Category: Hanley/City Centre

Hanley Park Wins Green Flag Award for the Fifth Year Running

Once again, Hanley Park has won the prestigious Green Flag Award. The park has received the award for five consecutive years. This confirms its status as one of the best parks in the UK.

Councillor Amjid Wazir OBE, the city council’s cabinet member for city pride, enforcement and sustainability, said:

“This is a fantastic achievement and a massive credit to the team who care for Hanley Park all year round. They always keep the highest standards. The Green Flag award is a clear sign of their dedication.

“Parks like Hanley are vital places where communities can come together. Congratulations to everyone involved. Your pride in our city can be seen by everyone.”

Daydreaming at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

Daydreaming is Stoke-on-Trent College’s 2025 end of year art exhibition at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. A vibrant mixture of students’ work will take you into a world of surrealism, imagination and different perspectives.

Short films created by students will be shown. A presentation, “The Plastic Ocean”, will raise your awareness of plastic pollution and highlight its impact on marine ecosystems.

The exhibition runs until Sunday, 31st August.

Pop-up exhibition to celebrate Arthur Berry’s life and work

Appetite has organised an open-air pop-up exhibition to celebrate the life of Arthur Berry.

Berry was a playwright, poet and painter. The exhibition explores his life and the impact he had on art and culture in the Potteries.

The exhibition opens in the City Centre on August 4th. It runs there until September 14th. Then it moves to Newcastle-under-Lyme. It reopens there on September 20th and runs until October 1st.

Share Your Memories of Hanley’s Theatre Royal

Do you remember the Theatre Royal in Hanley (the City Centre)? Were you a Hanley Babe, or did you help backstage? If you have memories or photographs of the Theatre Royal you want to share with the Claybody Theatre, come to the Dipping House, 5 Spode Courtyard, Church Street, Stoke, on Wednesday, June 25, between 7pm and 8.30pm. All are welcome, and refreshments are provided.

Lost Film Strips

Can You Help Trace Them?

North Staffordshire Heritage would like to celebrate the City of Stoke-on-Trent’s Centenary by showing a series of film strips.

The film strips were made by local schools in 1960. They celebrated the 50th anniversary of the amalgamation of the six towns, which created the County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent.

We have the film strip, The Township of Tunstall, made by Highgate Secondary School. The filmstrips about Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton are missing.

If you can help us trace them, please get in touch with northstaffordshireheritage@outlook.com

Can You Help Trace These Film Strips

We hope to show a series of film strips during Stoke-on-Trent’s Centenary Year. Schools in the six towns made these film strips in 1960 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent’s creation.

North Staffordshire Heritage has the scripts for all these film strips. But we only have one film strip, the Township of Tunstall, made by Highgate Secondary School.

The film strips about Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton are missing. If you can help us trace them, please email northstaffordshireheritage@outlook.com

The town Bennett forgot

Do you think Fenton is Stoke-on-Trent’s forgotten town? We believe Fenton’s town hall and Christ Church will help make North Staffordshire’s Industrial Landscape a World Heritage Site.

Fenton is called Stoke-on-Trent’s Forgotten Town

Can You Help Us?

We hope to show a series of film strips during Stoke-on-Trent’s Centenary Year.

Schools in the six towns made these films in 1960. They were made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent’s creation.

North Staffordshire Heritage has the scripts for all these film strips. But, we only have one film strip, The Township of Tunstall, made by Highgate Secondary School.

The film strips about Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton are missing. If you can help us trace them, please email northstaffordshireheritage@outlook.com

DM/LW /BC(2024)

The Mystery of Simeon Shaw

Simeon Ackroyd Shaw was born in Salford on April 17th, 1785. He became the Potteries’ leading intellectual in the first half of the 19th century.

Simeon came to North Staffordshire, where he worked as a printer and compositor for the Potteries Gazette and Newcastle-under-Lyme Advertiser.

Simeon Aykroyd Shaw

In 1985, Keele University’s Department of Adult Education published People of the Potteries. The book says that by 1818, Simeon was “running an academy for young gentlemen in Northwood, Hanley”. According to People of the Potteries, in 1822, Simeon owned a commercial academy in Piccadilly, Hanley. By 1834, he had a large academy in the town’s Market Place.

When he was writing By-gone Tunstall (Published in 1913), William J. Harper was given notes called Tunstall Reminiscences written by Simeon’s grandson, Mr W. S. Shaw. In these reminiscences, Mr Shaw says his grandfather lived in Piccadilly Street, Tunstall. He had one of North Staffordshire’s largest and most influential academies in the Market Place (Tower Square).

White’s Directory of Staffordshire, published in 1834, shows that Simeon owned an academy in Market Place, Tunstall. Official records prove that he lived in Piccadilly Street, which ran from Market Place to Sneyd Street (Ladywell Road).

Simeon was still living in Piccadilly Street in 1851. He died on April 8th, 1859 and was buried in Bethesda churchyard Hanley.

The Old Swan Inn, Hanley

In his Romance of Staffordshire (Published in the 1870s), Henry Wedgwood describes the Swan Inn, a coaching inn where stagecoaches to London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool stopped to pick up passengers. He writes:

It is wonderful how soon public buildings pass from memory. How completely the “Old Swan Inn”, Hanley, is now buried in the past and, along with the memory of those who met to socialise under its roof.

The old inn was a large building with strange-looking wings and gable ends, with square-built chimneys and gothic windows, some of them exceedingly small and mullioned by heavy stonework. There were iron palisades at the front of the inn and an extensive bowling green at the rear. The front entrance was covered by a flat canopy supported by stone pillars.

Inside there were queer, old, little rooms with chimney nooks and ancient screens that told of bygone days. There was one large room used by local clubs and for civic celebrations where speeches were made about the state of the pottery industry.

One of the rooms at the rear of the inn had a large bay window that overlooked the bowling green. In this room, the magistrates held petty sessions to try summary offences. They sent those suspected of committing indictable offences for trial at Quarter Sessions or the Assize Courts, which sat in the Shire Hall at Stafford.

(Edited by North Staffordshire Heritage)

Bull Baiting in 18th Century Hanley

Hanley’s bullring, where bulls were baited on Sundays, was near the Cock Inn at Far Green. Henry Wedgwood, in his Romance of Staffordshire, says the bullring was a place where ” some poor animal was attacked by dogs” and tortured by men. He writes:

Bull baiting was organised by men who frequented the Cock Inn, a small tavern with a thatched roof.

Writing about bull baiting, Wedgwood asks his readers to picture an infuriated bull made fast to a stake or a ring driven into the ground. The bullring was surrounded by hundreds of people – both men and women. Standing in front of the crowd were men restraining snarling dogs struggling to break free and attack the bull.

Spectators were betting on which dog would bring the bull to its knees. There were excited shrieks from its supporters when the dog they had bet on was sent into the ring. They cheered if the dog’s teeth tore flesh from the bull’s nose or another part of its body.

During the winter months, when bull baiting took place in the late afternoon or early evening, the ring was lit by torches made from long pieces of pit rope resoaked in pitch.

According to Wedgwood, the crowd surrounding the bullring was a drunken rabble that included colliers whose faces were as black as midnight and potters wearing leather aprons and breaches.

When the bull collapsed with exhaustion, its tormentors, egged on by the spectators, attempted to force it to get up by prodding it with sharp spikes or pouring hot tar onto the most tender parts of its body.