Burslem

Burslem (/ˈbɜːrzləm/ BURZ-ləm) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent. The population of the town was included under the Burslem Central ward and had a population of 6,490 in the 2021 Census.

Burslem is on the eastern ridge of the Fowlea Valley, the Fowlea being one of the main early tributaries of the River Trent. Burslem embraces the areas of Middleport, Dalehall, Longport, Westport, Trubshaw Cross, and Brownhills. The Trent & Mersey Canal cuts through, to the west and south of the town centre. A little further west, the West Coast Main Line railway and the A500 road run in parallel, forming a distinct boundary between Burslem and the abutting town of Newcastle-under-Lyme. To the south is Grange Park and Festival Park, reclaimed by the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival.

The Domesday Book shows Burslem (listed as Bacardeslim) as a small farming hamlet, strategically sited above a ford at Longport, part of the major pack horse track out of the Peak District and Staffordshire Moorlands to the Liverpool/London road. The name refers to the Old English personal name Burgweard and the former Forest of Lyme (reflected in the nearby town of Newcastle-under-Lyme). As far back as the late 12th century, a thriving pottery industry existed, based on the fine and abundant local clays. After the Black Death, Burslem emerges in the records as a medieval town – St John the Baptist's Church on Cross Hill, with a stone tower dating from 1536, was extended in the 18th century, and is still standing and in use. Until the mid-1760s Burslem was relatively cut off from the rest of England: it had no navigable river nearby, and there were no good and reliable roads.

By 1777 the Trent and Mersey Canal was nearing completion, and the roads had markedly improved. The town boomed on the back of fine pottery production and canals, and became known as The Mother Town of the six towns that make up the city. Hill Top Methodist Church and Sunday School opened on Westport Road in 1836. The railway station opened in 1848. The Burslem School of Art was founded in 1853. A new town hall was built in the market place in 1854, designed by G. T. Robinson of Leamington in elaborate baroque style. In 1906, the United Reformed Church was opened on Moorland Road, initially named the Woodall Memorial Congregational Church, in memory of William Woodall MP.

In 1910, the town was federated into the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent, and the borough was granted city status in 1925. The new town hall was built in 1911 on Wedgwood Place, in neo-classical style, designed by Russell and Cooper.

Many of the novels of Arnold Bennett evoke Victorian Burslem, with its many potteries, mines, and working canal barges. The Burslem of the 1930s to the 1980s is evoked by the paintings and plays of Arthur Berry.

Burslem contains Britain's last real working industrial district (i.e. where people live within walking distance of the factories of a single heavy industry, in this case, the potteries) and thus much of the nineteenth-century industrial heritage, buildings and character have survived intact.

"Burslem, an ancient town, with a market held for a long period by custom, and subsequently sanctioned by an act of parliament, is about three miles from Newcastle and two from Hanley, entitled to the precedence of other towns in this district, as claiming to be the mother, as it is the metropolis, of the Staffordshire Potteries."