Stoke-on-Trent, North Staffordshire 

 

 

Memories of St. James, Longton


The Rev W. Basil Buckland, was a vicar at the Church of St. James in Longton and this is a collection of slides that he took of different people and places in the area.

As well as pictures of St. James church and church life there are a lot of photos of people at their work.  (Optician, milkman, patternmaker, signalman, pottery workers , etc...) and some of the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

These pictures were taking in the 1960's and were supplied by his grand-daughter Anne Buckland.


Either click on the links below or click next.......

 


Rev W. Basil Buckland
Rev W. Basil Buckland


The church of St. James-the-Less
The church of St. James-the-Less
showing the close proximity of the bottle kilns
photo: c.1950's - Lovatt Collection

 


The church in the winter of 2004
notice that the church has been cleaned to remove the decades of pottery smoke and grime

photo: 2004 - Eileen Hallam


From: "The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent" John Ward - published 1843

"A spacious new church has been erected in Longton by the Commissioners for building additional churches and chapels, and, under the powers of the Stoke Rectory Act of 1827, has been made parochial, and endowed with £10,000 from the rectory funds, the advowson having, in the year 1839, been purchased by John Carey, Esq., an opulent manufacturer of Fenton and Lane End.

The church is a very good specimen of plain Gothic architecture of the perpendicular style, built from a design of Trubshaw, the architect of Stoke church, of Hollington stone. It occupies an area of 120 feet in interior length by 64 feet in breath, has a lofty clerestory supported by pointed arches, resting on eight pillars on either side the nave, and embattled side aisles; a small chancel forms five unequal sides of an octagon, to which are attached a Vestry on one side and a Sacristy on the other.

There are side galleries, with five tiers of pews, and a deep western gallery, in which is a small organ. The interior is arranged for a large congregation (2000 or upwards)..."

"A very good Rectory-house has been built by the Patron, with the aid of the provision made by the late Rector of Stoke, Dr. Woodhouse, as previously mentioned. The house, which is a handsome square building, in the Italian style, coated with cement, stands within a quarter of a mile from the church, on the edge of the parish adjoining to that of Trentham, is removed from the contiguity of manufactories or collieries, and agreeably seated within a newly planted curtilage."