Petit Fours

(22 December, 2025)

🧢 This week’s ‘Top Pick’ @WeightmanPR: The Tawny - a hotel like no other

The Tawny, in Staffordshire - just 15 minutes door-to-door from Stoke-on-Trent - calls itself “a hotel like no other”. And quite rightly, too. It’s based around a large historic and eclectic folly garden. And what they’ve done here is to ‘deconstruct’ all the best bits from a traditional hotel experience: an award-winning restaurant; a warm and friendly team; superb guest facilities; and a heated outdoor pool.... and then combined them all to offer a private space and a country escape which guests are able to call their “own” for the duration of their stay. The whole complex spans two neighbouring estates - a Wingspan Collection of Shepherds Huts, Treehouses, Lookouts, Boathouses, and Retreats - and luxury serviced holiday homes, The Fledglings, in a secluded area of the expansive Basford Estate. The Tawny’s Owlets meanwhile - also on the Basford Estate - offer a self-catering sanctuary for those seeking a more intimate countryside stay.

View from inside The Plumicorn restaurant across the gardens at The Tawny.

🧢 The way we live in the world we’ve made

Explore a world of chickens, cats, loo roll, bin bags, precious stones and fine old coats. Human Natures at Derby Museum & Art Gallery is an exhibition about people and the ways we live with nature: “It’s not a sad story. But it is a little strange…”. This new show has come about through a big experiment. Five museums across the UK came together to tell a single story. Together, they met people in our local communities, looked at different collections, and asked what they all had in common. Piece by piece, they built an exhibition that no-one was expecting. Once it ends in Derby on 22 February, Human Natures will visit Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Norwich and London.

🧢 One hundred years of a City

A new book, commissioned to mark Stoke-on-Trent’s centenary, has appeared has been launched. Produced with local publisher Barewall, and written by renowned local historian Fred Hughes, Stoke-on-Trent: The Story of a Citycharts key moments and people in the civic life of the city and takes a look at the year-long programme of events and activities which have taken place across The Potteries throughout 2025. It reflects on where the city has come from and looks ahead to its next century. Author and local historian, Hughes says: “This book is styled as an informal history of Stoke-on-Trent. It’s a book I’ve long wanted to write, and the centenary has provided perfect timing for its publication. It tells the story of what can only be described as the remarkably rapid rise of six humble villages that evolved through artistic and civic unity to become one of the nation’s foremost industrial and populated districts. This book is my tribute to my home city with particular reference to its civic guardians.”

🧢 Have a very Attingham Christmas

This month, the National Trust’s Attingham Park near Shrewsbury is inviting its visitors to step into a world of festive stories, sparkling decorations, and seasonal fun. Inside the Georgian Mansion, Christmas traditions from across the centuries are on display on the Mansion’s ground floor and in the Basement - in an “upstairs-downstairs” seasonal insight into how the festive season was celebrated by the Estate’s owners and its workers. Running through to 1 January, but closed on Christmas Day, entry is by pre-booked time slots - free for National Trust members (booking required), with non-members required to pay at time of booking. Outdoors, meanwhile, the Walled Garden cats lead a playful search for Father Christmas’s missing reindeer with a family-friendly festive trail. And new for this year, on selected dates, live music will be heard throughout the parkland from Attingham’s Christmas bandstand.

Inside the Mansion House at Attingham this Christmas.