Lighthouse Letter
Continuing the Bentilee Lighthouse local history column's aim to "illuminate the Past, Present & Future of Bentilee" we asked local writer, and one-time Bentilean, John Dixon, to recall his memories of living on and visiting pre-60's Bentilee....
You ask in your letter if I have any memories of Bentilee dating from my childhood. I am afraid I have only personal memories of actually living in Bentilee from 1953 onwards, since that was the date I was allocated a newly built house on the estate, although for a year or two before that I worked in the building trade and so helped to build the first houses there -- which were in the Brookhouse Green area and starting around 1951-52.
My childhood was spent in Cobridge. I have many memories of that area, and have wrote a lot about it, but Bentilee was off the beaten tract for me at that time. I never visited the place 'til much later when, in 1950, I can remember cycling up Dividy Road towards Weston Coyney. At that time, all I saw were fields each side of the road, where the Ubberley estate now stands; this period was just before the building commenced there.
As I have said, I have memories of moving to Ubberley and living there for eight years, but my recollections are much the same as those revealed in the excellent articles I have read in the copies of your magazine you sent me, and so I feel I might be going over the same ground myself. I will, however, do the best I can.
Ubberley in its early days was, like most places at the time, a rural farming area, with scattered farmhouses, but the important residence there appears to have been Ubberley Hall which was the seat of a gentleman. There is mention, in records, of one Bertram de Verdon who was Lord of Ubberley in the reign of Henry II (i.e. 1154-89). This Bertram was the one who founded Croxden Abbey, and the first of that family who settled in Alton. There is also mention of lands transferred to one Adam de Buckenhall in the reign of Edward III (i.e. 1327-77), these lands having been held by Henry de Ubberley. So, we can see, Ubberley Hall had quite a history.
When I first moved to Ubberley, in 1953, the Hall, or farmhouse, was still standing but was pulled down within a year or two. During these last years it was used as a 'Sunday School cum Church', 'til such time as the new St. Stephen's was built and opened in 1956. The Hall stood close to where the Ubberley Workingmen's Club now stands, in Ubberley Road. I lived quite close to, at number 158, and when it was demolished, I collected some coping stones from a wall there and made a border for a strip of garden by the house.
At the top of Brassington Way, where the Clowes' Community Hall now stands, there used to be an old farm. The animals from this farm (horses etc) had been used to roaming over the fields here, and after the houses were built, they still tried to do this. I often saw them in my garden at night. To wander over the gardens at night was easy for the houses had been designed on an open plan system (i.e. without any hedges or boundaries). We were not allowed to put any up at that time; I notice it is different nowadays.
I remember one day, I had planted some young cabbages in the back garden, which were standing a few inches above the ground. When I got home from work there were all gone. My wife told me what had happened. A flock of geese had eaten them! She had watched them do this from the windows, but had not dared to go out to them. "They looked so fierce," she said. She had always lived in the ttown and was not used to country life. I felt sorry for those animals, they had lost their homes to give us ours.
The open plan of those houses was new to the people at the time, and was not popular with some. Indeed, the Reverend W.G.L. James, who resided in Bucknall Parish whilst the estate was being built, said he couldn't understand why people should want to leave such a nice area so soon after moving in. The dislike, I presume, was due to the fact that, whilst many people like to live in a community, they also like a little privacy. However, most did not complain, they were glad to get a home of their own after living with in-laws or in lodgings for so many years.
Most of the people who moved into these houses in the beginnings were newly married since the war, and, at that time, there were few if any houses for sale -- the policy being to build council houses only. But there were some who had been moved from clearance areas and these missed the homely type of terraced houses, with their private back yards.
When I first went to live there, Ubberley Road was the only paved road through the estate as building was still going on in the Beverley Drive and Dawlish Drive areas, and the roads were only dirt tracks for the builders. Later on, when these roads were more marked out, they still remained dirt tracks, and the buses would not use them. It was quite a while before they were finally made up and could be used by all traffic safely.
In these early years there were no shops or pubs; if you were short of any small item, you had to walk down Ubberley Road to Brookhouse Green to get to a shop. Although it was long before a van started to come round with groceries and other odds and ends. Sometime later the Co-op opened a shop in a wooden hut, which stood on the site of the present building, but it was years after before Devonshire Square, and all the other shops, including the old Woolworths (where Kwiksave now is) were laid out.
Still in the very early days, the only pub in the area was the "Spring Cottage", down at Brookhouse Green, on the corner of the road which goes up to Bucknall church. This pub had been there for a good many years and got its name from the stream that runs close by. A few years later, they demolished this and built the new pub of that name, on Ubberley Road. This pub, as I have implied, is called "The Spring Cottage", but I have always thought it out to have been named "The New Spring Cottage" to make plain its connection with the old one, for the word "Spring" is now misapplied; there is now spring running near it at the present time.
This old pub at Brookhouse Green used to get so full you had a job to get served, especially on Sunday when, it seemed, every man on the estate tried to get in there. Very few had cars so they stayed local for their pleasure. The pub did an absolutely roaring trade and must have made a great amoung of money until such time as the other pubs were built.
Going back a year or two, before I lived on the estate, I worked in the building trade and helped to build some of the first houses there. The whole area was then a hive of activity: hedges were being ripped up, tree pulled down, and piles of soil and bricks were everywhere. The area was riddled with old pitt shafts, as there had been a lot of mining done in the past. There had been, until the recent past, a colliery called "Ubberley Hall Colliery", near the main Longton Road. This was served by mineral lines connecting with the North Staffs Railway, at Botteslow Wharf, on the main Stoke-Leek line. There were several other mineral lines in the area, for access to the main line was easy. I remember when we came across coal only a foot or so down. This was on the site of an out crop worked, as the said, by a foot-mine, though I cannot verify this myself.
This position was opposite to where Devonshire Square is now located, and on the Devonshire Square side there stood a row of terraced house, perhaps for the workmen at the mines? (Editor's note: These, I believe, were called "Jerusalem". Beats me where.)
In spite of these collieries, the area had been rural right upto when the houses were built. Before the war Stoke-on-Trent was always a very smoky area, but it was unique in being rather small compared with Manchester or Birmingham, say. The countryside was always on the doorstep, and Bentilee then was one of such places. It was right close to Hanley, and was very much used by courting couples during the summer months. Then you could walk right through the fields to a pub at Hulme called "The Coyney Arms". This was nick- named "The Candle Stick", but I never knew why. (Editor: This pub, I'm told, still exists. At least, I've passed a pub with that name whilst walking through Hulme Village.) At Bentilee, a few signs still remain of the past. There are at least two of the old house, both in Ubberley Road. One, "Brownfields Farm" appears to have become residential (Ed: Mr Dixon took a bike ride round Bentilee to check out these details.), and is all fenced in, but, though I notice new gates have been fitted, the old stone gateposts are still retained. The other old house still there is "Ubberley House", at the bottom of the road.
Bentilee is now a very large estate, stretching right over almost to Adderley Green. It is a far cry since Ford Hayes Lane was a pleasant country road, with a stream running alongside, and one could hear the cry of the cock on the farms, rousing us in the morning. Sometimes one feels sad to recall such country areas disappearing so rapidly, but change is always with us, and it compensates us to see so many people having homes of their own, with the social and community halls to go with it.
John Dixon is a local man who writes about local history "mainly for his own pleasure", but never fails to give pleasure to other in the process, and is always considered a welcome addition to Hanley's WEA Writters' Workshop.
Copyright The Bentilean 1991, 1999
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