An interesting new article from historian Fred Hughes, on Trubshaw Cross, between Dalehall and Longport [Longbridge] in Stoke-on-Trent…

“Trubshaw Cross is one of Stoke on Trent’s major gateways. It’s where Percy Adams gave us a glimpse of an ancient world where the packhorse was once king of the road.”

Now the area’s modern bits are mostly demolished.

But in 1624 the Cross was described as the terminus of the Moorlands and Peak packhorse routes headed across the Fowlea for the London Road…

“a great passage out of the north parts unto diverse market towns”.

The turn-piking of roads in 1763 likely put paid to the cost-effectiveness of the onward route to Newcastle-under-Lyme, and then canal haulage effectively came to Burslem around 1805 with a new wharf just a stone’s throw from the Cross.

Trubshaw Cross is a place which is featured in the first chapter of my novel The Spyders of Burslem. Fred interestingly notes an antiquarian dating of the cross base…

“[Percy] Adams identified the stone base as being of Saxon origin” […] “the historian John Ward Ward notes in 1843 that only the stone base remained”.

Fred seems to imply there’s a threat that the cross’s traffic island might be removed. In which case, if it is Anglo-Saxon (as seems likely from the ancient age of the site and the old documentation), then it might be interesting to first do a proper deep archaeological dig on the site of the whole island. Perhaps nearby Steelite might sponsor that?