The Potteries Through Time

A fascinating collection of images showing how the towns and villages in the Staffordshire Potteries have changed across the last century.

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Renowned for their illustrious ceramic manufacturing heritage, the Staffordshire Potteries originally centred upon six towns: Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton. The modern city of Stoke-on-Trent was created from these six towns and around fifty villages. In The Potteries Through Time, author Mervyn Edwards presents a nostalgic visual chronicle of the towns and villages in the Potteries across the decades.

In his previous Through Time books, Mervyn Edwards focused upon each of the six towns individually. This latest volume explores the hills and hollows between the centres whilst also offering new archive photographs of the main towns. We find shabby backstreets cowering in the shadow of enormous coal tips – the Potteries’ own ‘black hills’ – and there are industrial hotspots and busy suburbs. Then there are the proud old chapels and pubs and the even prouder people that patronised them. Stoke-on-Trent was not a pretty place, but as the proverb tells us, ‘where there is muck there is brass’, and the fascinating landscape came to be captured by all manner of writers, artists and photographers.

This collection of archive photographs is an engaging book that charts changing times and the shifting identity of the Potteries. It will be of immense interest to local residents, visitors and all those with links to the area.