History

History of Bucknall

Bucknall is a village in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, situated about a mile and a half east of Hanley and an adjoining hamlet to Eaves. The area, fomerly predominantly rural with scattered early coalworkings, is now a largely residential suburb of Hanley.

The first part of the name “Bucknall” derives either from Bucca, a personal name, or from the Old English ‘bucca’ meaning a buck. The second part may be from the Old English word ‘halh’ meaning ‘hollow’ or ‘hall’. In the Domesday Book, it is called “Buchenole” and was part of the lands of the Crown.

In 1327, the lay subsidy, a tax imposed to raise money for Edward III’s Scottish war, lists 18 people in “Buckenale”. Most of these can probably be considered as a family unit. The Hearth Tax returns of 1666 indicate quite a large population for the time. 41 households were assessed as chargeable for tax, including the house of John Beech which had five hearths. Two of them were “stopt upp”. A further 29 households were considered not chargeable for tax. The returns would have included Eaves and Ubberley, but not Bagnall as it is separately listed. By 1841, the population was 1,608. 638 of these were in the village of Bucknall, 382 in Eaves and 214 in Ubberley.

The parish church of St. Mary the Virgin, situated on Marychurch Road, dates from 1856. The architects were Ward and Son of Hanley. This church replaced an earlier building of 1718, which is said to have included building materials from the former Hulton Abbey. A previous timber-framed church has also occupied the same site and is said to have stretched to where the church car park now stands. There was also a New Connexion Methodist chapel at Bucknall, built in 1824, and Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels at Townsend.

The main estate in Eaves was called The Ash, and a large house called Ash Hall was built on a site overlooking Bucknall by Job Meigh – who was a local landowner. It was considered to have ‘every purpose of domestic comfort, very few modern houses will bear comparison’. A half-timbered house, Brook House, which stood formerly on Brookhouse Lane, was removed from the village in 1974 and rebuilt at Knighton near Adbaston.

Coalworking in the area dates back to the Middle Ages, when the Cistercian monks at Hulton Abbey worked surface outcrops of coal in the Bucknall area. Later coal was exploited through the development of the Hanley and Bucknall Colliery, Mossfield Colliery, Jubilee Pit and Lillydale Colliery, but these had been effectively worked out by the end of the 19th century. The area supported the pottery industry through the location of water-powered flint mills at Bucknall Bridge and at Mossfield.

Bucknall Hospital was originally the City’s infectious diseases hospital, and this is probably an indication of a reasonably healthy as well as a rural environment. The village had a station on the North Staffordshire section of the London, Midlands and Scottish Railway. Finney Gardens was established for the purposes of public recreation around 1890.

A school was founded in 1719 under the will of William Shawcross for 12 poor children, which was situated next to the churchyard. By the mid 19th century, this school had become known as Bucknall National School. However, by 1868, the building was in poor condition and a new school was built close by. This new school was designed by Henry Ward, who had designed Stoke Town Hall. The land for this building was donated by John Tomlinson. Eventually, this school became known as the Bucknall C.E (C) School. In 1974, a new school building was built to replace this one – and was built on Piggott Grove. This school was Marychurch C.E (C) Primary School, which shut in 2004, following a merger with Townsend C.E (C) Primary School. Both of these schools have since closed, and the new merger school is Kingsland C.E (C) Academy.

Trade directories for the first half of the 20th century in Bucknall indicate a very wide variety of trades and minor industry, such as the saw mills, as well as a number of farmers in the more outlying areas.

The local wakes in Bucknall were known as the “Pickled Onion Wakes”, because the local publicans used to cater for those attending with pickled onions and cheese. [1]

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