This image shows weeds growing at the base of the Smith Child Clock Tower in Tower Square. The tower was erected in 1893 to honour Sir Smith Child, the town’s most generous philanthropist.
Tell us about neglected and empty buildings in Tunstall which need ‘tender loving’ care and we will include them in our new series Tunstall Today.
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Tunstall’s Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Wesley Place (now Wesley Street) replaced a chapel built near America Street in the 18th century.
Opened in 1835. the Chapel in Wesley Place was a large brick building with a portico supported by four stone pillars. It could accommodate over 1,000 worshippers and was lit by gas lamps.
In 1838 a Sunday School was erected on land behind the chapel. Five or six years later, a Wesleyan Day School opened in the building. The day school became a Board School in 189o. It closed four years later when Wolstanton School Board opened High Steet Schools.
In a pamphlet, called ‘Introduction and Progress of Wesleyan Methodism in Tunstall’ published in 1842, Thomas Leese and Thomas Mores describe John Wesley’s visit to the town’s first Wesleyan Chapel in America Street.
“On March 29th, 1790, Mr Wesley preached in the new chapel at Tunstall, at nine o’clock in the morning, for the first and last time. He was then in his 87th year and died 11 months later, aged 88 years.
“His text on that occasion was ‘Let us go on to perfection.’ There was something very remarkable in his appearance that was calculated to impress the beholder with awe and veneration. Wesley seemed like a messenger from heaven. His pale heavenly countenance and penetrating eye, made him appear as if he was about to be ushered into the company of ‘angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect.’
“Wesley’s voice was weak and feeble, but his expression was clear and distinct. His hearing was remarkable, for although he knew, in general, all the hymns, there were times when he was at a loss for a starting word or two. On these occasions, Mr Joseph Bradford, who travelled with him, whispered the required word to him, which he would immediately catch, and proceed without it being observed by the generality of the congregation.
“He did not use glasses, and it would have been easy for him to have gone through the whole service without either a bible or hymn book.”
Edited by David Martin
During the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution changed the face of Britain, making it the ‘workshop of the world’.
Earthenware factories were built in Tunstall, a township that included Sandyford, Newfield and Furlong. At the end of the 18th century, there were seven factories making pottery. Small coal and ironstone mines were scattered throughout the district. Blue bricks and tiles were produced in the Chatterley Valley.
As early as 1735, William Simpson was making earthenware in the township. By 1750, Enoch Booth had a factory near a field called Stony Croft. The factory made cream coloured ware glazed with a mixture of lead ore and ground flint.
In 1763, Admiral Smith Child built Newfield Pottery, where he produced earthenware. By the 1780s, two brothers, Samuel and Thomas Cartlich, were making pottery and mining coal at Sandyford. There were brick kilns, coal mines, a flint mill and a crate maker’s workshop at Furlong.
During the 1740s, George Booth and his son Thomas, leased a pottery factory on an estate called Will Flats adjacent to Furlong Lane. In 1779, Burslem pottery manufacturer William Adams rented the factory and part of the estate. On 1 March 1784, William bought the factory and the land he was renting. He changed the estate’s name from Will Flats to Greengates. The old factory was demolished, and William built, Greengates, a new factory on the site where he made high quality stoneware and jasper ornaments for the luxury market.
William employed a Swiss modeller, Joseph Mongolot, to help him create the models from which the moulds used to produce the bas-reliefs for jasper and stoneware were made.
Pottery produced by William was sold to wealthy customers. They purchased ware from his showrooms in Fleet Street, London or visited the Greengates factory to buy tea sets, dinner services, jasper, and stoneware ornaments. Â
The 6th edition of William Chaffer’s book ‘Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain’ tells us that some of the jasper made at Greengates was ‘equal, if not superior, to anything made [by Wedgwood] at Etruria.’
Writer and broadcaster J. B. Priestly made his first visit to the Potteries in 1933. At the time, he was writing ‘English Journey’, a personalised semi-documentary account of life in England.
A well-built, good-natured, plain-speaking, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman, he visited towns and cities throughout the country collecting information for his book.
Meandering northwards from Southhampton, John made his way to the Potteries, where he visited Adams, an 18th-century potbank in Tunstall.
John was surprised to hear the foreman at the works call the employees ‘ladies and gentlemen’ instead of ‘men and women’. He saw them making and decorating cups and saucers, teapots, butter dishes, dinnerware and tea services.
The ‘ladies and gentlemen’ took pride in their work. John admired their skill and craftsmanship but was critical of the firm’s traditional designs that were not selling in overseas markets.
Before he left the factory, John unsuccessfully attempted to throw a large plate on a potter’s wheel. He could not control the wheel’s speed, and the plate kept slipping off it.
After watching this video, we are asking ourselves whether Stoke-on-Trent City Council cares about our city’s heritage or realises the role heritage buildings can play in revitalising the declining economy of a post-industrial city?
Coal mining has shaped England’s villages, towns, cities and landscapes for hundreds of years.
During the 1930s and 40s, the best oatcakes in Tunstall were made by an elderly couple, Mr and Mrs McQuire, who lived in Queen Street. Their home was a terraced house and they made oatcakes in the kitchen every Sunday morning.
On Sunday mornings, the front door was always open. Customers came to the house to buy oatcakes. They walked into the parlour and joined a queue that went through the living room into the kitchen, where the McQuires were making and selling oatcakes.
Mrs McQuire stood in front of a hot iron plate, called the backstone, laid across the top of the gas oven. There was a large bowl at her side, which contained oatmeal mixture. To make oatcakes, Mrs McQuire dipped her scoop into the mixture. When it was full, she ladled the mixture onto the backstone, swirling the scoop to create perfect circles. As soon as they were cooked on one side, she turned the circles over and cooked them on the other.
When the circles had browned to perfection and become oatcakes, Mrs McQuire scooped them off the backstone and threw them onto a wire tray. She wiped the backstone clean and began the process again.
Mr McQuire sold the oatcakes and wrapped them in newspaper. While serving he kept up a warm, friendly conversation with his customers.
The McQuires’ backyard gate was kept open enabling people living in John Street to come into the yard and be served at the kitchen window.
Mrs McQuire’s oatcakes cost a halfpenny each. They were delicious. Men, women and children came from all parts of Tunstall to buy them to eat with their breakfast, which was either bacon and egg or bacon, cheese and tomatoes.
The question isn’t ‘Can Tunstall’s Heritage Be Revived?’ It is, ‘How do we give people, who have seen Tunstall decline and its industries destroyed, the confidence to fight for the future of their town and create new job opportunities for their children?’
Tunstall has a lot going for it. The Harecastle Canal and Railway Tunnel Complex in the Chatterley Valley and Chatterley Whitfield Colliery merit World Heritage Site Status in their own right. Even without this status, they can become international tourist attractions and bring customers back to Tunstall’s decaying High Street.
North Staffordshire Heritage 