Two of the 20th century’s leading aircraft designers, Reginald Mitchell and John Lloyd, grew up in Stoke-on-Trent.
Both were educated at Hanley High School and served apprenticeships in The Potteries before going to work in the aviation industry.
Made in 1942, the film The First of the Few, starring Leslie Howard and David Niven, told the world how Mitchell raced against time to create the Spitfire while dying of cancer.
Already “a living legend” when the film was released, the Spitfire symbolised Britain’s determination to destroy Nazi Germany.
The film made Mitchell a Potteries’ folk hero. Hanley High School was renamed Mitchell High, the Mitchell Memorial Theatre was built to commemorate his life and a by-pass, Reginald Mitchell Way, was named after him.
John Lloyd’s contribution to aviation history was forgotten.
Between 1942 and 1949, John was at the cutting edge of aviation research working on the flying wing, an experimental tailless jet aircraft. Hoping these experiments would enable him to design an airliner, he constructed a two seater tailless glider which flew successfully.
Impressed by the glider’s performance, the government allowed him to build two jet powered flying wings. One crashed while being flown by a test pilot and the other was taken to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where it was used in tests which helped to develop the V Bomber force and Concorde.
You can find out more about John’s life and the aircraft he designed by reading “John Lloyd – North Staffordshire’s Forgotten Aircraft Designer” at http://www.northstaffordshire.co.uk/?p=136
An artist, a poet, a playwright and a broadcaster, Arthur Berry used his many talents to vividly portray working class life in the Potteries and the region’s economic decline.
Born at Smallthorne, a mining village in Stoke-on-Trent, on February 7th, 1925, he was educated at the Central School of Art in Burslem and at the Royal College of Art in London. On graduating, Arthur became an art teacher. He taught drawing and painting at Manchester College of Art before becoming a lecturer at Stoke-on-Trent College of Art which had branch schools in Burslem, Stoke and Longton. Appointed head of painting when the North Staffordshire Polytechnic was created in 1970, he remained there until his retirement in 1985.
Often called “the Lowry of the Potteries” he painted everyday life in Burslem as seen through the eyes of a working class man who was proud of his class and its values. Between 1976 and 1986, Arthur wrote six plays which were performed locally at either the Victoria Theatre in Hartshill or its successor the New Victoria Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme. The men and women depicted in his paintings and the characters he created for the stage were taken from real life. They were based on ordinary people whom he saw everyday in the betting shops and public houses he frequented.
Arthur’s father and grandfather were publicans. Public houses were the places where he felt most at home. According to his obituary in The Times (July 8th, 1994) he said “he had to drink at least three pints of bitter” before being able to sleep at night. Plays he wrote included “The Spanish Dancer from Pinnox Street”, “The Sweet Bird of Card Street” and Miss Cardell’s School Days”. On the opening night of his play “St. George of Scotia Road” at the New Victoria Theatre in 1986, he left the theatre before the end of the performance to go drinking in a public house.
The 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s were decades of social change and economic decline. North Staffordshire’s coal mining industry was contracting and collieries were closing. In the Potteries vast slum clearance schemes were replacing rows of terraced houses in gas lit streets with large housing estates. Small family owned pottery firms were taken over by major companies and became part of large combines. The industrial landscape was changing. Marl holes were being filled in. Colliery tips were landscaped and turned into country parks. Disused railway lines became walkways. Coal fired bottle ovens and kilns were demolished. Iron production ceased at Goldendale and Shelton Bar faced an uncertain future.
A traditionalist whose spiritual home was the industrial village where he was born, Arthur was a man who did not like change. He remembered the working class community that had existed in Burslem and the public houses he had frequented before they were demolished. Arthur mourned their passing and used his powers of observation to record their long, slow, lingering death. The popular talks he gave on Radio Stoke included “A Homage to the Chip”, “Lullaby of Queen Street”, Homage to the Oatcake”, “In Praise of Backs” and “Lament for the Lost Pubs of Burslem” which was awarded the Sony Award the best radio monologue of 1979.
A cult figure during his life, Arthur continued to paint and sketch until his death aged 69 on July 4th, 1994.
(Copyright Betty Cooper and David Martin – The Phoenix Trust 2010)
Betty and David are researching Arthur Berry’s life for “STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY – The Continuing Story…” one of a series of books they are writing on the history of education in North Staffordshire. If you knew Arthur or were one of his students and would like to share your memories of him with Betty and David please email northstaffs@live.co.uk
The Mellor Building on Staffordshire University’s Stoke-on-Trent campus is named after Joseph Mellor who became the world’s leading ceramic scientist. Born in Huddersfield during 1869, he was educated at Otago University (New Zealand) and at Manchester University, where he undertook research into organic and inorganic chemistry.
Awarded the degree of doctor of science in 1902, Joseph came to North Staffordshire to teach chemistry at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School. Fascinated by clay technology and the technical problems faced by pottery manufacturers, he left Newcastle High in 1904 and became head of the Pottery School in Tunstall which provided technical and scientific training for managers in the pottery industry.
Shortly afterwards, the school moved to temporary premises in Victoria Road (now College Road), Stoke. In 1913 it became the Central School of Science and Technology’s ceramics department. Appointed head of the department, Joseph established courses leading to degree level qualifications and organised research projects to help manufacturers produce better quality ware.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain’s small refractory industry used raw materials imported from Europe to make fire bricks and furnace linings. The steel industry lined its furnaces with Austrian made magnesite bricks and the inside walls of coke ovens were lined with fire bricks manufactured in Germany.
All trade with Germany and Austria ceased when the First World War started in August, 1914. Unable to obtain Austrian furnace linings and German fire bricks, the British steel industry faced a major crisis. It had to have fire bricks to reline existing furnaces and to build new ones to increase output. Unless alternative sources of furnace linings could be found quickly, steel production in the United Kingdom would cease. Deprived of steel, Britain’s shipbuilding, engineering and munitions industries could not produce the weapons the allies needed to fight the war.
Geological research at Liverpool University showed that with the exception of magnesite the United Kingdom had enough raw materials to manufacture furnace linings and fire bricks for the steel industry.
Greece agreed to supply Britain with magnesite but Greek magnesite had a different chemical composition from Austrian. Before it could be used to make fire bricks, Greek magnesite had to be synthesised. Aware of the problems the country was facing, Joseph approached the government and offered to use his expertise to create a fire brick for the steel industry. The government accepted his offer. Working with his students in the ceramics laboratory at the Central School of Science and Technology (Staffordshire University’s Cadman Building) he developed a furnace lining that enabled steel production to continue without interruption. Although offered a peerage for his contribution towards the war effort, Joseph turned it down saying that he had freely given his scientific knowledge to help his country because ill-health prevented him joining the army and fighting in France.
(Copyright Betty Cooper/ David Martin – The Phoenix Trust 2010)
Staffordshire University’s Cadman Building in College Road, Stoke-on-Trent is named after John Cadman.
John Cadman
Born at Silverdale on September 7th, 1877, John was the son of James Cadman the manager of Silverdale Coal and Iron Works. Educated at Audley Grammar School and Newcastle High School, he left school at 17 and became a trainee colliery manager. He attended evening classes at Stoke Technical School, which was housed in the Minton Memorial Building in London Road, and in 1896 won a scholarship to Durham University.
Graduating with a degree in geology, John joined the mining inspectorate and saw oil being extracted from shale on the Fife and Lothian Coalfields in Scotland. Seconded to the colonial civil service, he was appointed chief mining engineer for Trinidad and Tobago, a British colony in the Caribbean. Remaining there for three years, John developed the colony’s oil industry, drilling new wells and increasing production.
On July 27th, 1907, he married Julia Harrigan, whose father, John, was Port of Spain’s stipendiary magistrate. The couple had four children – two boys and two girls.
Awarded a doctorate in 1908, John was made professor of mining at Birmingham University where he established a school of petroleum technology, which trained geologists to search for oil.
As the Edwardian era ended, the world prepared for war. Germany and Britain built large heavily armed battleships called dreadnoughts. Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to replace coal fired boilers and steam engines on Royal Navy warships with oil burning boilers and engines. John was sent to Persia (Iran) to find oil for the fleet. His mission was successful. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company agreed to expand its oilfields and supply the navy with fuel.
During the First World War (1914-1918) German submarines attacked allied convoys bringing oil from the United States. England faced a fuel shortage and John attempted to find oilfields in North Staffordshire where small quantities of oil seeped to the surface from shale beds in the coal measures.
The fuel crisis continued and John was made chairperson of the Inter-Allied Petroleum Council which controlled oil production and regulated supplies. Internationally recognised as the world’s leading petroleum technologist, he was awarded a knighthood in 1918. John left Birmingham University and went to work for Anglo-Persian Oil where he organised geological expeditions to discover new oilfields. He founded the Iraq Petroleum Company and built pipelines from the Kirkuk oilfield to the eastern Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Tripoli.
John had a warm friendly personality and made friends easily. He enjoyed listening to music and playing the violin. Anglo-Persian made him its chairperson in 1927 and being a devout Christian he appointed the Rev. “Tubby” Clayton, the founder of Toc H, company chaplain.
Despite his busy life, John retained close links with North Staffordshire and the technical school in Stoke which became part of the North Staffordshire Technical College (now Staffordshire University’s Cadman Building). During the 1920s, the number of students attending the college increased and an extension to the college’s main building was erected in Station Road. The extension which housed the mining and the engineering departments cost £25,000 and was opened by John on December 11th, 1931.
During the 1930s, he served on government committees that looked at the future of civil aviation and television. Given a peerage in 1937, John took the title Baron Cadman of Silverdale. During the Second World War (1939-1945), he was appointed chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Council. Taken seriously ill, John had a stroke and died aged 63 at his home Shenley Park, near Bletchley, on May 31st, 1941.
Ceramic designer Clarice Cliff’s range of brightly coloured geometrical patterns, originally created to hide minor defects in earthenware produced by Arthur J. Wilkinson Ltd., captured the spirit of the late 1920s/early 1930s. Born at 19, Meir Street, Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, on January 20th, 1899, Clarice was one of iron-moulder Thomas Cliff’s eight children and her mother Ann was forced to take in washing to help make ends meet. Educated at High Street Schools and Summerbank Road Schools, she left school at 13 and became an apprentice guilder at Lingard Webster where her wages were one shilling (5p) a week. In the evenings Clarice attended classes at Tunstall Art School and in 1915 she joined Hollinshead & Kirkham as an apprentice lithographer. A year later, she left Hollinshead & Kirkham to continue her training at Arthur J. Wilkinson’s Royal Staffordshire Pottery in Middleport.
Clarice was ambitious. Determined to escape from her working class background she acquired knowledge of every aspect of the pottery industry and quickly learned to model figurines and vases; to keep pattern books; to band, enamel, freehand paint and fire earthenware in a kiln. Wilkinson’s managing director, Arthur Colley Austin Shorter whom most writers call Colley Shorter, was impressed by her artistic ability and enthusiasm. He encouraged Clarice to continue her studies at the Central School of Art in Burslem and arranged for her to attend short courses at the Royal College of Art in London and at an art school in Paris. Although he was a married man with two children, Colley and Clarice fell in love. They had a widely publicised affair which shocked his family and the company’s employees.
During 1925, Colley transferred Clarice from the Royal Staffordshire Pottery to the firm’s other works, the Newport Pottery, where she was given her own studio. The two factories that stood adjacent to each other on the banks of the Trent and Mersey Canal have now been demolished. Clarice used her studio to create Art Deco designs which were hand painted on surplus stock and “seconds” which the company’s sales consultants were unable to sell. In July 1928, Clarice named her designs Bizarre. By now the warehouse was full of earthenware decorated with her designs. Sales consultants who had been used to selling ware decorated with traditional patterns and lithographs did not think Bizarre would sell. Colley loaded the firm’s largest car with 72 items decorated by Clarice and persuaded his senior sales consultant, Ewart Oakes, to show them to buyers for large department stores.
Clarice’s patterns were an instant success. Bizarre represented the carefree spirit of the age and captured the mood of the people. Orders flowed in and Colley made her the company’s art director. She started designing angular and geometric shaped ware which was decorated with abstract and cubist patterns. New shapes including Conical, Stamford, Le bon jour and Biarritz appeared in quick succession. Between 1929 and 1936, she designed numerous patterns which included stylised fruit, flowers and landscapes that were painted in bright bold colours. A person with an eye to the main chance, Clarice used the media to market Bizarre and arranged for over 350 articles about her work to be published in newspapers, trade journals and women’s magazines.
The pottery she designed was mass produced at the Royal Staffordshire works and decorated by freehand painters and apprentices at the Newport Pottery. Her ware was sold by Harrods, Maple & Co., Lawley’s, Bon Marche, John Lewis, Peter Robinson, Selfridges. Waring & Gillow and other leading London stores. It was exported to Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Bizarre remained in demand until the middle of the 1930s when heavily modelled ware came into fashion and Clarice created “My Garden” ware which although painted in bright colours had small flowers modelled on the handle or base. Her new range included vases, bowls, jugs and a biscuit barrel. Although the colours became more muted towards the end of the 1930s, the “My Garden” series remained popular until production ceased in 1939.
Colley’s wife died in 1940 and shortly afterwards he married Clarice. The couple lived at Chetwynd House, Clayton. Wartime restrictions on the production of decorated ware prevented her creating new designs. After the war, people wanted conservative designs with traditional patterns. Clarice realised the “Bizarre” years and “the crazy days of the thirties” could never return. She took less and less interest in the business. Colley died in 1963. A year later she retired and sold the two factories to W. R. Midwinter Ltd. The first exhibition of her work was held at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in December, 1971. Now a recluse, Clarice refused to attend the opening ceremony. She died aged 73 on October 23rd, 1972.
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John Lloyd’s AW52 – The Flying Wing
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