All aboard for trip back in time to Pittshill's past...

WITH a few pounds to shed after the traditional Christmas gluttony, we're pulling on some sturdy shoes and embarking on a walking tour of Pittshill this week.

- HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS

If we start outside the Furlong pub in Furlong Road, we can perhaps consider some of the area's early history.

Pitts Hill, below Great Chell, was the home of the Bourne family by 1678. We know from the Manor Court Rolls that in 1683, it was ordered that the pits at the foot of Pitts Hill Bank should be filled in. These were pits made by early potters, who were evidently digging for clay near to the roadside, as happened in Burslem and other areas.

Pittshill is not mentioned on the 1775 Yates' Map, but was developing by about 1800, very likely spurred by the arrival of the Adams family's pottery-making in the area.

Old maps of the area indicate that there was plenty of work around here for potters and miners. The William Adams pottery was but a short distance up the road from our starting point. In the 1870s there was a colliery east of the main road at Pitts Hill. Whitfield Colliery (later Chatterley Whitfield) was conveniently near for Pittshill colliers, but over the years, they worked at a number of our local collieries including Chell Colliery, Sneyd in Burslem and Hanley Deep.

The miners made their presence felt in Pittshill, sometimes being mentioned in the police court reports for drunken behaviour. However, they were active politically in the community and we find references in the 1880s to a Pittshill Lodge of Miners - evidently a trade union.