Burton on Trent History
 

                                                                              John Betjeman on a visit to Burton:
"I was in Burton on Trent last Saturday, a much more attractive town than people who haven’t been there might suppose. It is an old place, Georgianised, built of pale pink Midland bricks and yellow sandstone, among the oaks and elms and wide meadows of the silver Trent. It has a skyline of towers and spires and well-proportioned chimneys. Some of the towers are to do with breweries. There are several square-paned Regency shop fronts and elegant terraces, and the Market Place in front of the Tuscan parish church of St. Modwen (1719-26), with its stalls and pollarded chestnuts and covered arcades, is quite like a French town, though if there were any bistros on the pavement one should be drinking Bass at them. The railway station is a fine affair, a large Swiss chalet on top of a bridge, with a covered wooden verandah with turned balusters, from which the people of Burton may watch the expresses hurtle to Derby and to Bristol via Brum. The refreshment room is entirely walled with purplish-blue patterned tiles and has mahogany overmantels and shelving and grand wooden chairs unaccountably carved with the initials of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. This delightful period piece has been spoiled lately by the addition of modernistic electric lights, an error which ought to be rectified." (Spectator, 22 June1956 - and hosted from the very excellent - Green C. L., (1999), “Betjeman’s Britain”, The Folio Society, London. On the high-res photo, note the use of milk churns. Also the quality of tiling.) There was, of course, a yet older Railway Station and an impressive railway network around Burton.