Bucknall to Cellarhead Through Time

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Bucknall, Werrington and Cellarhead have changed and developed over the last century.

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Bucknall to Cellarhead Through Time follows a short stretch of the A52 from the ancient village of Bucknall, at the edge of the Stoke-on-Trent conurbation, to Cellarhead in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Although often thought of as simply a route out of ‘the city’, this area, like everywhere else in England boasts a rich history. It is a journey of just four miles, beginning in densely populated Stoke and ending in the countryside of the Staffordshire Moorlands. Bucknall, which appeared in the Domesday Survey of 1088 as ‘Buchnole’, has a parish church and until relatively recently had both a railway station and a hospital. Today it is a residential area straddling the A52, which here is known as Werrington Road.

Near the former site of The Brookhouse, right where the Causley Brook passes beneath the road, the A52 crosses from Stoke-on-Trent into the Staffordshire Moorlands. The road changes its name here to Ash Bank Road and climbs past Ash Hall to Werrington. Werrington has a church, shops and houses, an old windmill, telecommunications tower and young offenders’ institution. On the far side of Werrington the road again changes its name and becomes Cellarhead Road. Our journey ends at Cellarhead crossroads, once famous for having a pub on each corner and now with no pub at all.