Basford, Staffordshire

Basford is a suburb which sits on high ground between Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England.HistoryThe Roman road of Rykeneld Street from Wolstanton to Stoke would have run through Basford.Basford's lofty position was first served by a 1759 turnpike road which was called "Fowlea Bank" by the 1770s, the name referring to the Fowlea Brook which runs through nearby Etruria and has formed the valley. This old road still exists today, complete with its steep 1 in 8 gradient, surmounted by the substantial "Queen's Arms Inn" first built in 1769. After descending this bank, the crossing of the Fowlea into Etruria was then often a matter of fording the swampy valley bottom. This may have given rise to the later recorded name of Basford, being a local conflation of 'Bank' and 'Ford'.In 1828 an easier 1 in 14 deep road cutting was made a short distance from the old road, and thereafter this became the main road linking Etruria with Wolstanton and Newcastle-under-Lyme. The banked footings of the base of this new road swept very high above the Fowlea Brook, ensuring easy passage across the valley bottom in all weathers. The new bank began to being referred to in documents as "Basford Hill" or "Basford Bank" by the 1830s.Due to abundant well-drained clay all along the valley ridge, tile and brick making is documented here as far back as the late 1600s. Rhead's book Staffordshire Pots and Potters (1906) found only a one-man water-pipe business in Basford at 1818, but noted traces of a possible early pottery: "... there were scattered foundations of what might have been a pottery in King's fields, with the remains of low arches as of oven or kiln 'mouths'." During the 1830s, the area along the base of the escarpment featured the full range of brick and tile yards and small ceramics manufactories, increasingly working at an industrial scale. Despite this, substantial pockets of fields and woods persisted, notably the Etruria Woods. As late as 1929 aerial photography reveals large fields of corn and wheat being harvested directly alongside large tile-works at Basford.