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STOKE-ON-TRENT
RAILWAY STATION

 

The city of Stoke-on-Trent owes its superb 21st Century railway service to the foresight of the North Staffordshire Railway Company, which established its main office and boardroom at its principal station in Stoke-on-Trent. The fine Victorian Station that they built is ideally situated on this main line (part of the shortest route between Manchester and London) and near the junction with its line to Derby.

These station buildings were completed in 1848 to the design of H.A. Hunt of London in a style referred to as ‘robust Jacobean manor-house’. Together with the North Stafford Hotel and the officers’ houses, they occupy Winton Square, in what Sir Nikolaus Pevsner has described as ‘the finest piece of Victorian axial planning in the county’. They were a masterpiece in their time and quite remarkably they have survived (among the earliest principal station buildings so to do), very well maintained, little changed, and still largely fulfilling their original purposes. They provide a facility of which the city can be justly proud.

     

The North Staffordshire Hotel in the same architectural style.



Statue to Josiah Wedgwood - North Staffordshire's most famous son
and father of the Pottery Industry.



Waiting for the 16:01 on a Mid-November afternoon.

Photographs © by Noel Walley taken November 16th 2004


NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE RAILWAY PASSENGER SERVICES

  • 1910 was the year of the six-towns federation that created the County Borough (later City) of Stoke-on-Trent.
  • In that year 186 passenger trains left Stoke-on-Trent every day (Mondays to Fridays). 
  • Of these three were express trains to London and 30 more were destined for Crewe, Manchester, Derby or Birmingham.
  • The remaining 153 trains were local trains travelling on average less than ten miles before returning to Stoke-on-Trent.
  • These local trains provided a service to almost a hundred stations on the North Staffordshire Railway.
  • By 1947 the number of local trains had fallen by two-thirds to 50 and although there were a few more expresses, the service had otherwise varied little in 37 years and the total passenger train milage remained about the same.
  • Great changes and a new approach came, with electrification in the mid 1960s and Inter-City in the mid 1970s. Local services failed to meet any observable need and continued to decline.
  • By 1999 there were only 14 former North Staffordshire Railway stations still open for passenger travel.
  • In that year, of the 117 trains daily, there were 16 express trains to London, 40 to Manchester or beyond (e.g. Carlisle and Edinburgh), 23 to Birmingham or beyond (e.g. Oxford, Reading and Bournemouth), 15 to Crewe, 15 to Derby (with most continuing to Nottingham or Skegness) and just eight short journey local trains. 
  • In 2007 there were 153 passenger trains leaving Stoke-on-Trent daily: 29 to London, 62 to Manchester, 32 to Birmingham or beyond, 15 to Crewe and 15 to Derby.  Etruria station had been closed and the local trains between Stoke-on-Trent, Wedgwood, Barlaston, Stone, Norton Bridge and Stafford had been replaced by a bus service.
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Updated February 2007

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