Staffordshire and the Industrial Revolution
The
history of Staffordshire during the Industrial Revolution
|
Return to the Home Page of the Bakers Family part of the website |
The Bakers of Highfields Story
The Story of the Dods and Bakers and of Highfields,
Fenton House and Hasfield Court. A journey through the history of Cheshire and
Staffordshire, an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who retained his lands after the
Conquest, pottery at Stoke on Trent, an encounter with Elgar, and the history
of an Elizabethan manor house at Audlem |
The family tree of the Bakers of Highfields |
The Family Tree of the Dods, predecessors to the
Bakers of Highfields |
The Bakers of
Fenton House and Hasfield Court
The Family Tree of the pottery Bakers of Stoke on Trent |
The Family Tree of the Bellyse Family |
The main part
of this website tells the story of the Farndale family from Yorkshire Descendants of Arthur Baker, the story of the
Farndale ancestry is told through the main part of this website You can also return to the Farndale
website home page |
The genealogy of the family of James Hall, linked to
the Baker family through marriage to Arthur Baker |
Headlines of are
in brown.
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to
other pages are in dark
blue.
References and
citations are in turquoise.
Context and local
history are in purple.
This page is work in progress
Staffordshire transformed from a quiet rural shire into a global
manufacturing powerhouse. Driven by rich mineral wealth, the north became the
world's ceramic capital known as the Staffordshire Potteries, while the south
evolved into the heavy metal-working region called the Black Country.
Plentiful local clay, coal, and lead-glazed materials laid the
foundation for cottage-level pottery making.
Master potters like Josiah Wedgwood and Josiah Spode modernized
production, perfected fine bone china, and created
global luxury brands.
Hundreds of iconic bottle-shaped brick kilns dominated the
landscape of the six towns that later formed Stoke-on-Trent.
In the south, and the Black Country, there was heavy industry.
Rich coal seams and ironstone reserves fuelled a massive expansion in iron
smelting, steel-making, and engineering. Towns like Wolverhampton, Walsall, and
Dudley specialized in nail-making, chain-making, locks, and metal wares. Thick
smoke from countless industrial furnaces famously blackened the local skies and
landscape.
Entrepreneurs built canals, such as the Trent and Mersey and the
Staffordshire and Worcestershire, to safely transport fragile ceramics and
heavy coal across Britain.
Nineteenth century rail lines later connected the county directly
into national and international markets.