A week with very little news.
Most of the time has been spent reorganising our filing system.
Research into the Anglo-Saxon legal system continues. We have been looking at the Christian Church’s role in the administration of justice.
Have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend. We’ll see you again next week.
Stoke-on-Trent’s Claybody Theatre is going to stay at The Dipping House on the historic Spode Works site in Stoke-upon-Trent’s town centre.
The theatre has taken a 15-year lease on The Dipping House, which has been its home since 2023. Deborah McAndrew, the theatre’s co-artistic director, said:
We absolutely delighted to have secured the future of the Dipping House.
The Dipping House has proven to be a great space for us and we have already welcomed thousands of visitors who have come to watch our performances and participate in workshops and other events.
In going forward we will continue to collaborate with the City Council to develop the venue for theatre, arts and community events right in the heart of this incredible and historic site at Spode Works.
The Staffordshire History Centre in Stafford has a collection of military records, personal letters, photographs and regimental histories. If your ancestor served in the armed forces, the centre could help you to trace them.
In June 1942, the small Czech village of Lidice, 12 miles from Prague, was destroyed. Its inhabitants were murdered or deported, and the village was wiped off the map.
The atrocity was a reprisal for a top-secret operation code-named “Operation Anthropoid,” to kill Reinhard Heydrich, a high-level Nazi official who planned the Holocaust, which murdered at least 6 million people.
On 9th June, the day of Heydrich’s state funeral in Berlin, Hitler ordered retaliatory measures against the Czech population. That very evening, German police and SS officials surrounded Lidice. Their behaviour was caught on film. The atrocities they committed caused an international outcry that strengthened the resolve of Great Britain and the United States to destroy Nazi Germany.
On Friday, 5 September, Dr Kate Vigurs, a Second World War Historian, will give a talk at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery telling the story of Lidice from Operation Anthropoid to 2025, revealing its special relationship with Stoke-on-Trent.
Her talk starts at 7.00 pm and ends at 9.00 pm. The bar opens at 6,00 pm. Tickets cost £12.
Telephone 01782 232323 or email museumevents@stoke.gov.uk to book your ticket.
The sketch above shows William Adams’ Greengates Pottery in Tunstall. The factory built between 1779 and 1781 was one of the largest in the Potteries. It manufactured tableware, stoneware and jasper ornaments for the luxury market. William Chaffer, the author of ‘Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain’, said some of the jasper made at Greengates was ‘equal to, if not superior’ to that produced by Josiah Wedgwood at Etruria.
A Description of the Country From Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, a book published in 1795, was compiled by Dr John Aikin. The book tells us about Newcastle-under-Lyme and North Staffordshire’s pottery towns and villages in the 1790s.
This edited extract from the book describes Tunstall as it was in the 1790s.
Tunstall is the pleasantest village in the Potteries. It stands on high ground, commanding extensive views of the surrounding countryside. Pottery manufacturers in the village produce good-quality ware and do considerable business. There was a church here, and human bones have been dug up. But such is the effect of time that no trace of either the church or the bones remains today. A small chapel has recently been built here. There is a considerable number of brick and tile works. They use local clay to make blue bricks, which look as well on the roofs of houses as moderate slate. Tunstall is four miles from Newcastle-under-Lyme and nine miles from Congleton. The turnpike road from Lawton to Newcastle-under-Lyme runs through Tunstall, where the turnpike road to Bosley in Cheshire begins [near the Wheatsheaf Inn].
Friday NewsDesk is a new regular weekly post that will tell you about North Staffordshire Heritage’s activities.
Worldwide interest has been shown in Chatterley Whitfield’s future. The creation of a circular heritage tourist trail linking Burslem, Ford Green Hall, Chatterley Whitfield and Biddulph Grange with Mow Cop and Kidsgrove.
North Staffordshire Heritage is continuing to research Mercia and its legal system. This is a long-term project, which is expected to last for eight or nine months.
Our new series of posts about the Township of Tunstall starts in September, and we will give you more details at the end of August.
We hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable weekend. Take care and stay safe. We’ll see you again on Tuesday.
Image of Biddulph Grange Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)
Something had indeed gone badly wrong. High in the sky above North Staffordshire, a scene of high drama was unfolding. It was away from the eyes of the assembled spectators. Even the excitement and danger of a normal parachute drop paled in comparison.
Leek’s Nicholson Institute is looking for people who live in the Staffordshire Moorlands to help shape its future.
If you are enthusiastic about local museums, heritage and culture, this is your chance to help make the Nicholson Museum more vibrant and inclusive.
Since May 2025, volunteers have been meeting to explore how the museum can be given a new image.
Four subgroups have been formed. These are Visitor Experience & Museum Operations, Content Development & Programming, Fundraising & Income Generation and Marketing & Audience Development.
New subgroups are being created to focus on education and the museum shop.
More volunteers are needed to join all these subgroups.
The Big Feast is NOT a Food Festival. It’s a weekend of amazing arts, curious culture and outdoor spectacle. Visitors to the Feast will see some of the UK’s best artists performing on Hanley’s streets. The two-day event takes place in Hanley/City centre on Friday 22 and Saturday 23rd August.
Another working week is almost over. It will soon be time to close the office for the weekend.
North Staffordshire Heritage welcomed the news that the Heritage at Risk Fund has given £1.5 million to help save Bethesda Church and Burslem’s Indoor Market.
We are still concerned about the future of the former colliery at Chatterley Whitfield.
If Chatterley Whitfield had been on the South Wales Coalfield, it would have been made a World Heritage Site many years ago.
It is not too late to save Chatterley Whitfield and make it an international tourist attraction. Regenerating the site and breathing new life into its derelict buildings would revitalise Tunstall, Burslem, Biddulph and Kidsgrove.
With imagination and initiative, Chatterley Whitfield can be the starting point of a North Staffordshire Tourist Trail. A circular trail linking Middleport Pottery, Burslem’s Historic Town Centre, Ford Green Hall and Biddulph Grange with Mow Cop, the Trent & Mersey Canal and the Harecastle Tunnels at Kidsgrove.
We hope you have an enjoyable weekend. Take care and keep safe. See you again on Monday.
North Staffordshire Heritage 