Surrounded by woods and parkland, Stallington Hall, near Blythe Bridge, was a country house that became a mental hospital.
Stallington Hall was a Queen Anne-style mansion built in the 18th century. It was the home of landowner Richard Clarke Hill. His daughter, Sarah, married Smith Child, who lived at Newfield Hall in Tunstall. The couple were married at St Nicholas’ Church, Fulford, in 1835. They lived at Newfield Hall until 1841, when they moved to Rownall Hall, Wetley.
In 1853, Richard Clarke Hill died, and Smith Child and his family went to live at Stallington Hall.
Smith Child, who was a magistrate, became a Member of Parliament. He became a baronet in 1868. His full title was Sir Smith Child, Baronet of Newfield and of Stallington in the County of Stafford, and of Dunlosset (Dunlossat), Islay, in the County of Argyll.
Sir Smith Child died at Stallington Hall on 27th March 1896. His grandson, Sir Smith Hill Child, inherited the estate.
Sir Smith Hill Child was educated at Eton and Christ Church College. He became a professional soldier and fought in the Boer War. In 1910, he became the commanding officer of the 2nd North Midland Brigade (Royal Field Artillery.
On 3 August 1914, Germany declared war on France. German troops invaded Belgium, a country Britain had promised to defend against German aggression. On 4 August, Britain declared war on Germany. The First World War had begun, and the brigade was sent to France. where it fought at Loos and on the Somme.
Sir Smith Hill Child was mentioned three times in dispatches. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George. Promoted to Brigadier General, he was given command of the Royal Artillery’s 46th Division. On 29 September 1918, the Division crossed the St Quentin Canal and broke through the Hindenburg Line, taking 4,000 prisoners. The French Government awarded him the Croix de Guerre.
When he returned home, Sir Smith Hill Child stood for Parliament. His election campaign was successful, and he represented Stone from 1918 to 1922. In 1925, he married Barbara Villiers. Shortly after their marriage, they left Stallington Hall. The couple had two daughters, Teresa and Mary.
The hall and its grounds were sold to the City of Stoke-on-Trent, which converted it into a mental hospital.
The conversion cost £20,000. Lady Aspinall opened the hospital on 18 September 1930. Miss M. A. Cahill was the matron. The hospital accommodated 81 patients and possessed an operating theatre and a dental surgery.
In 1770, Admiral Smith Child inherited the Newfield estate in Tunstall from his uncle Thomas Baddeley. He built Newfield Hall and died there in 1813. Admiral Child’s grandson, Sir Smith Child, inherited the estate.
Smithfield Hall, which is shown above, was built in 1791 by Burslem pottery manufacturer, Theophilus Smith. In 1793, he built an industrial hamlet called Smithfield near the hall. Theophilus was declared bankrupt in 1800. He attempted to murder John Wainwright and was remanded to Stafford prison to await trial. When his wife and daughter visited him there, he murdered them and committed suicide. In 1801, the hall was bought by Jesse Breeze, who renamed it Greenfield Hall.
A Description of the Country From Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, is a book published in 1795, compiled by Dr John Aikin. It describes Newcastle-under-Lyme and North Staffordshire’s pottery towns and villages as they were in the 1790s.
This edited extract from the book tells us what Newfield and Smithfield, two hamlets in the Township of Tunstall, were like in the 1790s.Newfield
Newfield is well situated for manufacturing purposes because there is plenty of coal nearby.
The hamlet belongs to Admiral Smith Child. He has a handsome estate there and lives at Newfield Hall. Smith Child owns Newfield Pottery. He is unlikely to allow more factories to be built in the hamlet in the foreseeable future.
Smithfield is the best place in the Potteries to manufacture earthenware. There are several strata of coal and clay, which are needed to make pottery. Smithfield belongs to Theophilus Smith. He owns a pottery and coal mines there. It is unlikely that there will be further industrial development in the hamlet.
During the 19th century, Sir Smith Child was the most generous philanthropist in North Staffordshire. He used his vast wealth to support hospitals, build schools and churches, fight poverty and help handicapped children.
Although many historians think that his family name was Smith Child, it wasn’t. Smith was his Christian name and Smith was his surname. Smith Child was born at Newfield Hall, Tunstall, on 5 March 1808. His grandfather was Admiral Smith Child, who was a partner in Child & Clive. The firm owned Newfield Pottery and Clanway Colliery, where it mined coal and ironstone.
Smith’s parents were John George and Elizabeth Child, née Parsons. When his father died in 1811, he became heir to the Newfield estate and other estates owned by his grandfather.
Smith was educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge.
On 28 January 1835, he married Sarah Hill, an heiress, at Fulford Church. The couple had three children – two boys and a girl. The family lived at Newfield Hall until 1841, when they moved to Rownall Hall, Wetley. Sarah’s father, Richard Clarke Hill, who owned Stallington Hall, died in 1853, and the Childs went to live there.
Smith took a keen interest in politics. He was a Conservative. In 1851, he became the Member of Parliament for North Staffordshire and held the seat until 1859.
In 1868, Smith was made a baronet.
He stood for Parliament again. He won the election and was returned to Westminster as the Member for West Staffordshire. A seat he held until 1874, when he retired from politics.
Smith was a philanthropist who took a keen interest in the welfare of disadvantaged individuals. He used his wealth to support local charities that were helping those in need.
North Staffordshire’s new infirmary at Hartshill. Smith Child gave £1,500 towards the cost.
He provided financial assistance to the North Staffordshire Infirmary at Etruria and made an annual donation to its general fund. Smith was a member of the hospital’s management committee and served as its president on three occasions. As well as making an annual donation, he contributed to the infirmary’s special funds. The management committee decided to close the infirmary at Etruria and build a new one at Hartshill. It launched a public appeal to raise money to finance the project. A building fund was created, and Smith contributed £1,500. When the Victoria Wards were being erected, he gave £250 towards the cost.
After one of his sons died, Smith built and endowed the Smith Hill Child Memorial Hospital. The hospital, erected in the grounds of the infirmary, was designed to care for patients who were incurable. The infirmary did not have the resources to care for incurable patients, and the project was abandoned. The building was used as a nurses’ home until 1877, when it was converted into a children’s hospital.
In 1875, Smith founded a charity that sent patients who were convalescing to convalescent homes. He endowed the charity with £6,500. The money was invested in securities. The income from these securities was used to send hundreds of men, women and children to seaside convalescent homes.
Smith realised that the pottery industry’s future depended on vocational training.
He was one of the founders of the Wedgwood Institute and organised competitions that awarded prizes to industrial designers. To encourage sales representatives to study foreign languages, he gave prizes to those learning to speak French, German or Spanish.
Although he left Newfield Hall in 1841, Smith retained an interest in Tunstall and its citizens’ welfare. He always referred to people living there as his friends and neighbours.
St. Mary’s Church and School in Lime Street, Tunstall. Both the church and the school were demolished many years ago.
His first gift to Tunstall was £100, which was given to help finance the construction of Christ Church. He gave £50 when the church appealed for money to build a National School. The appeal was successful, and the school was built in King Street (Madison Street). When St. Mary’s Church launched an appeal to raise money to build a school, he gave £100.
Smith built the church schools in Goldenhill and created a charity to support all church schools in Tunstall and Goldenhill. He helped finance the construction of St. John’s Church in Goldenhill and endowed it with £1,000.
During the 1880s, he made donations to help regenerate Christ Church and St. Mary’s Church. In 1884, he established a workingman’s temperance club at Calver House in Well Street (Roundwell Street).
Six years later, in 1890, he founded the Tunstall Nursing Association. The association was a charity. It employed trained community nurses, who provided free medical care to patients being treated at home.
Tunstall publicly recognised Smith’s generosity in 1893. The clock tower in Market Square (Tower Square) was erected to make sure that he would never be forgotten.
Smith was to ill to attend the tower’s unveiling ceremony. His health continued to decline. He died three years later and was buried in Fulford churchyard
If you and your family worshipped at St. Mary’s or you were at pupil at the school, please use Comments to share your memories with us.
Sir Smith Child (1808-1896) was written by Betty Martin before she died in 2023. More articles she wrote will be posted periodically.
He was born at Bath on 29 March 1781. After his father’s death, John and his mother, Sarah, came to live in Longton.
On 28 May 1793, Sarah married earthenware manufacturer Charles Simpson at St. Giles’ Church, Newcastle-under-Lyme.
John served an apprenticeship in the pottery industry. He married Lydia Cash on 30 September 1805 at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Norton-in-the Moors.
Shortly after John’s wedding, his stepfather, Charles Simpson, started making pottery at a factory in Sandyford.
Sarah and Charles left Longton and moved to Tunstall, where they lived at Newfield Hall. John and Lydia came to live with them. John managed the Newfield Estate for its owner, Admiral Smith Child, and went into partnership with him. They formed a company, Child & Clive. The firm mined coal and ironstone at Clanway Colliery and made earthenware at Newfield Pottery.
John was an astute entrepreneur. He realised Tunstall was a growing industrial town. A town that needed shops, a market square and a civic building containing a covered market and a courtroom, where Justices of the Peace could hold Petty Sessions (Magistrates’ Courts) and try minor criminal cases.
John formed a company to finance the project and sold its shares to local businesspeople. The company leased a plot of land, on a field called Stony Croft, for 500 years at an annual rent of £5 from Walter Sneyd, the Lord of the Manor, who lived at Keele Hall. Shares in the company cost £25 each. John bought one share. Walter bought eight, and Ralph Hall, the company’s treasurer, bought two.
Between 1816 and 1817, the company created Market Place, a market square surrounded by shops and erected a civic building. The building had two names until it became known as the Town Hall in the 1840s. The company called it the Courthouse, and the Sneyd family called it the Market Hall. In the late 1830s, Market Place’s name was changed to Market Square.
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