Long before the Saxons and centuries before the rise of the pottery industry, the area around modern Stoke-on-Trent lay within Roman Britain. Although no major Roman town developed on the site of the present city, the district was crossed by important Roman roads linking military and trading centres across Staffordshire and Cheshire. 

These routes, together with evidence from nearby garrisons and settlements such as Chesterton and the Trent valley, show that the Potteries district formed part of the wider Roman landscape from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD.