Old times

Thursday, February 18th., Cadogan Square, London.

I have to make a visit to the Potteries next week. Only for the day! As usual an impending visit to my native area sets me reflecting on its distinctive character. 

Evolution in the Potteries has been quite remarkably dramatic during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. And of course it has marched with the improvement in the means of communication. Long after the death of Josiah Wedgwood, its supreme hero, the Potteries retained the primitive characteristics of a district cut off by Nature from the rest of the world. Josiah Wedgwood was a great man and did much, but his impress was left far more deeply on the manufacture of pottery than on the habits of the potters.

A great-uncle of mine used often to tell me stories of bear and dog fights at which he assisted as a boy. At that time Burslem had its municipal bear and Sunday was the day of battles. "But what about the law?" I asked him. "Bless ye!" he would reply, "There was no law in the Potteries in those days." The statement was exaggerated for effect of course, but it had some truth. Hundreds of men still alive in the Potteries can remember a period when during the annual 'Wakes', the public houses kept open day and night for a week, and the sole ambition of the population (male half) seemed to be to get drunk and to remain drunk.

In my youth the population of the Potteries was at least 130,000, and the towns were even then merged into one another, and yet there existed less than two miles of tram line in the entire district, and only two trams (drawn by horses and travelling between Burslem and Hanley) twice an hour. Now, electric cars in scores run about everywhere, from Longton in the south to Tunstall in the north, and from Newcastle in the east to Smallthorne in the west. And it was precisely these rapid cars which at last broke down the stubborn individualism of the separate towns and brought about their federation. And Hanley was in the middle and quickly outgrew its neighbours. Another case of geography influencing history.

I hope to find time for a walk up through Burslem Park as far as the cemetery where one day I hope to lie with my ancestors.