Category: Transport and Communications

Buses from Mow Cop to Tunstall

A forty-horsepower Daimler Bus

In 1914 the Potteries Electric Traction Company started running bus services from Biddulph and Mow Cop to Tunstall using forty-horsepower Daimler Buses.

During the First World War (1914-1918) the government requisitioned the company’s buses, and the services were suspended. The buses were sent to France, where they were used to take troops to the front line. When the war ended, the buses were returned to the company and the services resumed.

Former soldiers and sailors formed small transport companies that ran bus services bringing customers to Tunstall’s shops and markets from industrial towns and villages on the northern part of the North Staffordshire Coal Field.

The bus services to Tunstall operated by these companies competed with those run by the Potteries Motor Traction Company.

Rowbothams, a transport company whose garage was in Sands Road, Harriseahead, ran a bus service from The Bank, a hamlet in South Cheshire, to Tunstall. Its buses stopped to pick up passengers in Mount Pleasant, Dales Green, The Rookery, Whitehill, Newchapel, Packmoor, Chell and Pitts Hill.

The Potteries Electric Traction Company also operated a service between The Bank and Tunstall although its buses followed a different route.

Buses owned by both companies ran via Mount Pleasant, Dales Green and The Rookery to Whitehill, where their routes diverged at the top of Galley’s Bank. Rowbothans’ buses turned left into Whitehall Road which took them to Newchapel. Buses owned by the Potteries Motor Traction Company turned right into Whitehall Road and went to Tunstall via Kidsgrove, Goldenhill and Sandyford.

Staniers who had a garage in Newchapel was another company whose buses competed with Rowbothams. It ran a service from Mow Cop to Tunstall via Harriseahead, Newchapel, Packmoor, Chell and Pitts Hill.

Stagecoaches and Coaching Inns

A Red Rover Stagecoach

In the 1830s, two mainline stagecoach services, the Red Rover and the Royal Express, that ran between London and Liverpool, passed through Tunstall.

The coaches stopped at the town’s two coaching inns, the Swan Inn on High Street and the Sneyd Arms in the Market Place (Tower Square).

When they left Tunstall, southbound Red Rover coaches went to Burslem, Hanley, Shelton, Stoke, Fenton, Longton, Uttoxeter and Burton on Trent before journeying to London via towns and cities in the East Midlands. After leaving Tunstall, northbound coaches to Liverpool passed through Sandbach, Middlewich and Warrington.

Royal Express ran one northbound and one southbound coach daily on its London/Liverpool service. Their route was through Warrington, Knutsford, the Potteries, Stone, Rugeley, Lichfield, Birmingham and Warwick.

Two local stagecoach services, the Hark Forward and the Independent Potter, stopped at Tunstall’s coaching inns. The Hark Forward was a one-coach daily return service between the Potteries and Birmingham via Stone, Stafford and Wolverhampton. Like the Hark Forward, the Independent Potter was a one-coach daily return se vice. The coach linked the Potteries with Manchester via Congleton, Macclesfield and Stockport.

Stagecoaches were pulled by teams of four or six horses. They could travel at a speed of eight to ten miles an hour. Travelling by stagecoach was expensive, and tickets had to be booked in advance. The coaches carried first and second-class passe gers. First-class passengers travelled inside the coach. Second-class passengers made the journey sitting on wooden benches on the roof.

The cost of the journey depended on its length. First class passengers were charged threepence per mile. Second-class class passengers paid one and a half pence per mile.