Adams

William Adams (1869-1952) came from the famous pottery family, who trace both the business and their ancestry to the 14th century. For around a decade, more or less, he lived with his wife Mildred Serjeantson at the Gables in Church Road, during which time their son and his successor William Anthony was born. While he was there he became chairman of the family firm, which he ran with his brother Percy. He eventually settled at Oulton, near Stone.

Beswick/Wood

Robert Beswick (1803-1890) started his career as a joiner and builder at Tunstall, and by the 1850s owned collieries at Chell. Though mines continued to be the mainstay of his business, by the time he moved to Radway House (the late 1870s) he had also owned the Church Bank pottery at Tunstall, later owned by Joseph Eardley. His predecessor at Radway House was Josiah Wood (c.1826-1887) at Burslem), who moved from there to Prospect House. He had various partnerships making parian ware at Copeland Street, Stoke, the extent of the workforce being about 60. He was among the trustees of the Mere, but is not associated with large property transactions.

Dudson

The family’s association with Alsager began with James Dudson (1812-1882), who with his wife Jane moved to Hope Villa in Fields Road in 1866. As he owned much property, including the original factory, around Hope Street, Hanley, they were presumably responsible for the name of the house. Their son James Thomas (1841-1917), though he remained based in Hanley while he ran the business, in parallel lived at (and probably built) the nearby Ivy House on Cedars Avenue, opposite the 13 Club. He took the firm into its later concentration on hotel ware. His sons, James Robert Dudson (1865-1918) who lived on the north side of Lawton Road, and Harry Dudson (1874-1913), who lived briefly at Osborne House next to the Ivy House, took over the factory in their turn; their sister Jane and her husband, Henry Buckley King, built Wollaston on Station Road behind. Dudsons went into administration in 2019.

Eardley

Joseph Eardley was the son of an earthenware painter and made his living as a potter, eventually in partnership with Ralph Hammersley at the Church Bank works, Tunstall, which had formerly belonged to Robert Beswick. The partnership dissolved, Joseph and his wife Lucy retired to Alsager, becoming the first known occupants of Springfields. The family was associated with the Wesleyan Chapel. Three of their sons-in-law (George Hammersley, W. H. Bratt and Edwin Meir) were not only locally resident and, with their wives, behind the development of part of Station Road. Together with Joseph’s son Alfred Eardley (another resident in Lawton Road), and Robert Parker, husband of another daughter, they also formed the Brownhills Pottery Co. at Tunstall.

Goss

William Henry Goss (1833-1906) was a Londoner who came to Staffordshire in the wake of his mentor, Alderman Copeland, owner of the Spode works, where he was at first employed. His own works were founded around 1858, and ultimately he owned the Falcon factory (its emblem a goshawk) on the London Road in Stoke. It was two of his sons and successors who, together with their mother, are most associated with Alsager: Adolphus (1853-1934), the eldest, who is credited jointly with his father with inventing the ‘heraldic’ pottery that made the firm famous; and (William) Huntley (1867-1947), the youngest, who presided over its decline. W. H. Goss senior and his wife Georgiana lived in Stoke but also kept a house in Rode Heath; they separated about 1873. Thereafter the many children divided their time between their parents. Ultimately William had a country place at Barthomley, and Georgiana had successively several homes in and near Alsager. On their father’s death, when they came into an inheritance, Huntley moved from elsewhere in Church Road to Westmere Lodge, and Adolphus (who had already moved to Church Road from Mereleigh in Crewe Road) went to the Old Villa. Huntley and another brother inherited the factory; Adolphus was kept out of the business. Adolphus’s daughter Dorothy (1896-1972), whose husband Dr Percy Harpur had taken over both Dr Henry Crutchley’s house (Holmcroft) and his medical practice, is well-remembered, especially as a local councillor.

Hammersley

The famous Hammersley pottery firm based at the Alsager works, Sutherland Road, Longton, was founded by Titus Hammersley, who for a time owned the Cedars. His widow, Sarah, moved to Alsager in the 1880s, becoming first in her family to live in the Avenue. Her son Gilbert Hammersley (1859-1909) took over the factory in 1888 from his brother George Harris Hammersley (no relation to Joseph Eardley’s son-in-law), who moved away, and ran it until his sudden and early death, being succeeded by his sons Eric and Leslie. His widow, Helena, moved to Station Road, and his mother Sarah ultimately to Church Road.

Hancock

Benjamin Hancock (1816-1890) was throughout his working life a potter, retiring finally to Osborne House (which he may have built in the 1860s) in 1881. He and his wife Amy, while living in Tunstall, had a lodger, Sampson Hancock, who was to become Benjamin’s partner. When Amy died, Benjamin Hancock married Sarah, with whom he already had a son, James. Sarah and James Hancock moved after Benjamin’s death to Station Road. Sampson and his family carried on the pottery business well into the 1930s.

Lingard

Daniel Lingard (1846-1913) lived at several different Alsager addresses, including Chapel Terrace, then Lawton Road, Cresswellshawe and finally Northolme in Crewe Road. The son of a miner, he started out as a grocer near the Primitive Methodist Chapel, where he was choir master. He formed various pottery partnerships; at his death his firm was called Lingard and Webster. He married three times, first Kate Barker, then (presumably illegally) her widowed sister, Julia Colclough; lastly another Barker, Ann, whose father had once farmed at Heath End. Julia’s late husband and son James had both been landlords at the Horse Shoe Inn, Betchton.

Maddock

John Maddock senior (c.1807-1877) founded the family firm, which in his time had more than 200 employees and specialised in the American market. He had brought his family to Alsager from Endon by 1861, initially to Longview, soon building Brundrett Villa on Sandbach Road South (John’s daughter Sarah had Brundrett as a middle name). John junior was then at ‘Minton House’. The Maddocks had various addresses around this part of Alsager; John junior on the south side of Fields Road, and another son, James, and grandson Robert at the Cedars and Springfields respectively. Jane Maddock, the youngest of this second generation, built the fine almshouses for single women in Crewe Road. John Maddock and his elder son John both held municipal office in Burslem. The family were supporters of the Congregational chapel, to which Jane’s sister Margaret left a generous benefaction.

Robinson

Joseph Robinson (1830-1903), of the Knowle works, near Burslem Park, built Parville at the junction of Ashmore’s Lane and Sandbach Road South. By 1871 his pottery business was employing 134 people; according to his obituary, the works was known as a ‘happy family’, despite its owner’s misleadingly ‘brusque manner’. It also asserted that, before manufacturing, he had worked as a grocer at Goldenhill. His pottery business ‘for the home and general export trade’ ran for at least twenty years, till 1896.

Sudlow

Robert Sudlow (1844-1916) is remembered as a maker of teapots, though his firm (tracing its origin to Burslem in the mid-1870s, latterly at Adelaide Street) specialised in ‘jet goods and Rockingham ware’ as well. A self-made man who had started labouring first on his father’s small Shropshire farm, then in a pottery, he was a member of the UDC, a supporter of the Primitive Methodists, and resident ultimately at Hampton House in Station Road.

Walker

Thomas Walker (c.1799-1864) was a very early resident of Alsager, and the builder of ‘the Old Villa’ (to him it was just ’the Villa’). His successor (until the house was occupied and renamed in 1906 by Adolphus Goss and his family) was his son-in-law James Gibbons, husband of his daughter Ann. Other than that as an earthenware manufacturer he was concerned with the promotion of free trade, and was a shareholder in the railway, little is known of him.

Weatherby

The Weatherby pottery factory was moved from Tunstall to Hanley (confusingly, the Hanley factory was called the Falcon works, but wasn’t connected in any way with the Goss works of the same name), and closed only in 2000. The first two generations in the firm settled in Alsager in the early 20th century. John Henry Weatherby senior (who founded the firm in 1891) was very much a self-made man; his mother was widowed as a young woman and had to bring up her son and two daughters on her own. He built substantial semi-detached houses, nos. 44 and 46 Sandbach Road South, for his sons John Henry Weatherby junior and Samuel Mawdesley Weatherby; then Parkholme, on the Station Road frontage of the same plot, for himself.