Price: To Be Established  

Publication Date: Early Summer 2007

Please advise me when published: click here (This will make you eligible for a 20% discount off the recommended purchase price when published)

Summary:

Tunstall is the most northerly of the six towns that form the modern City of Stoke-on-Trent. The town is situated on a ridge, with Scotia Brook to the east and the valley of the Fowlea Brook to the west. To the south, Tunstall os bounded by the town of Burslem with Kidgrove and Biddulph to the north. 

The economy of the town was essentially agrarian until the early 1800s, although coal and ironstone mining is recorded in Tunstall in the 13^th Century, and from the 14^th century there are documentary reference to pottery production on a small scale. It was the development of the pottery industry that drove the town’s economic expansion in the 19^th century, This growth was made possible by the improvements made to local communication routes in the second half of the 18^th century, particularly the turnpiking of the main road from Newcastle and Burslem to the Red bull at Lawton in 1763 and the opening of the Trent and Mersey canal in 1777. Even so, Tunstall was a comparative late-comer to industrial-scale pottery production.

In 1800, there were only three potworks in the village of Tunstall, with a further two on furlong Road on the northern and north-eastern extremities of the village, two at Newfield 1km to the north and six at Goldenhill, 2km to the north. By 1818, however, pottery production was firmly established in Tunstall itself, with then potworks operating there at this time, and another four at Goldenhill. The count reached a peak in 1838m when there were seventeen pottery factories in the township.

Surprisingly, however, evidence for pottery manufacture in and around Tunstall was extremely slight in the archaeological record, until a wave of development commenced in the late 1990s which was set to change the physical appearance and layout of the town. Until this time comparatively few causal finds of ceramics had been made, and there had been no major archaeological interventions of any kind. This was to change, however, and since 1999 there has been almost constant archaeological work in the town, with watching briefs, evaluations and large-scale excavations.

This volume describes the results of three such interventions which accompanied the initial phase of the late 20^th-century development in Tunstall, and highlights the town’s archaeological potential. There are watching briefs carried out during the refurbishment of Tunstall Market Hall, during development in the area between Scotia Road, Woodland Street and Williamson Street, and during renewal of water mains in three separate locations, two to the eat and one to the north of the town centre.

Closely related to material recovered from one of the watching briefs discussed here is a group of mid-nineteenth century ceramic wasters found more than twenty years ago in Madison Street, which have not previously been published in full. These, too, are included in this volume, as they contribute to our understanding of the development if ceramic manufacture in Tunstall and of the markets served by Tunstall manufacturers.

Over the past three years there have been major excavations on a number of important pottery factory sites in the town, and on the houses of the workers who sustained these. However, there more recent projects will be the subject of future reports, and the interpretation of the sites and the finds from then have the benefit of being able to draw upon the results of the earlier work presented in this volume.