Hales family | People from Stoke-on-Trent

| index: H | 

Hales family

[ Web Site Index ]

 

The Hales family of Cobridge

The Anglican community at Cobridge was supported by two important families - the Hales and the Adams families. 

The Hales family lived at Cobridge House (now the site of St Augustine Home) from the late 17th to the 19th century. 

John Hales (c. 1736-179 ) married Dorothy the widow of John Adams, potter, of the Brick House, Burslem. She was 12 years his senior and he set up as a pottery manufacturer with his stepson William Adams. A formal deed of partnership was drawn up in 1775 between John Hales, William Adams, and Thomas Hales, for the purpose of carrying on the business as co-partners and joint traders "in the art, trade, and mystery or occupation of a Potter”, for twenty-one years, with a joint capital of £1,000. The Thomas Hales referred to in the deed married Mary the sister of William Adams. John Hales was also involved in a partnership with John Sparrow, attorney, of Newcastle-under-Lyme. In the 1770s they bought an estate at Smallthorne for £2,403 6s 8d. and subsequently formed the Cockshead Colliery Company to exploit the mineral reserves under the land.

The pottery factory run by John Hales and William Adams was on Cobridge Road (near the present "Edgware Street"). The local “Turnpike Road” was the present “Century Street’ (previously 'Brook Street') and was the main access road to Hanley from the North before the construction of Waterloo Road. There was an area of land west of Cobridge Road in the ownership of John Hales, Esq. His son, also John Hales, subsequently built almost 40 terrace houses on the land nearest to Cobridge Road at the centre of which was “Hales Square”.

 


12/12/2001