Digging Deep!

HISTORIAN MERVYN EDWARDS DIVES INTO THE HISTORY OF DEEP HAYES COUNTRY PARK

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STAFFORDSHIRE County Council opened one of the county's most charming and uplifting green attractions on July 19, 1983 and I've made periodic visits with friends ever since.

Deep Hayes Country Park in the splendid Churnet Valley is a mere two miles south-west of Leek and four miles east of Stoke-on-Trent, offering variable walking territory through its meadows, bird-friendly woods and poolside tracks. Here is a natural wonderland.

But let's take the advice of the King in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and begin at the beginning.

Like Apedale Country Park near Chesterton, Deep Hayes and its environs had a busy industrial past, with coal and clay extraction, iron smelting and brick-making all being carried on in the area. However, the pools here started life as a reservoir, built in 1848 by the Potteries Water Works Company, formed in 1847 with dominant figures such as William Davenport (chairman), John Ridgway and Herbert Minton among its backers. The reservoir offset the loss of water in the River Churnet, which not only fed the mills downstream but supplied water to nearby Stoke-on-Trent.

The dreadful state of the water supply to the Pottery towns is illustrated by author William Scarratt (Old Times in the Potteries) who wrote of one old woman living in Mill Street (Etruria Road) in 1845. Requiring a can of water one Saturday night, she strolled to the top of her street and met with a chap hawking water from a bucket.