Bournes Bank, Burslem
Lost and forgotten roads of Stoke-on-Trent

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Bournes Bank, Burslem Bennett's Bournes Bank:   Many of the locations in Clayhanger and other of Arnold Bennett's novels based in "The five towns" correspond to actual locations in and around Burslem and the other Potteries' towns. Bennett gave the streets different names in his novels, some are given below:   Bennetts name actual name Woodisun Bank Bournes Bank Duck Square Swan Square Trafalgar Road Waterloo Road Wedgwood Street Queens Street Aboukir Street Nile Street     Bursley Burslem Hanbridge Hanley       These extracts from the book "Clayhanger" give a flavour of what Bournes Bank (once a packhorse road) was like:     Clayhanger   "Edwin came steeply out of the cinder-strewn back streets by Woodisun Bank [hill] into Duck Square, nearly at the junction of Trafalgar Road and Wedgwood Street.  A few yards down Woodisun Bank, cocks and hens were scurrying, with necks horizontal, from all quarters, and were even flying, to the call of a little old woman who threw grain from the top step of her porch."     "Duck Square looked out upon the very birth of Trafalgar Road, that wide, straight thoroughfare, whose name dates it, which had been invented, in the lifetime of a few then living, to unite Bursley with Hanbridge.  It also looked out upon the birth of several old pack-horse roads which Trafalgar Road had supplanted.  One of these was Woodisun Bank, that wound slowly up hill and down dale, apparently always choosing the longest and hardest route, to Hanbridge; and another was Aboukir Street, formerly known as Warm Lane, that reached Hanbridge in a manner equally difficult and unhurried. "     "Duck Square could remember strings of pack-mules driven by women, `trapesing' in zigzags down Woodisun Bank and Warm Lane, and occasionally falling, with awful smashes of the crockery they carried, in the deep, slippery, scarce passable mire of the first slants into the valley."   "Woodisun Bank (now unnoticed save by doubtful characters, policemen, and schoolboys) was once regularly `taken' by four horses at a canter."   "Its brick pavement, in the narrow branch of it that led to the double gates in Woodisun Bank (those gates which said to the casual visitor, `No Admittance except on Business'), was muddy, littered, and damaged...."   "Another procession--that of the Old Church Sunday school--came up, with standards floating and drums beating, out of the steepness of Woodisun Bank, and turned into Wedgwood Street,......"

"muddy, littered, and damaged"   the double gates in Woodisun Bank (those gates which said to the casual visitor, `No Admittance except on Business')   "once regularly `taken' by four horses at a canter."   "Another procession--that of the Old Church Sunday school"

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