Stafford is a West Midlands market town at the heart of its own county, located halfway between Crewe and Birmingham. It may be the same size as Crewe but it's over a millennium older, has much better shops and boasts a castle and some nice old buildings. It's even got a Tourist Information Office, although this turned out to be the box office of the local theatre where three smiley ticket-floggers apologised for having nothing to offer but an over-sponsored map, so I guess the borough council no longer take visitors as seriously as they once did. [Visit Stafford][10 photos]
You can tell Stafford's very different to Crewe as soon as you cross the road outside the station and enter Victoria Park. Smart lawns, a bench commemorating the latest coronation, a bridge across a tamed river, a bowling green, an iron shelter donated by an alderman, cages of tropical birds, two historic millwheels, a bursting magnolia, a greenhouse filled with tropical plants and a rotunda cafe funded with lottery cash, all within a single park. Admittedly there was also a man getting his snake out, but this was in a tank in the greenhouse and I think he worked there. The river threading through is the Sow, a lesser tributary of the Trent, although it still makes a good job of splitting the town in two. And once you're across the park you're pretty much in the town centre, which is another one-up on Crewe where it's at least a mile's walk.
Stafford has an actual tourist attraction in the main street which is the Ancient High House. It cuts quite a dash with its half-timbered four-gabled frontage protruding rather higher than you'd expect for Tudor housing stock. It was built in 1595 for a wealthy merchant family and is reputedly the largest surviving timber-framed town house in England. Even better all four floors are accessible for most of the day, and for free. At high street level the occupiers sell shampoo and phones but if you step through the centre door you meet the lovely staff at the desk and are free to explore upwards via the central staircase. Charles I has been up there before you.
The building is the star and the rest mainly historical window dressing, including a number of era-themed rooms. The Stuart bedroom is the most evocative because the council went to the effort of including a genuine four-poster, and the sweet shop the weirdest because they've attempted a lacklustre begoggled Willy Wonka Experience. An attempt has been made to cover wider ground with an excellent and comprehensive display digging into how geology has influenced life and industry across Staffs (generally by being dug up and sold). And on reaching the top floor you'll discover a claustrophobic attic telling the military backstory of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, which'll either be your thing or else you'll be back down the vertiginous stairs pronto.
The Stafford Town Trail starts outside, for which a leaflet used to be provided but these days to save money they expect you to view its 30 pages on your mobile device. I tried, but if you're going to include a map please join up the 30 places to show the route else it's all too easy skip a direction and lose your way. I found most of the buildings anyway, including 13th century St Mary's church and the footprint of its Anglo-Saxon predecessor (although I didn't get inside because the opening hours are brief and complex). Other survivors, if you follow the right alley, include the early medieval St Chad's church (also closed), a timber-framed Tudor sheriff's office (with jettied upper storey), a row of Jacobean almshouses, a sail-less windmill, a Victorian prison and a couple of former coaching inns.
The Market Place retains an air of Georgian splendour, so long as you don't spin round to see the modern glass confection Shire Hall has been replaced by. It also no longer hosts the market which has shifted indoors to a drab hall where all I found mid-afternoon were a few unthrilled traders hoping to shift haberdashery, hi-vis and slippers. But it's still doing better than the 1990s mall nextdoor, the Guildhall Centre, whose substantial footprint has shrunk down to the embarrassing point where only one tiny stump serving five shops remains open. The site's pencilled in for rebirth as a "residential-led mixed-use development", should funds allow, but for now its inert bulk makes a large chunk of the town centre impractically impermeable.
The biggest heritage disappointment is perhaps the loss of the house where Compleat Angler Izaak Walton was born in 1593. You wouldn't expect a random Tudor cottage to have survived to the 21st century but what's depressing is that the site's now occupied by the town's police station so the plaque has had to be mounted on an anonymous brick wall alongside a securely locked backdoor. Fishing fans are instead advised to head for the village of Shallowford a few miles out of town where, with impressive forethought, his thatched riverside cottage was bequeathed with civic preservation in mind. It's still open as a small museum, but only on summer Sunday afternoons so I didn't head out that way.
Instead I devoted time to walking a mile out of town along the Newport Road, almost to the M6, to visit Stafford Castle. I knew it wasn't a historical big-hitter and I knew it wasn't fully open midweek in March but I still wasn't quite sure what to expect. What I found beyond the car park was a steepish path climbing into some woods and at the summit a further mound with a stone keep on top. The path kept spiralling until a proper vista opened up revealing a fair chunk of central Staffordshire, and swiftly reached a high loop around the outside of the keep. Impressively it turns out this keep is the only part of the site you can'tget into, at least on winter weekdays (and never on Tuesdays).
Reading the information boards, which are copious, I learned that the keep is a mere folly, a 19th century replacement for the Civil War ruins of a stone castle which replaced something medievally wooden. I also learned that the slope I'd just walked up had originally contained the outer bailey so there were more remnants to be explored there. I would probably have learned more in the Visitor Centre but this only opens when the keep does and it looked more cafe than commemoration anyway. The castle's worth the hike, basically, should you ever find yourself in Stafford, which I can confirm is a better idea than finding yourself in Crewe.
The train home was only £4.50 thanks to another half price Great British Rail Sale bargain, indeed if you hunt really carefully you can still find advance fares for under a tenner. Ridiculously I spent more money on my connecting train between Crewe and Stafford, which is just one stop, than I did altogether on the rest of my cross country trip.
