Chell is a suburb of the city of
Stoke-on-Trent in
Staffordshire, England, that can be subdivided into Little Chell, Great Chell and Chell Heath. It lies on the northern edge of the city, approximately from
Tunstall, from
Burslem
Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent.
...
and from the county border with
Cheshire. Chell borders
Pitts Hill to the west,
Tunstall to the south west,
Stanfield and
Bradeley to the south, with the outlying villages of
Packmoor
Packmoor is a small village in Stoke-on-Trent near to Kidsgrove.
References
Villages in Staffordshire
{{Staffordshire-geo-stub ...
and
Brindley Ford to the north and
Ball Green to the east.
Since 2011 the area has been divided into the electoral wards of Bradeley & Chell Heath, Great Chell & Packmoor and Little Chell & Stanfield.
History
There is no mention of Chell in the
Domesday Book
Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...
, it is believed to have come under the lands of
Wolstanton. The earliest written record of Chell comes from 1212, by which time Chell had already been split into Little and Great Chell. Prior to 1212 the
lord of the manor
Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...
was Adam de Audley. He was succeeded by his son Henry de Audley who in 1212 confirmed in writing his father's decision to award one third of Chell to Robert Blund when giving him a further 14 acres 'in the wood between Chell and Thunstal'. Henry de Audley later gave the remaining two-thirds of Chell to Richard of
Hanley, who is recorded under the name Richard Chell c.1230. Chell is now a common family name in north Staffordshire.
[Notes on Staffordshire place names](_blank)
. Allbooks-online.com. There are few records of Little Chell manor after 1344 suggesting it had merged with Great Chell manor. However, the earliest confirmation of this is in 1679 when the Sneyd family, owners of Great Chell Manor, are known to have also taken over Little Chell Manor. The Sneyd family held these manors into the 19th century.
William Henry Duignan traced the etymology of Chell back to Ceolegh. "Ceole" meant throat or narrow valley in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...
and Chell is situated at the edge of a ridge of land by a narrow valley. Another possibility is that the township was named after a person known as Ceol- Ceol's Lea, lea meaning meadow.
In 1666 surveys conducted for the then recently implemented
Hearth Tax
A hearth tax was a property tax in certain countries during the medieval and early modern period, levied on each hearth, thus by proxy on wealth. It was calculated based on the number of hearths, or fireplaces, within a municipal area and is ...
recorded a total of ten households in Chell as being liable for payment of the tax on a total of 15 hearths. No households were recorded as being too poor to pay the tax. Chell receives a mention in William White's 1851 ''History, gazetteer, and directory of Staffordshire'': "CHELL (GREAT AND LITTLE) form a liberty of 740 acres and 737 souls. Great Chell is on an eminence 2 ½ N. by E. of Burslem, and is occupied chiefly by potters. The
Primitive Methodists have a chapel here, built in 1823, and enlarged in 1830 and 1841. The Union Workhouse is at Great Chell." Twenty years later Chell receive another mention in
John Marius Wilson
John Marius Wilson (c. 1805–1885) was a British writer and an editor, most notable for his gazetteer
A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains informati ...
's grander ''Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'', compiled 1870–72: "CHELL, a township in
Wolstanton parish,
Stafford; 2 miles north of
Burslem
Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent.
...
. Population, 1219. Houses, 215. It contains the
Wolstanton and
Burslem
Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent.
...
workhouse; and its inhabitants are chiefly colliers and potterers."
In 1772 the celebrated
canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...
engineer
James Brindley
James Brindley (1716 – 27 September 1772) was an English engineer. He was born in Tunstead, Derbyshire, and lived much of his life in Leek, Staffordshire, becoming one of the most notable engineers of the 18th century.
Early life
Born i ...
died at his home,
Turnhurst Hall, on what is now Turnhust Road, Great Chell.
Little Chell Water-Mill is first mentioned in 1539, as having belonged to the
Colclough family for several generations. It is believed to have been situated on Scotia Brook, where it enters what is now Victoria Park, and ground corn. In 1757 the then owner, Thomas Baddeley of
Newfield, contracted
James Brindley
James Brindley (1716 – 27 September 1772) was an English engineer. He was born in Tunstead, Derbyshire, and lived much of his life in Leek, Staffordshire, becoming one of the most notable engineers of the 18th century.
Early life
Born i ...
to fit the mill with machinery for grinding flint and also pumping water out of a neighbouring mine. By 1832 the water-mill had been decommissioned and demolished, only the attached farmstead remained.
Chell Lodge, on the south side of Little Chell Lane, also known as Little Chell Hall, was built by wealthy potter Thomas Cartlich in the late 1830s. It was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the houses on Sproston and Scott Roads.
[British History Online – Tunstall](_blank)
British-history.ac.uk. Sited on the north side of Little Chell Lane, was Little Chell Farm, first documented in 1775. Blessed William Southern Roman Catholic County Secondary was built on this site in 1957 and was renamed St Margaret Ward's Catholic School in 1970. The school was renamed
St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy in 2013.
The
Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level un ...
put Chell under
Wolstanton Rural District from its creation in 1895 to its abolition in 1904. Parts of Great Chell had by then already been transferred to
Tunstall Urban District Council
In England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, an urban district was a type of local government district that covered an urbanised area. Urban districts had an elected urban district council (UDC), which shared local gove ...
. Little Chell and Chell Heath were transferred to
Smallthorne Urban District, which did not join the
federation of Stoke-on-Trent
The federation of Stoke-on-Trent was the 1910 amalgamation of the six Staffordshire Potteries towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Fenton and Longton into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. An anomaly in the histor ...
until 1922, making Chell one of the last additions to
Stoke-on-Trent.
Barnett Grove and Stross Avenue, in Little Chell, off Little Chell Lane are named after
Barnett Stross a former city councillor and MP for
Hanley constituency from 1945 to 1950, and its replacement
Stoke-on-Trent Central from 1950 to 1966. He is noted for founding and championing the global
Lidice Shall Live campaign that sought to raise awareness of, and rebuild, the
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
village of
Lidice
Lidice (, german: Liditz) is a municipality and village in Kladno District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 600 inhabitants.
Lidice is built near the site of the previous village of the same name, which was co ...
, destroyed by the
Nazis in 1942 in revenge for
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
's murder by
British trained Czechs.
Chatterley Whitfield Colliery is a disused
coal-mine on the eastern outskirts of Chell. It was the largest mine in North Staffordshire and in 1937 it became the first colliery in the UK to produce 1,000,000 tons of saleable coal in a year. In 1976 coal drawing at Chatterley Whitfield came to an end, with the coal worked from
Wolstanton Colliery, via a four-mile underground passageway, until it too closed in 1981. On 28 April 2014,
Greene King Brewery
Greene King is a large pub retailer and brewer. It is based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England. The company owns pubs, restaurants and hotels. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by CK Assets in October 2019.
H ...
opened a new £4.5m pub named The Chatterley Whitfield on the western outskirts of Chell.
Chell Workhouse
![Chell worlhouse](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Chell_worlhouse.jpg)
The Wolstanton And Burslem Union Workhouse was opened in 1839 in
Turnhurst Road in Great Chell, at a cost of £6,900 to house 400 inmates. The workhouse remained in use beyond the
Federation of Stoke-on-Trent
The federation of Stoke-on-Trent was the 1910 amalgamation of the six Staffordshire Potteries towns of Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Fenton and Longton into the single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. An anomaly in the histor ...
whereupon the newly formed county borough took over the running of the facility. It finally closed in 1922, eight years before the workhouse system was abolished by act of parliament. Following this it became a municipal home for poor people until 1975 and therein remained vacant until it was demolished in 1993. A range was built to the south as a hospital in 1894. This became the Westcliffe Hospital, which was demolished in 2011, finally removing any substantial reminders of the workhouse's presence. In local novelist
Arnold Bennett
Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist. He wrote prolifically: between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboratio ...
's book
Clayhanger, the characters referred to the Chell workhouse as the
Bastille
The Bastille (, ) was a fortress in Paris, known formally as the Bastille Saint-Antoine. It played an important role in the internal conflicts of France and for most of its history was used as a state prison by the kings of France. It was stor ...
.
Geography and geology
Chell predominately lies on a north-south ridge of land west of
Ford Green Brook and east of Scotia Brook, both tributaries of the
River Trent
The Trent is the third-longest river in the United Kingdom. Its source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands. The river is known for dramatic flooding after storms and ...
. Scotia Brook is a designated Natural Heritage Site and is home to an important number of
water voles. Great Chell, the northernmost and highest Chell, sits atop the ridge. Little Chell is situated south of Great Chell, lower down on the western ridge flank, alongside the
grade II listed conservation area surrounding Victoria (or Tunstall) Park. Chell Heath lies east of both on the eastern flank, separated from Ball Green village by reclaimed spoil from
Chatterley Whitfield Colliery.
The
superficial geology beneath Chell consist of
Devensian glacial till
image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...
s, which overlie the
Middle and Upper Pennine Coal Measures; the same sequences of
sandstones
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) b ...
,
mudstones
Mudstone, a type of mudrock, is a fine-grained sedimentary rock whose original constituents were clays or muds. Mudstone is distinguished from ''shale'' by its lack of fissility (parallel layering).Blatt, H., and R.J. Tracy, 1996, ''Petrology.'' ...
and
coal seam
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron fro ...
s as forms the impressive
coalfields of Lancashire. There are records of millstone and blackband ironstone being quarried in Chell from at least the 13th century onwards. In 1831–32 Chell provided the stone for
Christ Church, Tunstall
Christ Church is an Anglican church in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. It is the parish church of Goldenhill and Tunstall; the combined parish, which is an Anglo-Catholic parish, was created in 2010. It is a Grade II listed b ...
. The main coal producing seam beneath Chell was the
Winghay seam. The nearest workings were at
Chatterley Whitfield, bordering Chell Heath, which was the first UK mine to produce more than 1 million tons of coal per annum. It closed in 1976, was declared a
local nature reserve (part of
Whitfield Valley nature reserve) in 1991 and a
Scheduled Ancient Monument
In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change.
The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...
by English Heritage in 1993.
Just to the west of the Chells, lay
Wolstanton Colliery, which at 3197 ft once had Europe's deepest mine shaft. The Chell Colliery Company had shafts off Turnhurst Road, Great Chell and High Lane, Little Chell, both had ceased production by 1901.
Community Profile and Facilities
The area is predominantly residential with a good mix of private, council, detached, semi-detached and terraced properties. There is a great deal of open space, with Victoria (Tunstall) Park, Sproson Park, Burslem Golf Course, Spring Bank Recreation Ground and Monks-Neil Park helping distance Chell from the urban area of
Stoke-on-Trent to the south and east. To the north and west of Chell the land peters out into the open countryside and
heathland
A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a coole ...
of the
Staffordshire Moorlands
Staffordshire Moorlands is a local government district in Staffordshire, England. Its council, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, is based in Leek and is located between the city of Stoke-on-Trent and the Peak District National Park. The ...
.
The area is home to two secondary schools;
St Margaret Ward Catholic Academy in Little Chell and James Brindley Science College in Great Chell, which was replaced by
Ormiston Horizon Academy in 2011 and relocated to new buildings in 2013. There are three primary schools; Mill Hill Primary, Whitfield Valley Primary and Burnwood Community Primary School. There is also the
SENbr>
Watermill Schoolin Great Chell, opened in January 2014. It was formed from the merger of Middlehurst School and Heathfield Special School, and caters for 2-16yr olds.
Church of the Saviour, Chell Heath
There are two
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
churches; Chell Heath Church of the Saviour on Sprink Bank Road and St. Michael & All The Angels on St Michael's Road in Great Chell.
In Great Chell there is a post office, small collection of shops, pharmacy, petrol station and pub on Biddulph Road, close to the roundabout with St Michael's Road. The New Horizons Sport and Leisure Centre, a partnership between the City Council and Orimiston Horizons Academy, is based on Uplands Avenue in Great Chell. There is also a small parade of shops on Chell Heath Road.
The Vine, a rare Victorian (c.1875) backstreet local, is a grade II listed pub in the adjunct Pitts Hill area.
The
Sustrans
Sustrans is a United Kingdom-based walking, wheeling and cycling charity, and the custodian of the National Cycle Network.
Its flagship project is the National Cycle Network, which has created of signed cycle routes throughout the United K ...
National Cycle Routes
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
5 and 55 pass west and east of Chell respectively and help to delineate the extent of the area.
Notable residents
*
Robbie Williams
Robert Peter Williams (born 13 February 1974) is an English singer and songwriter. He found fame as a member of the pop group Take That from 1990 to 1995, and achieved commercial success after launching a solo career in 1996. His debut stud ...
(1974 – ),
Take That
Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer ...
and solo musician, was a student at St Margaret Ward Secondary School in Little Chell (that features on a new Robbie Williams tourist trail)
Robbie Williams Tourist Trail Launched
/ref>
* Roy Smith (1910–1971), cricketer, died in Great Chell.
* Charlotte Rhead (1885–1947), the famous pottery designer, lived in Chell during the 1930s, a contemporary of Susie Cooper and Clarice Cliff
Clarice Cliff (20 January 1899 – 23 October 1972) was an English ceramic artist and designer. Active from 1922 to 1963, Cliff became the head of the factory creative department.
Early life
Cliff's ancestors moved from the Eccleshall area ...
, their collected art deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
inspired works are highly sought after.
* Job Ridgway (1759–1814), one of the founder members of the Methodist New Connexion at Hanley, was born in Chell. He was a potter and became joint-owner of the Bell Pottery Works at Hanley. The Potteries Museum is now on the site. Later he became owner of the Cauldon Pottery Works at Hanley.
*James Brindley
James Brindley (1716 – 27 September 1772) was an English engineer. He was born in Tunstead, Derbyshire, and lived much of his life in Leek, Staffordshire, becoming one of the most notable engineers of the 18th century.
Early life
Born i ...
(1716–1772), lived at Turnhurst Hall, Great Chell, from 1765 to his death. He created experimental models of the lock systems he later implemented on the Trent and Mersey Canal in the grounds of the hall.
See also
* Tunstall
* Turnhurst
*The Potteries
The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. North Staffordshire became a centre of ...
* Stoke-on-Trent
* Chatterley Whitfield
* Pitts Hill railway station
* Ormiston Horizon Academy
* Parliamentary Constituency for Chell
References
External links
Ormiston Horizon Academy
James Brindley Science College
St Margaret Ward Catholic School and Arts College
Mill Hill Primary School
Whitfield Valley Primary School
Burnwood Community School
Heathfield Special School
St Michael and All Angels
Chell Heath Church of the Saviour
{{authority control
Areas of Stoke-on-Trent
Villages in Staffordshire