Old strips of negatives can be wonderfully evocative because they provide context as well as individual images. This strip of 35mm monochrome images of mine dates back to the early 1970s when I was at university in Keele and would frequently escape the rigors of macroeconomic theory by wandering the byways of the neighbouring five towns that made up Stoke-on-Trent. On the day that I took these photographs I had obviously decided to explore the Trent and Mersey Canal as it passed through the wonderfully named Etruria.
The area was named by Josiah Wedgewood when he built his new pottery works here in 1769 (it was named after the region of Etruria in Italy in an early example of somewhat fanciful marketing). By the early 1970s, the pottery works had been moved, and the old canal was caught in the doldrums between commercial and leisure traffic. It was a sight made for monochrome, and I was lucky to have the opportunity to capture it.
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