“The Sytch, Burslem” by Gordon Mitchell Forsyth, showing in the middle-distance the ‘cliff’ of clay-tippings along the north western edge of the town centre, falling down to the dusty wasteland of clay shards and finings. In my novel The Spyders of Burslem, Miss Merryweather Craft has her workshops perched on the edge of this in the late 1860s, and the dusty wasteland of the Sytch itself is the setting for a pivotal encounter mid-way through the novel.

Maps of The Sytch. Much later the upper part with the factories, where it entered the town, became known as Westport Road.