What's new on 'The Potteries' Web Site.

Stoke-on-Trent
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What's New on this site? | also see what was new in: 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007

Only significant additions are included in this section.

30 June 2008	“Grove Road is a piece of an arterial semi-circle leaving and rejoining the original Roman road. It begins life as Duke Street as far as the crossroads at Heron Cross. Here it becomes Grove Road until it gets to Mount Pleasant where it changes its name to Whieldon Road. And when it gets to Stoke it becomes Lytton Street,” Steve tells me. “The semi-circular routes is like an ancient D-Road by-passing the Roman Road, or as we named it, King Street.”
23 June 2008	Listed building section completely revised with thumbnail picture index.
23 June 2008	Normacot Road Hardly any traffic moves along Normacot Road or the two parallel roads, Uttoxeter Road and Lower Spring Road. They all terminate as dead-ends at the A50 hectic Intersection.
22 June 2008	Grove Road, Heron Cross, Great Fenton It is not at all fanciful to speculate that a number of famous and early potters journeyed along the track which is today known as Whieldons Road, Grove Road and Duke Street.
15 June 2008	Fowlea Bank - "it’s like falling off the edge of the world" One of the longest and busiest roads in Stoke on Trent is Etruria Road. It stretches from the Victoria Theatre in Basford to the Grand Hotel in Hanley. But all that’s left of the original road is now nothing more than a tiny concealed lane that runs beside Basford’s Queen’s Hotel.
15 June 2008	Normacot Road, Longton Normacot Road was once an important thoroughfare from Normacot to Longton Town. Many of the houses and works were demolished between the 1930's and the 1970's and the opening of the A50 road in 1997 meant that the end of Normacot Road was sealed off - so now it is a road to nowhere.
9 June 2008	The Ash Hall bridle path was a strategic location in the mid-19th century because of its carriage of coal from Hanley Hayes Colliery to the Hanley-Cheadle Turnpike Road, - Early coalmining on Ash Bank is reflected in the names of the fields such as Coal Pit Field and Slack Pit Field
8 June 2008	The end of an era? There is no single reason for the decline of the local pub, there are many contributory factors: loss and erosion of the communities that underpin the trade of the local; decline of industry and the spread of unemployment; greedy breweries and pub company landlords screwing their tenants to the point where they cannot make a living and move on; the rise of the ‘pub chain’
5 June 2008	Lord Street (Etruria Old Road) Josiah Wedgwood set an example by building houses for his workers. There may have been an element of philanthropy here, but it was also a necessity if skilled men were to be enticed to Etruria from Burslem. The terraced houses stretched along both sides of the main road from Etruria to Basford Bank.
27 May 2008	Although now a largely desolated street at one time it was a busy place with a large number of public buildings.......The Free Library, the North Staffs. Technical and Art Museum, the Government School of Art, the Potteries Mechanics’ Institution, and the Theatre Royal were all situated in Pall Mall.
19 May 2008	When the Longton society bought Spratslade Farm it had to accommodate an ancient bridle path leading from Longton to Trentham. The streets were designed in geometric blocks and the bridle path was included as a pedestrian way between the old Belgrave Road and the new Ricardo Street.
12 May 2008	Ricardo Street. There are some places that draw you back like a bee to a hive or a bird to its nest; a honeymoon spot say, or a childhood holiday beach. For me such a place is Dresden. Yes, I do mean Dresden Stoke on Trent, that sprawl of streets and houses crammed between the A50 and Queen’s Park. But my, what streets, what houses!
5 May 2008	Bournes Bank Once part of a packhorse road which ran from Hanley through onto Church Lawton. Bournes Bank was originally called Church Street and was the main path down to St. John's Church and then on to Hanley. Many pottery and related industry buildings and businesses thrived on Bournes Bank. A school, an ice skating rink and two cinemas found their home on this unassuming road.
17 April 2008	Lost and forgotten roads of Stoke-on-Trent
15 April 2008	1763 - The potters petitioned Parliament to build turnpike roads, Wedgwood told them that the roads were "in very bad condition, narrow in some parts, and in the Winter Season impassable in many places". Parliament granted their Bill and turnpikes were constructed.
13 April 2008	new summary page for Burslem - the "mother of the potteries" seated between Hanley and Tunstall.
12 April 2008	Church Lawton - home of the Lawton family and Hall. The Trent and Mersey canal and the Macclesfield canal junction is located nearby at Red Bull.
10 April 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week .. James Brindley canal engineer
3 April 2008	continuation of Pevsner's architectural commentary on the Potteries towns... Stoke, Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent Villages and Trentham Park
31 March 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week ... Greengates and the Adams family - potters of Tunstall.
30 March 2008	There are two Harecastle Tunnels, one of which is still in use today. The earlier of the tunnels, built by Brindley, is now closed and disused. Yet the Telford tunnel is used daily by canal boats coming to and from the Potteries. Brindley's tunnel didn't have room for a towpath - the barges were legged through the tunnel and the horses taken over the hill along Boathorse Road.
24 March 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week .. Ladywell, Tunstall - 'a town of courts, wells and windmills'
23 March 2008	Members of the Adams family were Potters as early as 1447. They rose to eminence in the trade in the eighteenth century as Master Potters in Burslem and other parts of the Potteries, working constantly side by side with the Tofts, Astburys, Daniels, Wedgwoods.
20 March 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week ..The young surgeon, Dr Thomas Oliver, cut a pathetic figure as he was led to the gallows at Stafford Gaol in 1797 for shooting dead John Wood of Brownhills.
14 March 2008	Tunstall, including its environs, is the pleasantest village in the pottery. It stands on high ground and commands pleasing prospects.
10 March 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week ... Trubshaw Cross 'a Major gateway provides a glimpse into cities past'
8 March 2008	"Brownhills is situate upon the main Turnpike Road (from Burslem to Lawton,) at the junction of the Branch which comes from Newcastle through Longport; and is at nearly equal distances from the market-places of Tunstall and Burslem; which are rather more than a mile apart. It is within the township of Burslem, which extends, north-westward, as far as an inn called High gate, close up to the town of Tunstall."
4 March 2008	‘Relics’ One of the most historically significant routes in the Potteries is Westport Road in Burslem, which links the Mother Town with Brownhills, just south of Tunstall, the route once being busy with export wagons en route to Liverpool (and on to the rest of the world) and the North.
3 March 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week ..... Brad-Wall - a house on the western side of a large wood overlooking Tunstall and Burslem.
2 March 2008	Trubshaw Cross is the upper part of Longport, situated on the junction of Newcastle Street and Davenport Road - it was an important point on the packhorse lanes from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Burslem and Tunstall.
29 February 2008	Continuation of the walk along the 'old roads' of the city - this week Dimsdale and the continuation of the old Roman road
27 February 2008	Experts calculate that in the heyday there were up to 4,000 bottle kilns with as many as 2,000 still standing in the 1950's. The Clean Air Act sounded the death-knell for the smoky, coal fired oven. See photos of the 47 kilns still standing today - all are listed buildings
24 February 2008	To me there is a beauty in their honesty, in the lives of the people that worked and lived in the Potteries and the buildings they left behind." Chris Oldham - photographic artist
18 February 2008	Cobridge - the Victorian suburb on route to Burslem A 'walk' around the old streets of Burslem - 'Packhorse Lane - the lifeline of the Potteries'
17 February 2008	Bradwell - the Hall, the wood, the tilery and the Eler brothers
16 February 2008	'The Unknown Legends' Norton-in-the-Moors is where the city meets the moors, and has its roots in coal being home to Norton Colliery and a neighbour of Chatterley Whitfield.
10 February 2008	Significant packhorse lanes and later turnpike roads existed in Burslem - these were essential for the transport of raw materials into the town and the export of finished ware via Winsford and the River Weaver to the port of Liverpool.
9 February 2008	Photos of the remaining Victorian Post Boxes in Stoke-on-Trent (if you know of any others then please let me know)
7 February 2008	- continuation of the 'walk' around the old roads of Stoke-on-Trent ....... Hanley Lower Green \| Etruria \| Cobridge \|
20 January 2008	Etruria has been created, nurtured and grown by men of local, national and international fame, without whom the story would never have been complete.....
16 January 2008	Stoke Road, Howard Place & Snow Hill - 'This road well travelled deserves a second look' 20 Snow Hill - The apartments are where Clarice Cliff lived from 1936 until she married her boss Colley Shorter in 1940.
15 January 2008	a "walk" around Station Road, the railway and North Stafford Hotel
15 January 2008	In the late seventeenth century, Hanley consisted of two small hamlets known as Hanley Upper Green (or just Upper Green) and Hanley Lower Green (or just Lower Green). The centre of Hanley preserves the irregular layout of the late-18th-century village and in 1960 Mr. J. W. Plant the City Reconstruction Officer described it as 'an archipelago of island sites'.
12 January 2008	'Libraries gave us power' - each of Stoke-on-Trent’s six towns is blessed with its own public library, and each one is a major architectural statement.
10 January 2008	The history of part of Shelton - Stoke Road, Howard Place and Snow Hill
5 January 2008	Allan Chell's photos of the Granville Street / Waterloo Road area of Cobridge in the 1950's
3 January 2008	a "walk" around Lower Lane, Fenton
3 January 2008	Complete section on Winton Square, its history and the listed buildings there.
1 January 2008	Entry on Winton's Wood, Shelton - its history and current day importance