I’ve found another Stoke writer. Katherine Thomson (1797–1862) was the seventh daughter of Thomas Byerley of Etruria. She compiled many ‘memoir biographies’, and wrote a string of historical novels. Here is The Chevalier : A Romance of the Rebellion of 1745 (1844), with a description of Hartshill…

“It was more than two days’ journey before the famous hill, called Mow Corp, at the foot of which lies Congleton, rose, darkened by the bilberry wires which dotted its sides, before the view of the travellers. They had journeyed along through what is now a defaced, and revolting country [the Jacobites had reached Macclesfield, but the town did not welcome the invading Jacobites and was murderously hostile]; amid hills, now obscured by volumes of the darkest smoke [a sign of pillaging Jacobites, seizing supplies], and vales … [They arrive at the industrialising Potteries, which in 1745 was pre-Wedgwood] standing on the ridge of the valley of Stoke, you may see countless chimneys vieing in height … The Trent [below was] narrow in this part of its course, where it has but lately quitted its source, wound through fertile fields, and beneath, at this point, a gentle rise, upon which, not many weeks since, wavy corn had been growing attracted the eye. A windmill stood on this fair bank, bearing the name of Harts-hill, just by a group of dark pines which rose against the blue sky. … Only a few days ago, the Trent had reflected that blue sky, that grove of pines, and the withies that grew on its bank. It was now fringed with a row of tents; the vale was speckled over with the [English army] camp, and its appurtenances. Horses were fording the shallow Trent; women were washing linen low down in the [Fowlea] stream; pennons [i.e.: war pennants] were waving in the breeze; the miller at Hartshill was weighing out his corn to the ravenous tyrants of the [English army] commissariat; beasts were penned in folds, in the grassy fields. The inconveniences of war were manifest … ”

The windmill was later the site of Holy Trinity church at Hartshill.

Thompson followed this two years later with a three-volume Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745, outlining from first-hand accounts the local manoeuvring of the armies…

The Duke therefore assumed the command of an army ten thousand strong [to prevent the Jacobites reaching Lichfield, and thus the road to London.] The Duke of Cumberland was by no means so ignorant of the force which he was now destined to attack [as he] had become acquainted with the peculiar mode of fighting practised by the Highlanders …

At Macclesfield, Prince Charles gained the intelligence that the Duke of Cumberland … was quartered at Lichfield, Coventry, Stafford, and Newcastle-under-Line.

The Prince then resolved to go direct to Derby; and it was to conceal his design, and to induce the Duke to collect his whole army at Lichfield, that [his man] Lord George Murray marched with a division of the army to Congleton, which was the road to Lichfield. Congleton, being on the borders of Staffordshire, was sufficiently near Newcastle-under-Line for Lord George to send General Ker to that place to gain intelligence of the enemy. General Ker advanced to a village about three miles from Newcastle [which would suggest Burslem?], and very nearly surprised a body of dragoons, who had only time to make off. … [Cumberland then decided to try to force a battle, meeting the invading Jacobites just outside Stone rather than Lichfield, but the battle there never materialised].

Upon the third of December, Lord George Murray with his division of the [Jacobite] army marched by Leek to Ashbourn; and the Prince, with the rest of the [Jacobite] forces, came from Macclesfield to Leek, where, considering the distance of the two columns of his army, and the neighbourhood of the enemy, he naturally considered his situation as somewhat precarious. It was possible for the enemy, by a night-march, to get betwixt the two columns; and, contemplating this danger, the Prince set out at midnight to Ashbourn, where it was conceived that the forces should proceed in one body towards Derby. “Thus,” remarks a modern historian, “two armies in succession had been eluded by the Highlanders; that of Wade at Newcastle, in consequence of the weather or the old Marshal’s inactivity, and that of Cumberland” … The young Prince [and] this gallant but trifling force was enabled to return to Scotland … scarcely ever was there a handful of valiant men placed in a situation of more imminent peril.