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Lord Street, Etruria
Development of the housing:
By 1770 42 cottages had
been built on the north side of Etruria Road. As production was
transferred from Burslem to Etruria new rows of cottages were added on the
north and south sides of the main road. By the time of Josiah Wedgwood’s
death in 1795 there were almost 100 cottages at Etruria. Josiah Wedgwood
II carried on building houses on a smaller scale and by the mid 1820s
there were 126 houses in the village.
This was not a model ornamental village but a
simple development in a plain functional style: The houses were built of
brick and tile, with two rooms on each floor. The facades were devoid of
any architectural ornamentation with plain board doors and brick lintels
and sills for the casement widows. Most of the cottages were accessed
directly from the street but each house had a separate yard and garden
at the rear.
A small
number of the later cottages near the Fowlea Brook also had small front
gardens and four of these are illustrated in the picture below. The houses
were quite primitive compared with later buildings particularly those
constructed by building societies at the beginning of the 19th century but
they were far superior to most of the existing cottages in the Potteries
which had thatched roofs and communal yards with shared privies and
ashpits.
Part of
the reason for the simple design of the houses was due to the fact that
this was not a complete factory village accommodating all classes of the
workforce in carefully segregated and different sized houses. Many
employees — particularly the upper and middle management — did not live at
Etruria but in the surrounding towns and villages.
Etruria in 1832 from a
map by Thomas Hargreaves
Dark red circle = bridge over the
canal and the 'round house'
dark blue square = Wesleyan Chapel
red square = Jessie Shirley's house
Etruria from a 1898 OS
map
green line = Lord Street
dark blue square = Wesleyan Chapel
light blue square = Sunday school building
red square = Jessie Shirley's house
purple square = current Rendezvous Pub
Early 19th century
maps and plans show that land on the south-east side of the village was
let out for allotments.
In the 1860s the
Wedgwood family began to develop this land with new terrace housing.
Four new streets: Salem Street, Humbert Street, Etruscan Street and
Cavour Street were laid out and the land sold off for building
development.
The houses built in
these streets were larger than the old Wedgwood cottages because they
had to conform with the building bye-laws of Hanley Borough Council.
All the old Wedgwood
cottages were demolished in the 1960's but some of this later housing is
still standing including Etruscan Terrace, a row of 5 houses built in
1870 in Cavour Street.
Etruscan Terrace, a row of 5 houses built in 1870
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