Among the places I regret failing to reach – Damascus, Leptis Magna, Odesa, Sinai – I had not expected Stourbridge to figure. I meant to go there last Wednesday, and got as far as Coventry when a message called me back to London.
I was going to Stourbridge to celebrate the publication of Birmingham and the Black Country in Pevsner’s “Buildings of England” series. (Stourbridge I think of as Worcestershire, though the West Midlands swallowed it in aggressive revanchism.) While there I would have popped into Our Lady and All Saints.

It’s a marvellous church, 1864, designed by Edward Pugin. I wonder how being him felt. His father was like an alarming firework going off noisily and burning out by the age of 40. His mother died when he was 10. Aged 18, Edward was in charge of the architectural practice his father left. He died unmarried aged 41.