Hulton Abbey to Ruston
Grange
Sneyd Street
Forest Park Link - on
Sneyd Street
Forest Park Link is the footpath from
Cobridge Park across Sneyd Street to Central Forest Park - standing by the
link marker sign there are good views over Cobridge & Burslem and
landmarks can be clearly seen.......
reclaimed spoil heap of
Sneyd Colliery
Old cupola melting
furnace stack of Progress Foundry
Moorcroft Bottle Kiln
Vale Park floodlights
Mow Cop
The angel and clock tower
of Burslem Town Hall
 \
View up Sneyd
Street from Elder Road
Site of the
Old School House, Erected 1766 Demolished 1897.
Cobridge School
In the
1680's there were only three or four small houses at Cobridge but by the
mid 1770's a distinct settlement had come into existence in the vicinity
of the crossroads formed by Sneyd Street Grange Street and Elder Road.
By 1766
the population of the district had increased to the point where provision
was made for the construction of a public building to serve the area.
The
original trust deed made between Thomas Fenton of Newcastle Gent. and 57
trustees including Josiah Wedgwood and John Hales devised:
| “a
piece of land in Cobridge containing 120 sq yards lying on the north
side of the road leading from Cobridge to Burslem & a dwelling house
& other buildings erected upon it for the purpose of a school for
the education and instruction of children, & a Public hall for the
purpose of meetings for transacting public affairs in Cobridge & its
neighbourhood". |
In 1766
members of the Warburton family were prominent among the list of trustees
of the Cobridge school.
The
report of the commissioners concerning Staffordshire Charities in 1826
records that a school was built to accommodate 60 to 70 scholars on the
first floor with two dwelling rooms on the pound floor. The report went on
to state that the school of the first floor was kept by a master who paid
the trustees a rent of £2 while the rooms on the ground floor were
occupied a widow who ran a small school there and who paid a rent of £5.
Fifteen years later John Hales one of the surviving trustees reported to
Samuel Scriven (Royal Commission on Children’s Employment, 1841) that the
school:
“is now occupied by Mr Goodfellow; he pays a rent to me, or has do
so at the expiration of 12 months, of £5, which I find hardly enough
to keep it in repair.
There are now 20 scholars educated in it at their own expense; Mr
Goodfellow derives the profits and emoluments arising out of it.
There was a committee appointed to the management some years ago,
but they are all dead, and the whole management consequently
devolves on me and Mr John Hales; I believe I was appointed by the
original trust deed with the others, but I cannot find the deeds,
and therefore cannot say with certainty.” |
Cobridge School
- the front of which faced Elder Road
Sneyd Street is the road on the right.
(from Scarratt: "Old times in
the Potteries" 1906)
  
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