No 16 -  Burslem 
Price Street

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'Towards a Potteries Vernacular' 

"No architect designed the variegated rows of cottages that characterise the villages of Britain. They are the work of generations of local builders working with materials and in styles they have been familiar with since childhood…making use of the most readily available materials; stone, brick or wood, and using them in a fashion unique to that place. 

Every area of Britain, every county, almost every village, has its own idiosyncrasies that root the houses firmly in their immediate environment. This is vernacular architecture”

Matthew Rice

I first took an interest in “vernacular architecture” a number of years ago, around about the time the City Council and RENEW North Staffordshire began tearing down the city’s housing stock in great swathes.

Vernacular architecture isn’t really architecture at all. Vernacular architecture is local people using local materials to build homes within their locality reflecting ‘styles’ within the local context. To architectural snobs, this is copycat architecture, or pastiche. However, it can also prove popular with ordinary people that have to live with the decisions and designs that architects and builders foist upon them.

This sort of approach is something that is predominantly associated with rural areas, but the same thing happened in urban areas, particularly following the Industrial Revolution when housing was needed quickly.

It got me thinking what a Potteries Vernacular would look like.

coloured banding on simple Potteries terraced housing

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Located on the edge of the Peak District, the topography of the Potteries area meant that it was not well-suited to agriculture, and so the farming community was relatively small, and unprofitable. As late as 1686, the area was described by Dr Plot in The Natural History of Staffordshire as “barren, heathy and gorsey grounds”. However, this geography did provide sandstone suitable for building, workable seams of coal, and ironstone to the east of the region, with the west providing timber and clay, and also charcoal, while nearby Cauldon Low was rich in limestone which was quarried for various industries including iron making.

These were the raw materials for the growth of an economy based on ceramics, which local farmers jumped on to supplement their meagre earnings from agriculture. There is evidence of pottery activity from at least the fourteenth century, and the first potter from the Wedgwood family was born in 1617.

Development of the Trentham Estates by the Dukes of Sutherland was a success, by taking land of average quality and turning it into a valuable asset through coal mining and iron production. Even so, the area was not a growth spot in terms of development until transport connections were improved by the introduction of turnpike trusts and the opening of the Trent and Mersey Canal in the late 1700s.

These innovations triggered the urbanisation of North Staffordshire, and industry expanded significantly throughout the nineteenth century, providing an economy focused on the areas main settlements, Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton, and Longton – the Six Towns.

The factory system meant a constant need for more workers, which further increased urbanisation of the region, with rural workers migrating to the expanding conurbation leading to a fourfold increase in population in the parish of Stoke-upon-Trent over a sixty year period.

Factory workers were accommodated in new developments of terraced houses, homes which have become a significant element of the character of the Potteries.

Terrace Houses in Hitchman Street, Fenton
courtesy - © Matthew Rice, Lost City fo Stoke-on-Trent 

The terraced house in Stoke-on-Trent was developed and built in similar ways to the way in which housing in rural areas did: local builders capitalised on the availability of local materials and copied the style of previous terraced housing as they progressed. Local brown-to-red brick was used for the main structural walls, with different coloured banding such as yellow bricks or Staffordshire Blues, with roofs of plain clay tiles. Potteries’ terraces are characterised by the use of classical elements and panels of ceramic tiles, reflecting the region’s growth industries, with decorative elements such as dentil cornices.

This led to a massive supply of two-up, two-down terraces – or “slummy cottages” as Pevsner described them – across North Staffordshire which still endures today due to their affordability and longevity, despite the attack on such housing stock in recent times through Government-sponsored ‘regeneration’ programmes.

the result of Government-sponsored ‘regeneration’ programmes?

courtesy - © Matthew Rice, Lost City fo Stoke-on-Trent 

The Burslem area retains large numbers of terraces, in and around the town centre, and in nearby neighbourhoods such as Middleport, which suffered greatly under the so-called housing market renewal programme.

One of the streets in the area that survived the mass cull of the terrace is Price Street at the heart of Burslem. Price Street is an attractive town centre terrace, which is handy for local services, and though just off the busy A50, is quiet enough to provide a first step on the housing ladder for many a young family.

Price Street also hosts homes that would fit with my idea of what a Potteries Vernacular would look like: red/brown brick walls, plain clay tiled roofs, decorative lintels above windows and doors, and banding of Staffordshire Blues.

Much of the new housing built in recent times fails to reflect a lot of what forms the character of the Potteries, and you also question to quality of some of the materials used. And so it begs the question: will they will last as long as streets such as Price Street?

Dave Proudlove - November 2013

panels of ceramic tiles, reflecting the region’s growth industries

decorative elements -  dentil cornices on Tunstall houses