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The American, Cobridge
  
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Historian Fred Hughes
writes....
I wonder
what mischievous irony was afoot when someone decided to convert an old
pub into an alcohol-prohibited meeting place? It’s about as capricious as
turning a church into a tavern or a prison into a leisure centre. But as
more pubs become obsolete we are just as likely to find ourselves sipping
a cappuccino where we once supped beer. Take, for instance, the
topsy-turvy world of the American Hotel in Waterloo Road Burslem.
The American in Waterloo
Road, Cobridge
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“Alcohol is strictly banned in the American,” declares Emma Robertson,
communications manager for the community trust Brighter Futures. “This
policy is enduring. And even though the name harks back to its previous
pub life, its function comes from the temperate New York Clubhouse, a
social resource offering mutual support to communities where lives have
been affected by mental illness. Brighter Futures chose the American
Hotel for its size to host and inspire similar social contact. This has
enabled an enlargement of shared programmes and has widened the scope of
its membership.”
The
role of Brighter Futures is to assist people in recovering their
self-esteem within a cohesive community. A programme of supported
self-help strategies addresses social exclusion and homelessness as well
as mental health and substance misuse. For club members it encourages a
new start influenced by American social structures but set inside an old
English pub. Now, how divergent is that?
“The
building is fitted with American decor and American themes. Members from
all over North Staffordshire are welcome to use its facilities,” says
clubhouse network manager Susan Preston. “Essentially we are a day-service
provider of life skills. The American is an informal walk-in clubhouse
that runs an arts group, a music society and provides online IT
instruction. It is where people can come together and take part in shared
activities; not unlike a pub I suppose.”
The American Clubhouse
Emma
tells me that the name of the pub may not originate, as often thought,
through its proximity to the former neighbouring Washington Pottery but
from trade union meetings held here to promote an emigration society.
“I was
told that the first pottery emigrants to America were able to buy land
in Wisconsin if they won a lottery that was held in the American back in
the early 1800’s,” she says.
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“Not far
off being true,” agrees historian Steve Birks. “The Potters’ Emigration
Society was founded in 1844 following a period of industrial unrest
inflamed by the activities of the Chartists. An early union leader was
Welshman William Evans who came to the Potteries for work and became a
principal agitator for worker’s rights. He was the first editor of a union
newspaper that evolved into the celebrated Potteries Examiner. Emigration
was pushed by Evans to encourage the purchase of land in America where a
new colony of potters was to be settled. The society acquired a bulk of
stock and each member was offered one share for £1. The plan was to raise
enough money through a savings club to buy 12,000 acres of farmland in
Wisconsin. Once the land had been bought each shareholder was entered into
a draw with the successful ticketholders each winning 20 acres of land.
The lottery Emma is referring to took place at Hanley Meat Market but some
draws may have taken place at the American Hotel. It was a pioneering step
which ultimately failed a few years on. Nevertheless the town of
Pottersville was founded in Wisconsin; and I think there are still some
ancestral connections between Stoke-on-Trent and Wisconsin from those
times.”
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Before Waterloo Road opened around 1815 the main road out of Burslem was
through the meandering backs of Commercial Street. There’s good evidence
to show that an inn formerly stood on the site of the American. But then
the inn faced the opposite direction towards an ancient lane between
Burslem and Hanley.
“Our
backs clearly have the markings of it once being the front of a public
house,” says Susan. “Of course the old front is now our backyard, used as
a terrace for outdoor activity.”
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In 1833
the famous potter Enoch Wood hosted a dinner at the new swanky American
Hotel recently built on the new road. As the leading Burslem citizen of
his times, Wood paid tribute to the growth of the town remarking on the
‘splendid new inn’ where sixty years earlier he had been accustomed to
travelling a lonely route to Hanley across boggy fields.
“The
Staffordshire Advertiser announced the lease of the American a few years
later,” says Steve. “It was described then as a lavish and superior
hotel with ample stabling, ‘situated on the great thoroughfare leading
from Burslem to Hanley’. In addition to extensive accommodation it even
boasted a large billiards room.”
From the 1970’s to its closure as a pub in 2000, the American became a
centre of West Indian culture as successive Jamaican licensees turned it
into a legendary blues and reggae venue. These days it is much more than
an old pub with a new use. It is a new kind of New World reconciling
itself with old Industrial Britain.
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