Stoke-upon-Trent

Stoke-upon-Trent, a manufacturing town of Staffordshire, the capital of the 'Potteries,' on the Trent and the Trent and Mersey Canal, 15 miles SE. of Crewe, 2 E. of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and 16 N. of Stafford. It is a modern place, dating only from the last quarter of the 18th century, and has a parish church with Wedgwood's grave, a town-hall (1835), a market-hall (1883), a free library (1878), the Minton memorial building (1858), the Hartshill Infirmary (1868), public baths, and statues of Wedgwood, Minton, and Colin Minton Campbell. Its factories of porcelain, earthenware, encaustic tiles, and tessellated pavements are among the largest in the world; and the industries also include coal-mining, brickmaking, and the manufacture of iron, engines, machinery, &c. Mrs Craik was a native. The parliamentary borough, constituted in 1832, was much curtailed in 1885 and lost one of its two members; the municipal borough was incorporated in 1874. Pop. (1871) 15,144; (1881) 19,261; (1891) 24,027; of parliamentary borough (1891) 75,352. See John Ward's Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent (1843).