Potteries and Churnet Valley

Character Area Potteries and 64 Churnet Valley Key Characteristics dissected ridges rising to the Peak District. This is combined with a transition from lowland to upland ● Strongly dissected hills and small plateaux, rising up vegetation and with an ancient pattern of valley-bottom to the Pennines and cut by major river valleys. villages with scattered farmsteads and hamlets on the slopes above. In the west this pattern is strongly overlaid, and ● Strong contrast between remote uplands, urban often completely obscured, by the 18th and 19th century areas, sheltered wooded valleys and hillside pastures. towns whose settlement pattern, buildings and industrial ● Prominent Millstone Grit and Coal Measures ridges. heritage still dominate the landscape today. ● Sprawling industrial towns of the Potteries forming a major conurbation. ● Extensive former industrial and extractive sites, many now reclaimed, intermixed with settlements and open land. ● Open moorland and rough grazing on higher ground. ● Rural settlement pattern of sheltered villages on low ground with hamlets, scattered farmsteads and cottages elsewhere. ● Brick and sandstone older buildings with tile and slate roofs. Landscape Character AGENCY MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE The area is a rolling, hilly landscape dissected by well wooded river At the western edge of this area, the industrialised and valleys. It is a rich, pastoral landscape with generally good field densely settled conurbation of the Potteries forms a pattern survival. boundary with the Shropshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire The Churnet Valley runs through a smoothly undulating Plain. To the south where the landscape is more rural there upland pasture landscape and linked to it are short, steep, is a less abrupt transition to the Plain west of the Trent wooded valleys known locally as ‘cloughs’. The main valley Valley. The ground rises eastwards, overlooking the low has attractively-sited small villages, former industrial glacial till and Triassic Mercia Mudstones of Needwood and buildings such as streamside mills, and substantial hedges South Derbyshire to the south and south-east, with the with hedgerow trees. In the lower valley the parks at Alton Dove valley forming an approximate boundary. The north- Towers and Wootton are conspicuous features of a rich and eastern edge is formed where the Millstone Grit and Edale visually complex landscape. Above the valley, hedges Shales, commonly dipping quite steeply around the Churnet gradually give way to dry stone walls and stone farmhouses Valley, meet the limestone landscape of the White Peak. linked by narrow, winding lanes. As the land rises, the The southern margin of the high ground is flanked by the fields become larger and take on the regular rectilinear Triassic Sherwood Sandstones. pattern of 18th and 19th century enclosure. The landscape is very varied. There is an underlying In the north, rising to its highest point at Biddulph Moor, landform of deeply incised, steep valleys and high, much- there is an undulating plateau separating the coalfield 35 towns from the Churnet Valley. There are frequent The landscape of the six towns of the Potteries is very hamlets, individual cottages, farms and formless clusters of complex. The towns, and the villages interspersed between houses along a dense network of lanes. Red brick is as them, developed rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries but common a material as sandstone in the older buildings. still remained individual settlements with their own civic Hedgerow and hedgerow tree cover is variable and the buildings and vast Victorian churches which now form open character of the landscape is often dominated by prominent landmarks. The original rural character of these views of settlements. coalfield valleys has been largely, but not entirely, lost. Between the older urban areas, largely dominated by red In contrast, to the south of Stoke, eastwards along the brick buildings with slate or tile roofs, there are extensive lower reaches of the Churnet valley and rising up from the areas of reclaimed land in residential, industrial, Dove valley, is an altogether lusher and more rural commercial and amenity use. There are also patches of landscape which was the ‘Loamshire’ of George Eliot’s unreclaimed land as well as larger, older industrial Adam Bede. There are medium-sized fields, well-trimmed buildings, subsidence ponds, canals and fragments of hedges and many large hedgerows oaks. The land is naturally-regenerated vegetation. Around the edges of the predominantly pasture with occasional arable cultivation. Character Area 64: Potteries and Churnet Valley Area 64 boundary Adjacent Area 3 A Road Macclesfield District B Road Congleton District Railway and Station 53 County boundary CHESHIRE A527 Biddulph 6 Unitary Authority boundary Moor A523 61 District boundary Rudyard Biddulph Mow 0 10km Cop Brown LEEK Edge Kidsgrove Endon A53 Tr Caldon A50 ent & Mersey Canal Canal A500 Stanley CITY OF STOKE- Cheddleton ON-TRENT UA Audley 52 Bagnall A520 A34 Burslem 5 Wetley River Churnet STOKE-ON-TRENT Rocks Hanley Silverdale Kingsley Madeley A52 Werrington Madeley Heath A525 Staffordshire Stanton Moorlands A522 Mayfield NEWCASTLE- A34 M6 District East Staffordshire A519 A50 UNDER-LYME Oakamoor District Cheadle Ellastone Newcastle-under-Lyme District A521 Alton Trentham River Trent Blythe Bridge Denstone Meir 4 8 Heath Hollington Derbyshire Dales Stafford District Barlaston District DERBY- SHIRE over 1000' SJ0 SK 68 800-1000' STAFFORDSHIRE 600-800' 9 400-600' 200-400' 1 height above sea- level in feet 36 urban areas, agricultural land is mixed with abandoned Newcastle, and the area was dominated by a substantially land, overgrazed pasture and indeterminate land uses in a sheep-based pastoral economy. This was based on an typical urban fringe pattern. Beyond the towns around the infield-outfield system with arable close to settlements and coalfield valleys, Leek has a more distinctive centre of brick unenclosed common grazing on the higher and more open and local sandstone buildings but is quite exposed on its land to the north. The Churnet Valley remained more elevated site. significantly wooded and, by the 14th century, iron was already being produced there. In the succeeding centuries the valley was an important centre of metal production. The extensive woodlands that still survive today were used for charcoal production. At the end of the Middle Ages the settlements, which later became the six towns of the Potteries, were just a group of poor villages and hamlets relying on subsistence agriculture. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries pot making and coal mining began in earnest. For a long time the pottery industry was a part-time occupation. In many cases the buildings were placed around a hollow square – large works like Copelands Spode pottery at Stoke still preserve this arrangement. By the mid-18th century pottery was a major industry. Wedgwood’s factory and model village of Etruria was being built and the Trent and Mersey canal was under construction. With the canal and new turnpike roads widening the available markets, the Potteries MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE AGENCY MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE expanded rapidly but remained a dispersed collection of Early industrial sites occur throughout the Potteries – sometimes fiercely independent communities. Brickworks and tileries they are now in quite rural locations. also flourished and large pits were excavated. Iron working and coal mining expanded greatly and the land between Physical Influences Biddulph and Blythe became a mosaic of red brick towns, villages, isolated groups of settlements, industrial workings The core of this area are the hills, heavily dissected by the and derelict land, with farms still lingering in the pockets Churnet Valley, which are associated with Carboniferous of open land between. and Triassic sandstones, overlain in the main with brown earth and podzols. To the north-west, towards Biddulph Moor and Mow Cop, outlying sandstone outcrops of the high Millstone Grit moors, with stagnogley and peaty soils, give rise to deeply dissected moorland plateaux. To the south and west, Carboniferous Coal Measures are covered with glacial drift giving rise to stagnogley soils. Fireclays, pottery clay and coal lie near the surface along valleys, with Newcastle-under-Lyme lying in part on the concealed coalfield. Historical and Cultural Influences Much of the high moorland on the fringes of this area probably became upland grazing for the scattered communities in the surrounding valleys. Bronze Age barrows are to be seen on prominent hilltop sites. The other principal prehistoric evidence in the present landscape AGENCY MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE is the Iron Age hillfort within Alton Towers. Roman Kidsgrove, a large 19th century industrial town typical of the area, influence appears to have been slight and the permanent set among old mineral workings, improved pasture, rough grazing and wooded areas. Anglo-Saxon settlements may well have been confined to the tons of the valley floors. After the Norman Conquest, The wealth from potteries, coal and iron enabled the part of the area was for a while Royal Forest. There were building of grandiose mansion houses and historic parks like only a few centres of consequence, like Leek and Biddulph and Alton Towers, ‘the work of morbid 37 imagination joined to the command of unlimited resources’ little of the character of a country town. Large, modern, as one contemporary put it. Throughout this period the industrial development, as well as high density residential hinterland outside the coalfield remained deeply rural apart development, edge of town retail and industrial units and a from some localised quarrying. complex road network, mask these identities and the civic buildings and imposing 19th century blackened stone The individual communities created extensive areas of churches are often dominant characteristics. At the edges of derelict land, which was described as ‘a messy and forlorn the towns and straggling along main roads, like the A53 and environment ... workshops, grimy rows of houses ... yards A520 between Stoke and Leek, there are scattered filled with rusted metal, and great pitches of waste ground’.

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