Pottery
was first made in the Stoke area about 3,500 years ago. The work of
Josiah Wedgwood in the second-half of
the 18th century helped establish this part of Staffordshire as the
centre of the pottery industry. Wedgwood also helped finance the building
of the Trent & Mersey Canal which enabled
Cornish clay to reach Staffordshire.
The North Staffordshire Railway that now owned the Trent
& Mersey Canal, opened its first line to Stoke in 1848. The
town was now linked to Crewe and the following
year a line to Manchester was built.
The city of Stoke was created in 1910 from a federation of six towns:
Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton. The
population of the city was now nearly 250,000.
(1)
Shirley Brooks,
The Morning Chronicle (October 1849)
The exact local population in each of the Pottery towns
appears by the last census to be as follows: Stoke-on-Trent (8,391);
Hanley (10,185); Shelton (11,836); Longton (12,407), Fenton (4,923);
Burslem (16,090) and Tunstall (6,945). The house accommodation of
Longton is inferior to the standard of most others. Filthy and crowded
courts - ill-arranged, undrained and irregular streets - and expanses
of half waste-land, covered with rubbish and cinder-heaps, patched
with neglected gardens, piled up with broken saggars and smashed fragments
of pottery, all bear testimony to the hastily ill-built, and ill-laid-out
town.
Perhaps the best specimen of a pottery village is to be found in Etruria.
The characteristically named hamlet, which is indebted for its classic
appellation to the founder of the great pottery firm of Wedgwood,
is situated in the township of Shelton, upon the banks of the canal
which connects the waters of the Trent and Mersey. The village is
entirely the property of Messrs. Wedgwood, and is almost wholly occupied
by the working people in their employment.
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