Stoke-on-Trent

The architecture of North Staffordshire has a history expressive of locally acquired or manufactured building materials, including: quarried stone, coal and clay for brick and tile-making, ash, sand gravel and cement for concrete; and also cast iron steel and timber. Examples include: Stoke-on-Trent's architecture is tied closely to the industrial heritage of the city. Bottle ovens (used for early pottery manufacture), canal-side and railway-related mill, factory or warehouse buildings evolved – within the tightly knit street pattern of each of the six townships – from transport links and adjacency to local generationally skilled labour. Post-WWII pottery factories developed a style…

Stoke-on-Trent is often known as "the city of five towns", the name given to it by local novelist Arnold Bennett, and is the only polycentric city in the UK. In his novels, Bennett used mostly recognisable aliases for five of the six towns, although he called Stoke "Knype". Bennett said that he believed "Five Towns" was more euphonious than "Six Towns", so he omitted Fenton, now sometimes referred to as "the forgotten town." As it is a city made up of multiple towns, the city forms a conurbation. In this case, the conurbation is bigger than Stoke itself, because the urban area of Stoke is contiguous with that of administratively separate Newcastle. The six towns run in a rough line from…