Fields Road
This area of Alsager, the first substantial chunk to be sold for prospective building development, was long known by its old name, the Fields. Well after the roadway and its residences were established, houses here would be described not as ‘on Fields Road’, but ‘in the Fields’.
Sales of land for building in this area in the mid to late 1850s were undoubtedly stimulated by the beginning of a railway service in 1848. An early purchaser was the Burslem and Tunstall Freehold Land Society, formed just after that date. Originally such societies were formed as an attempt to enfranchise men, often small traders, in the wake of the Parliamentary vote being conferred on those who owned a quantity (by value) of freehold land. They also saw advantage in collectively buying land at ‘wholesale’ prices and tended to allocate plots by ballot among the membership. Many such societies were avowedly partisan, promoting one political faction rather than another; there is nothing however which obviously links this society with either of the main parties.
Advertisements in the local press were pitched both at investors and ‘working men’ wanting their own home near work. But it is clear that the Society intended the Alsager transaction as special. In July 1854 land was offered to the Society by its owner, Michael Ashmore, through John Mayer. It was originally planned to divide the acreage into plots of a quarter acre, but this was rapidly changed to half an acre – there was a limited number of potential takers. The layout was devised by the Society’s surveyor, Ralph Hales, and was evidently dependent on the field entrance being extended sideways and south, enabling villas to be built on either side, while retaining the possibility of later development to the west of the new road.
Though the ballot allotted 13 plots to some 9 members, more than half the plots ended up with Joseph Latham. In 1856 he advertised 3 and a half acres for building, stressing the healthy air of Alsager and its proximity to the Pottery towns, and is the first identified developer in this area, possibly also acting as what would now be called an estate agent. Successively he occupied at least two – probably more – of the early houses himself.
Houses at the southern end can be identified as among the earliest to be built. Albert Cottage (44), Field or Fields House (36; occupied by C J Baines until 1872, then Andrew Balmain, a draper in Kidsgrove, till c. 1877), Peel Cottage (49), and Rose Cottage (46) appear as such in the 1861 census. Some were probably in existence by 1859. No. 47 (Holly House) is also early, and nos. 12, 16 and 30 may have been there too, though not named. Field House still had 2 acres undeveloped to its south in 1872.
The 1860s saw the development of both the Sandbach Road frontage and Grosvenor House (formerly ‘the Laurels’) for one of the younger Maddocks. No 48 is likely to be the house called Hope Villa (after the street in Hanley where their factory was) by the pottery manufacturer James Dudson and his family, who lived there from 1866 (other Dudson family members lived across Sandbach Road).
Rural idylls speak for themselves, but the names Peel Cottage, Nelson Cottage (no. 34 – for long owned and occupied by successive market gardeners, latterly another Ashmore) – and Albert Cottage, presumably honour political allegiance, naval success or royalty (indeed, one of Albert Cottage’s neighbours, it is not known which, was briefly named after Queen Victoria). Balmain’s sale of items on his leaving Field House in 1877 indicate the high Victorian style in which these houses were furnished, from the green velvet, walnut and gilt of the drawing room to the mahogany four posters, japanned French bedsteads and ‘painted beaufets’ upstairs. Balmain’s parrot lived in the kitchen, where there were three other bird cages too, their occupants unidentified.
As well as those already mentioned, nos. 37 (once called Yew Tree Villa) and 42 (now Etruscan House) were in existence by 1875 and may well have been among the earliest in the road. Others were advertised later as having been ‘recently built’, as Peel Cottage was in 1877, though this is not to be taken too literally (it was there in 1871).
The road was popular with people who ran schools, including boarding schools. These were not large: most had no more than a handful of pupils. One of the earliest was at the home at no. 46, Rose Cottage (or Villa) of Thomas Daniel, an earthenware painter. His daughter Sarah (then just turned 20) had a couple of schoolgirl boarders in 1861. John Goodfellow at Oak Cottage – location uncertain but towards the northern end – was a private schoolmaster but did not have resident boarders. Other schools include Holly House, where the wife and daughters of Samuel Bray, formerly an alum manufacturer, ran a ladies’ school in the 1870s; and Greenway Cottage (no. 22), where a similar establishment was run by Kate Bastarde from about 1875 until about 1893. She probably altered the house accordingly in 1877. Mrs Bastarde advertised that she was ‘assisted by Foreign and English teachers’, and that she brought in a professor of music, and an art teacher from the Wedgwood School of Art. She also admitted small boys.
Eventually the plots at the northern end were developed. Nos. 2 to 10 started at the south end of the terrace as a pair of cottages, in being by 1875; the terrace had been enlarged by the late 1890s. About 1912 they consisted of two rooms up, two down, and a privy in the back yard. At the beginning of the 20th century they belonged to Allen Kaye of Lawton Road. The bowling green nearby opened in 1909.
In the late 19th century the complex of buildings on the corner comprising nos. 28 to 32 included what was known as ‘Johnson’s corner’, after the family of John W. Johnson (d.1893), a boot and shoe manufacturer and dealer in leather, who lived hereabouts from at least 1861, Johnson’s house being known as Rowley House. The Burslem and Tunstall auctioneer Thomas Turner had an office next door at Stanley House in the 1870s, the house – whichever it was – being sold after the death of his widow in 1908. It still had no bathroom in 1912. Nos. 24 and 26, once called Glenholme and Holmdale, belong to the early 20th century, and are likely to be the ‘two villas’ proposed by John Ford from 1912; a cottage was removed at this time. On the opposite corner, a pair of semis, which may have been built about 1906, are cleverly designed to look from the front like a single house.
A speculator around this time was Alfred Parkes, landlord at the Alsager Arms. Nos. 39 and 41 are likely to be those he built after 1911, and alterations at no 37 (probably including the frontage, to match the new houses) date from the same time. Nos. 43 and 45 were in existence by the late 1890s; 43 had originally a stable and coach-house. Its occupant, Elizabeth Ford, advertised a ‘light phaeton’ for sale from here in 1900. Though a pair of similar houses, only a single name is associated with them: Sandycroft.
To the north, nos. 7 to 27 are on land which failed to sell at auction in 1906. This plot was eventually developed from the autumn of 1909 by the builders Bennett Brothers of Burslem, who in 1912 advertised semis (with entrance hall, 3 bedrooms and bathroom) as to let or for sale. Harold Bennett, presumably from the same family, moved here during the building period.
