Stoke-on-Trent

Sister cities

• Erlangen

History

An early proposal for a federation took place in 1888 when an amendment was raised to the Local Government Bill which would have made the six towns into districts within a county of Staffordshire Potteries. On 1 April 1910 the "Six Towns" were brought together. The county borough of Hanley, the municipal boroughs of Burslem, Longton, and Stoke, together with the urban districts of Tunstall and Fenton now formed a single county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. In 1919, the borough proposed to expand further and annex the neighbouring borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme and the Wolstanton United Urban District, both to the west of Stoke. This never took place, due to strong objections from Newcastle Corporation. A further attempt was made in 1930, with the promotion of the Stoke-on-Trent Extension Bill. Ultimately, Wolstanton was instead added to Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1932. Although attempts to merge Newcastle, Wolstanton and Kidsgrove (north of Tunstall) were never successful, the borough expanded in 1922, taking in Smallthorne Urban District and parts of other parishes from Stoke upon Trent Rural District. The borough was granted city status in 1925, with a lord mayor from 1928. When the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent initially applied for city status in 1925, citing its importance as the centre of the pottery industry, it was refused by the Home Office as it had fewer than 300,000 inhabitants. The decision was overturned, when a direct approach was made to King George V, who agreed that the borough ought to be a city. The public announcement of the elevation to city status was made by the king during a visit to Stoke in June 1925. It is planned that charter trustees will be used to continue Stoke-on-Trent's city status, and mayoralty. Since the 17th century, the area has…

Geography

Stoke-on-Trent has an area of . It is located between Manchester, Wolverhampton and Birmingham on the M6 corridor in the West Midlands region. It lies on the upper valley of the River Trent at the south-west foothills of the Pennines, near the uplands of the Peak District to the north-east and the lowlands of the Midlands and Cheshire Plain to the south and west. The city ranges from 92 to 250 metres (301 to 820 ft) above sea level. As well as Newcastle-under-Lyme, which adjoins it to the west, other nearby towns include Crewe, Nantwich, Alsager, Congleton, Biddulph, Kidsgrove, Stafford, Uttoxeter, Eccleshall, Cheadle, Stone and Leek. 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 north to south along the A50 road – Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. Although the city is named after the original town of Stoke, and the City Council offices are located there, the city centre is usually regarded as being in Hanley, which had earlier developed into a major commercial centre. For Eurostat purposes, it is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG23); it is also one of four counties or unitary districts that compose the…

Most-observed species

• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  7,115
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  6,117
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,994
• Eurasian Magpie

  Pica pica (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,988
• Carrion Crow

  Corvus corone Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  5,864
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  5,165
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,610
• European Goldfinch

  Carduelis carduelis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,453

Most recent

• M 2.7 — 2023-06-28
  2 km SE of Cheadle, United Kingdom
• M 3.6 — 2022-05-30
  2 km ESE of Prees, United Kingdom
• M 3.2 — 2022-02-21
  5 km N of Hockley, United Kingdom
• M 2.6 — 2014-10-28
  2 km NNE of Hucknall, United Kingdom
• M 2.9 — 2013-01-18
  0 km NE of Hathern, United Kingdom
• M 3.9 — 2008-10-26
  2 km N of Bromyard, United Kingdom