference in Bedford, where farmers and conservationists discussed the problems and began to look for common ground.
Advertisement
The outcome was the founding in 1969 of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group, by Barber and several colleagues. It has since blossomed: there are county advisers up and down the land, and tens of thousands of farmers have taken FWAG’s practical advice on how to mix profitable farming with conservation.
Barber’s life took a new course in 1970 when he was elected to the council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. After resigning from government service in 1972, he became chair of the RSPB’s education committee and then chair of the society itself (1976-81). He and the director, Ian Prestt, formed a powerful partnership, leading a period of expansion: the RSPB’s purchase of the Abernethy estate in Scotland was particularly important. Barber was awarded the RSPB gold medal in 1982.
In 1981, he was appointed by Michael Heseltine, then environment secretary, to be chairman of the Countryside Commission. The commission had its roots in postwar socialism, and stood for access and public enjoyment of the countryside; Barber’s predecessors were Barbara Wootton, John Cripps and Michael Winstanley. So Barber and the Countryside Commission were not natural bedfellows. But they learned to respect and eventually love one another.
Barber was the most skilful of chairs and much respected by his commissioners. He was deeply admired by his staff for his commitment to the commission’s values, his fairness towards them, his willingness to do anything for the organisation and his skill in working with ministers, some of whom, like Nicholas Ridley, were instinctively suspicious of this quango.
His charm could be disarming. On one occasion he set out to persuade a hostile Cumbria county council to support the commission’s designation of the North Pennines as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The omens were bad, with some local interests arguing that the designation would threaten the area’s fragile economy, but he talked the councillors round. He could also use his unquestioned authority with farming audiences to convince them of the conservation case, getting them on board for example with the new Broads Authority in Norfolk.
Barber was knighted in 1984. In 1992, a year after leaving the commission, he was created a life peer. He was active in the House of Lords and engaged still in his countryside work, for example as chair of Booker PLC’s Countryside Advisory Board (1990-96).
He also gave more time to writing. His articles displayed a wicked sense of humour and a telling choice of words: whether nostalgically describing the prewar Gloucestershire farmed countryside, before he and others set about modernising it, as “delightfully shaggy”; or characterising his lively Countryside Commission staff as “Gypsies” compared to the rather inflexible “monks” that he thought inhabited the then Nature Conservancy Council.
A proud man and at times appearing somewhat aloof in his manner, Barber was nonetheless one of the kindest and most thoughtful of people. A lifelong Tory of the old school, he was able to make friends across the political spectrum. He was a farmer who understood the passions of conservationists – and a conservationist who could share the farmer’s view of the world.
He is survived by his second wife, Rosemary (nee Pearson), whom he married in 1983; and by a son, Richard, and daughter, Janet, from his first marriage, to Joyce, which ended in divorce." Source: (
visit link)