No place like Rome for historic estate village

MAY we speak of faded glories? Of a location where 'eclipse and tragedy are written across the scene, for a great palace is gone, [where] the kings and captains have departed.

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These elegiac words were penned by Arthur Mee in his book, Staffordshire: Beauty in the Black Country (1937) and refer to a special place in the Potteries that simultaneously always seemed set apart from Stoke-on-Trent detached and aloof, and with an air of its own worth, like a school prefect supervising a knot of rowdy sixth-formers.

Trentham was well aware of its advantages. We know that when cholera reached the Potteries in 1832, there were a number of deaths in nearby Fenton and Longton so that efforts were made to raise money for the distressed poor and perhaps to provide a dispensary.

Trentham between cholera-affected Longton and Newcastle was largely spared by the pernicious disease. Between August 29 and October 25, there were only two cases in Trentham, resulting in one death and one recovery.

The salubrity of this small estate village, dominated by the elegant Trentham Hall and by its affluent owners, set it apart from the clay caked, slip-smeared, grot-mottled pottery towns with their narrow, poky streets and industrial pollution, creating disease and death.

By comparison, Trentham was a veritable Eden. We'll say nothing of the malodorous River Trent teeming with sewage from the Potteries which passed through the Trentham Hall grounds, but we should note that affluence is never far away from effluence.

Trentham is the story of blue blood, aristocratic connection, political hegemony, visits from the Shah of Persia and other glitterati and much more.

This resplendent past is celebrated by the Trentham Heritage Project, whose various researchers continue to find new ways in which to showcase the history of the area.

There is, of course, a fine website, but the project has recently produced a very reader-friendly folding leaflet that offers walking trails around the estate buildings, the old village and the branch railway line.