Character Area Potteries and 64 Churnet Valley

Key Characteristics dissected ridges rising to the . 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 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 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 Endon A53 Tr Caldon A50 ent & Mersey Canal Canal A500 Stanley CITY OF STOKE- ON-TRENT UA Audley 52 Bagnall A520 A34 5 Wetley STOKE-ON-TRENT Rocks Hanley Silverdale Kingsley Madeley A52 Werrington Madeley Heath A525 Staffordshire Stanton Moorlands A522 Mayfield NEWCASTLE- A34 M6 District A519 A50 UNDER-LYME District Cheadle Ellastone Newcastle-under-Lyme District A521 Alton Trentham Blythe Bridge Meir 4 8 Heath Hollington Derbyshire Dales 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 , 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’. settlements and a maze of narrow lanes and footpaths Since the 1960s there has been large-scale restoration of the typical of old industrial and mining areas. Leek and landscape although this has sometimes been accompanied by Cheadle, separated from the Potteries, are settlements of demolition of historic industrial buildings and removal of medieval origin which developed 18th century industries. landscape features. Their mills and works cottages are still prominent features. To the east, where the landscape becomes almost entirely rural, there are small villages like Ellastone and Alton sheltering on the most favourable sites of the Churnet and Dove valleys. However, the characteristic settlements away from the towns are the small hamlets, isolated farms or groups of red brick cottages built to serve some long- forgotten industry. The parklands within the sheltered valleys have some outstanding buildings including the Jacobean Wootton Lodge which has been described as ‘perhaps the most beautiful country house in Staffordshire’ and the 19th century gothic extravagance of Biddulph and Alton Towers.

Land Cover

Between and around the Potteries towns there are quite MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE AGENCY MIKE WILLIAMS/COUNTRYSIDE large areas of open land comprising clay and gravel pits, Upland agricultural landscape characterised by brick and sandstone buildings, farmsteads, woodlands and mixed grazing. abandoned mines and tips, subsidence ponds, reclaimed land and patches of naturally regenerated scrub and The novels of Arnold Bennett dominate many perceptions of woodland. At the edge of the towns there are often small the area, often for the worse: ‘the vaporising poison of their fields of rough and horse grazed pasture with gappy fencing ovens and chimneys has soiled and shrivelled the surrounding mixed with neglected and abandoned land in a typical urban countryside till there is no village lane within a league but fringe pattern. The reservoirs associated with the canal what offers a gaunt and ludicrous forestry of rural charms’. systems are locally significant features. Much more typical In contrast George Eliot was able to write about the rural of the higher ground either side of the Churnet Valley, and landscape in the east of the area in the same century. rising up to Biddulph Moor, is rough or improved pasture enclosed by hedges or dry stone walls with patches of Buildings and Settlement unenclosed common. Open heather or grass moorland is found on the highest ground. The older vernacular buildings are predominantly red brick but the churches, civic buildings and larger Victorian houses To the south of Stoke and eastwards towards the Dove were built of purple sandstone, now much stained and valley, the land is still predominantly pasture but there is a weathered. Sandstones are also to be found in the older more substantial hedgerow pattern and frequent hedgerow rural buildings in the east, with Sandstones from the trees. Arable is found occasionally on the best land of the Millstone Grit being used locally in the west. Occasionally river valleys. within the older town centres, like Leek and Cheadle, there Woodland is generally sparse in the area although there are are timber framed buildings but most were swept away in significant woodland clusters as well as new woodlands on the 18th century. reclaimed sites. However, there is extensive woodland in The Potteries, although effectively a conurbation, still retain the Churnet Valley comprising both conifer plantations, the identity of individual town centres like Burslem, Hanley much of which are on ancient woodland sites, and semi- and Stoke while the older parts of Newcastle still have a natural ancient woodland. Corsican pine is the dominant

38 species of the former and sessile oak a characteristic species acidification of soils and impoverishment of vegetation - of the latter. Elsewhere in the rural areas, and particularly remain to be tackled. on the higher ground, the main tree cover is groups of ● Urban fringe pressures on farmland may decrease its sycamore around farm buildings. viability and lead to abandonment or non-farming uses.

The Changing Countryside Shaping the Future

● The reclamation of derelict land within and around the ● Marginal agricultural land and reclaimed industrial land Potteries towns is continuing. It includes multiple-use should both be considered for the re-establishment of reclamation like the National Garden Festival site. heathland. ● The industrial archaeology of the area is exceptionally ● The wet valley-bottom grasslands and the smaller rich. While major sites and linear features like the canals historic parks would benefit from appropriate are safeguarded, many features could be lost to well- management. intentioned landscape reclamation or natural regeneration. ● The visual and nature-conservation characteristics of marginal land and its associated features like dry stone ● It is possible that parts of the area will be considered for walls are important. forestry expansion, given the perceived availability of suitable land. Selected References ● Heathland and moorland could become further fragmented by agricultural conversion and other Millward, R & Robinson A (1971), The pressures. Macmillan, London. Palliser, D M (1976), The Staffordshire Landscape, Hodder & ● Although major air pollution is a thing of the past, the effects - blackening of buildings and rock outcrops, Stoughton, London. ANDY GOODE/STAFFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL GOODE/STAFFORDSHIRE ANDY Biddulph Moor – farmsteads and cottages set in an open landscape of small fields and remnants of upland enclosure with stone walls and banks.

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