Betty and David wish to apologise to everyone for the delay in replying to emails. Due to technical difficulties, they have access to the internet for less than three hours a day. Until these problems have been resolved, neither Betty nor David will be able to put posts on this site and David will not be using his Facebook or his Twitter account. We are working to resolve the technical difficulties that have arisen and will reply to all emails which have been received as soon as possible.
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Until school boards were established by the Education Act 1870 no state provision was made for the education of working class children.
What little education they received had to be paid for, although there were a few free places reserved for them in the grammar schools at Leek, Newchapel, Stafford, Stone and Uttoxeter.
At the end of the 17th century, Newcastle-under-Lyme had a grammar school, where 39 boys were educated free of charge, and a municipal dame school with free places for up to 20 girls.
In 1808, nonconformist educationalist Joseph Lancaster founded the British and Foreign Schools Society to give financial help to free churches who were building day schools at home and missionary schools overseas. Fearing that the British Schools would monopolise elementary education in the new industrial towns, the Church of England set up the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church throughout England and Wales.
During 1814, the National Society opened its first school in North Staffordshire at Chesterton and the first British School in The Potteries was erected in Burslem by the Wesleyans. The parish church, St. John’s, opened a National School there in 1817 and by 1822 the Roman Catholic Church had built a school at Cobridge.
Many teachers were not well educated or properly trained. Pupils who wanted to become teachers stayed at school until their early teens and became apprentice teachers. Called monitors, the apprentices were trained by the headteacher and allowed to teach younger pupils. After a few years, monitors who had successfully completed their training and could maintain discipline were employed as assistant teachers at the school were they had been trained.
James Kay-Shuttleworth
In 1840, the first Teacher Training College was opened in London by James Kay-Shuttleworth. A private venture, the college was not economically viable. It was taken over by the Church of England in 1843 and by 1845 the Church had established 22 teacher training colleges.
During 1846, the government made regulations governing teacher training. Under these regulations, boys and girls who had stayed at school until they were 13 could be appointed pupil teachers. Each school was allowed to employ one pupil teacher for every 25 scholars.
Pupil teachers were apprenticed to the headteacher for five years. Every year they were examined by the school inspectors. When their apprenticeship ended, pupil teachers took the Queen’s Scholarship examination.
Those who passed with the highest marks were given a grant which enabled them to go to training college for three years and become fully qualified certificated teachers. Pupils who passed with lower marks were offered employment as assistant teachers. Only certificated teachers could obtain headships. The others remained assistant teachers throughout their careers. Many stayed at the schools where they had been educated, teaching there until they retired.
Copyright Betty Cooper – The Phoenix Trust 2013
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The Swan Inn
During the 18th century Hanley and Shelton became the most important towns in The Potteries.
Between 1762 and 1801 their populations grew from 2,000 to 7,940. Hanley’s first church, St. John’s, erected in 1738 was enlarged during the 1760s. Stage coaches called at The Swan, an old inn in the town centre. Pack horses and wagons carried ware from Hanley and Shelton to the Weaver Navigation’s wharfs at Winsford and brought back ball clay and household goods. A covered market designed by architect James Trubshaw was built in Town Road during 1776.
The Trent & Mersey and the Caldon Canal stimulated economic expansion and population growth.
Entrepreneurs opened factories and iron works. People from the surrounding countryside came to Hanley looking for work and new houses were constructed.
In 1791, a trust was formed to acquire the market hall and build a town hall. The trustees leased land in Market Square from John Bagnall, the Lord of the Manor, where they erected a town hall.
Markets were held in the square on Wednesdays and Saturdays. A fortnightly cattle market was established at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1813, Parliament gave the trustees power to regulate the market place and make by-laws. The trustees demolished the old town hall and built a poultry market and a stone lock up where prisoners were held until they were brought before the Magistrates’ Court which sat in a room at the Swan Inn.
Punishments in the 18th century were severe and intended to deter the offender by degrading and humiliating him.
Men found guilty of being drunk and disorderly were put in the stocks and pelted with bad eggs, rotten tomatoes and potato peelings by jeering crowds. Women convicted of street fighting or brawling were placed on the ducking stool and dipped in Clementson’s Pool until they begged for mercy. Men and women caught stealing from market stalls were tried at the county Quarter Sessions and received a public whipping or were transported to Australia for seven years.
Despite these draconian penalties, law and order broke down. The annual wakes turned into a drunken orgy which was followed by rioting and looting.
Fearing for their own safety, Hanley’s unpaid constables turned a blind eye when serious crimes were committed. In the evenings, robbers lurked in doorways waiting to pounce on unsuspecting victims walking home through narrow unlit streets.
Having no confidence in the constables, residents employed watchmen to patrol the streets and protect their property. A society for the prosecution of felons was formed and in 1825 a professional police force was created.
Copyright Betty Cooper and David Martin 2013
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The Caldon Canal passing through Hanley Park
A major tourist attraction, the Caldon Canal, which passes through Hanley Park, links The Potteries with Leek and Froghall.
Branching from the Trent and Mersey Canal at Etruria’s Summit Lock, the Caldon Canal was constructed by Scottish civil engineer John Rennie.
John, who designed London Bridge, Southwark Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, was born at Phantassie near Edinburgh on June 7th, 1761. He began his career building flour mills and constructing drainage systems on the Solway Firth. Moving to England, he worked on projects to drain East Anglia’s fens and built roads, bridges and canals, including the Kennet and Avon Canal, the Lancaster Canal and the Rochdale Canal.
Opened in 1779, the Caldon Canal meanders for 17 miles through the Trent and Churnet valleys.
Boats brought coal from Kidsgrove to forges in the Churnet Valley and flint stones to flint mills where they were ground, bake-dried and turned into slop, which the pottery industry used to make earthenware more durable.
The canal terminates at Froghall Wharf, where a tramway had been laid to limestone quarries at Cauldon Lowe.
Between 1779 and 1797 two thousand boats were loaded with 40,000 tons of limestone which was used as a flux to smelt iron ore, to make fertiliser or to build houses, town halls and churches.
Towards the end of the 18th century, the Trent & Mersey Canal Company, which owned the Caldon Canal, decided to build a reservoir at Rudyard and construct branch canals to Leek and Uttoxeter.
The Leek branch opened in 1802 but work stopped on the Uttoxeter branch in 1809 when the company ran out of money. It borrowed £30,000 to complete the branch which opened on September 3rd, 1811 when six or seven boats took the directors and their guests from Uttoxeter to Crump Wood Weir (between Denstone and Alton) for a picnic lunch.
Large wharfs and dry docks were constructed at Uttoxeter where boats were built and repaired.
The branch, which carried coal, copper and brass from Alton, Kingsley and Oakamoor, was not a commercial success. It closed in 1847 The bed was drained and used by engineers constructing the section of the Churnet Valley Railway that ran between Uttoxeter and Froghall.
Like the Uttoxeter branch, the Leek branch was not economically viable although it continued to carry coal until the late 1930s.
Copyright Betty Cooper – The Phoenix Trust 2012
Photograph © Copyright Stephen McKay and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Stone Station
Isolated from the main railway network that was constructed in the 1830s, North Staffordshire’s pottery industry had to rely on canals for raw materials and to distribute its products.
During 1835, leading industrialists made plans to build a railway linking The Potteries to the national network.
These plans were forgotten when North Staffordshire was hit by a recession. Factories and mines closed. There were strikes and lock outs culminating in the Chartist Riots and the Battle of Burslem in 1842.
Two years later, pottery manufacturer William Copeland, who was also a Member of Parliament, called a series of meetings to discuss building railway links to Manchester, Liverpool and Birkenhead.
The North Staffordshire Railway Company was formed to construct the Churnet Valley Line and lines running from Macclesfield and Crewe through The Potteries to Norton Bridge, Colwich and Burton-on-Trent.
The company’s first line ran from Stoke to Norton Bridge. Opened for goods traffic on April 3rd, 1848, the line started carrying passengers shortly afterwards.
Between 7.30am and 8.00am on Monday, April 17th about 80 people made their way, by carriage and horse drawn omnibus, to the 18th century mansion in Fenton built by Thomas Whieldon which had been turned into a temporary railway station.
They entered the building and bought tickets to travel on the first passenger train from Stoke-on-Trent to Norton Bridge which stopped at Trentham and Stone.
Just before 8.00am a bell rang. The passengers got on the train. The engine driver blew the locomotive’s whistle. He opened the throttle. Clouds of steam engulfed the platform. Smoke poured out of the locomotive’s funnel and the train began to move slowly. It quickly gathered speed and was soon travelling at 25 miles a hour, terrifying cattle and sheep grazing in trackside pastures.
A temporary station had been built at Stone, where the train stopped for several minutes enabling passengers to get out and view the construction work taking place there. They saw men constructing a line from Stone to the Trent Valley Railway’s mainline at Colwich that would provide a direct route for express trains running between Stoke and London. At the junction, where the Colwich line joined the Norton Bridge line, an Elizabethan style station, with corn and cheese warehouses, coal yards and cattle pens, was being built.
A bell rang and the passengers rejoined the train. The train left Stone and arrived at Norton Bridge just half a hour after it had left Fenton. Passengers got off and caught a mail train that took them to Stafford which they reached before 9.00am.
Copyright Betty Cooper – The Phoenix Trust 2012
Photograph © Copyright Maurice Pullin and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
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