The county of Staffordshire has been a distinct entity since the early 10th century, when Stafford became the capital of Mercia.

Historically, Staffordshire was divided into the five hundreds, Totmonslow, Pirehill, Offlow, Cuttleston and Seisdo. In modern times the county lost the conurbations of Wolverhampton, Walsall and West Bromwich (to the West Midlands in 1974). In 1553 Lichfield became a separate county, remaining so until 1888.

Northern Staffordshire is to a large extent moorland (the county is home to the highest village in Britain, Flash), less attractive to early settlers, while southern Staffordshire was largely forested, covered particularly by Kinver and Cannock Forests.

Throughout the entire county there are important coalfields. In the southern part there are also rich iron ore deposits. The largest river is the Trent. The soil is chiefly clay and agriculture was not highly developed in the region until the mechanisation of farming.

Staffordshire is most famous, of course, for its potteries. The traditional ‘six towns’ of the Staffordshire Potteries – now forming the city of Stoke-on-Trent – were Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. North Staffordshire started to become a centre of ceramic production in the early 17th century, due to the local availability of clay, salt, lead and coal. Hundreds of companies produced decorative or industrial ceramic items.

However, the boom came after the discovery in 1720, by potter John Astbury of Shelton, that adding heated and ground flint powder to the local reddish clay could create a more attractive white or cream ware. The flint was sourced from either the south coast of England or France, and then shipped to the port of Liverpool or Shardlow on the River Trent. It was then ground by local watermills or commercial flint grinding mills in either the Churnet Valley or Moddershall Valley. Until the process was improved, many pottery workers suffered from silicosis.

With the coming of the railway distri-bution of pottery products from the 1840s, mainly by the London and North Western Railway and Midland Railway, there was a considerable increase in business. The Chartist 1842 General Strike was ignited by striking collieries in the Potteries and led to the 1842 Pottery Riots. See www.thepotteries.org for more information, including genealogy resources.

Primitive Methodism was also founded in Staffordshire by Hugh Bourne at a public gathering in the village of Mow Cop. In 1801 he reformed the Wesleyan Methodist service by conducting it outside, and co-founded a chapel in Tunstall.

Exclusive census analysis by TheGenealogist.co.uk confirms the importance of the potteries to the workforce, with pottery-related trades dominating the top 20 in 1841, along with coalmining and brickmaking. Another common trade was ‘nailor’ –someone who made iron nails. Nailors often made up to 3000 a day. By 1911, the county’s population had nearly trebled from 508,000 to 1.4 million – pottery had slipped from the top professions but coalmining remained a major source of employment.

TheGenealogist.co.uk’s analysis shows that common surnames in Staffordshire, in both 1841 and 1911, included Cooper, Turner and Hill. Whitehouse, Baker and Jackson all feature prominently in 1841, as do Bailey and Price in 1911. It’s also notable that many surnames associated with Wales were common, and indeed the Staffordshire top 20 is very close to the list for England and Wales as a whole.

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