Stoke-on-Trent
The region round Stoke-on-Trent is world famous for its pottery industry and is known in popular imagination as the ‘Potteries'. Originally centred on the five towns of Stoke, Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley and Longton, the city of Stoke-on-Trent was created in 1910 from an amalgamation of the above plus a sixth town, Fenton. Once fiercely independent, the six towns became progressively involved with each other as improvements in amenities such as transport and water supply encouraged federation. The city's newly designed crest displays an ancient Egyptian potter at his wheel, representing the source of wealth of the area.
Pottery was first produced in the region about 3500 years ago during the Bronze Age - cremation urns of this period may be seen displayed at the City Museum and Art Gallery in Hanley. The museum also houses a fine collection of Roman pottery, including lampholders and cooking pots excavated from the remains of a Roman garrison established at Trent Vale in about AD50. This excavation has also revealed, most appropriately given its location, a perfectly preserved Roman pottery kiln. Two medieval pottery kilns, dating from about 1300, have been discovered at nearby Sneyd Green, and a collection of medieval pottery has been unearthed at Burslem. However, despite the centuries long tradition of pottery making around the Stoke area, pottery was no more important here than in any other part of Britain, that is until the 17 th century. Then it was that the North Staffordshire potters began to take advantage of the presence of essential raw materials employed in the manufacture and decoration of ceramics. In particular, the vast local resources of marl clay, coal and water and nearby deposits of iron, copper and lead for the oxides used in glazing.
Although the concentration of pottery manufacture in the area increased in the 17 th century, it was the entrepreneurial skills of Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Minton who developed production from being merely a cottage craft to a full-blown factory-style industry. Wedgwood (1730-95) was the greatest single figure responsible for the massive leap forward in production that took place in the 18 th century. He is best remembered today for his blue Jasper ware ornamented with Classical white designs, but he was most successful in his lifetime for the crockery he brought to the masses - tasteful, yet simple and cheap. Production in the Potteries reached its zenith towards the end of the 19 th century, but even today the Wedgwood Group remains one of the largest potters in the world. Together with two other famous Stoke firms, Spode and Royal Doulton, they produce more than three-quarters of Britain's pottery, bone-china, earthenware, sanitary fittings, floor and wall tiles and electrical porcelain. Apart from the home market Stoke exports ceramics to more than 140 world markets.
Most of the major companies provide guided tours around their works and have museums illustrating the history of their wares. The Wedgwood Museum and Visitor Centre, lying to the south of Stoke, faithfully recreates 18 th century workshops complete with a reconstructed bottle kiln and an original turning lathe, which went into disuse after the 1940's. The display vividly brings to life the working conditions of early days in the industry, with rooms designed to recapture the style of specific periods wherein are hundreds of Wedgwood pieces from these eras. Visitors interested particularly in industrial and Victorian architecture will find Stoke a marvellous city through which to wander and make discoveries.
There is a memorable tablet to Wedgwood in the 19 th century Church of St Peter ad Vincula, and a bronze statue of him facing the railway station. The City Museum has one of the finest collections of pottery and porcelain in the world, including outstanding examples of Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Persian, Chinese and Japanese ware. The oldest house in the city is Ford Green Hall, an Elizabethan half-timbered manor house of about 1580 with brick wings added in 1734. The furnishings include a rare 16 th century shop counter with a sliding top, an Elizabethan four-poster bed with secret panel and a scold's bridle worn by nagging women as a punishment. Three-and-a-half miles south of the city centre lies world famous Trentham Gardens comprising 700 acres of formal gardens, pleasure gardens, woodland and parkland. The earliest reference to Trentham relates to a nunnery established by St Werburgh, daughter of the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia in AD680, and later to the daughter of Alfred the Great about 907. Ownership then passed, via Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror, to William Rufus. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the estate was bought by James Leverson, a wealthy wool merchant who founded the dynasty of the Dukes of Sutherland, owners of the estate for over 300 years. At the heart of the Estate are the Italian Gardens originally laid out by ‘Capability' Brown and given a more formal style by Sir Charles Barry - these gardens overlook the mile-long waters of Trentham Lake.
The novelist Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), who immortalised Stoke in his novels of the ‘Five Towns', was born in Hope Street, Hanley, while No 205 Waterloo Road, where the Bennett family lived from 1880, is now a Bennett Museum. Bennett left Stoke when he was 21 years old, and never lived there again, but all his best-known works are set there including Clayhanger, The Card and The Old Wives Tale .