Art UK now has images of the Stoke-on-Trent paintings by Maurice Wade. Specifically, Longport and Middleport on the edge of Burslem, plus widely-seen pictures from Etruria and some obviously commissioned for the new Wedgwood factory at Barlaston. It’s similar to the more colourful work of his fellow Potteries painter Jack Clarkson. Here are Wade’s Longport and Middleport pictures, with my explication of exactly where they are and what they show…

On the Trent and Mersey Canal towpath at the edge of Middleport, looking north. On the right are the garages sited at the foot of Middleport Park alongside the canal. Ahead is the point at which the footpath from Wolstanton to Burslem crosses the canal on a bridge and enters into Middleport from the west, passing from the left to the right of the picture.

This is the other end of the Wolstanton to Burslem footpath-way (seen crossing the first picture in this post, above), but here we see the the point at which the footpath enters/exits Middleport on the east side. The viewer of the picture is placed in the position of a visitor from Burslem who has walked ‘down the back’ by the quiet Navigation Lane, has gingerly crossed the often-flooded patch of the lane at the corner by Rogerson’s Meadow, and is about to enter into Middleport (probably with trepidation, if not a local) by ascending by the sloped path up to Dimsdale St. Usually known as ‘the Dimsdale St. bridge’, it crosses a disused dry canal spur. Here’s a 1960s photo from the bed of the dry canal, looking south under the bridge…

On the Trent and Mersey Canal towpath at the edge of Middleport, headed north toward Longport. The tall buildings are part of Burgess and Leigh, aka Burleigh, aka Middleport Pottery. Behind the hedge on the left, allotments slope down to the Fowlea Brook.

Seems to be the Trent and Mersey Canal towpath at Longport, looking north toward the Bradwell Wood (would be visible behind the line of the bridge), with what is now the boat-building yard and Steelite on the right. One can just make out the grilled gate-fence that gave canal-access to the beer-garden of the pub which was sited just before the bridge and to the left of the towpath.

A typical Middleport/Longport scene, with a slightly sloping road letting onto a back-alley. He’s got the telegraph pole exactly right.

What’s missing here is the people, for which you need to go instead to the paintings of Arthur Berry. Middleport was one of the strongest communities in the city, until its deliberate destruction as a community — first by twenty years of official neglect and then by the Council bulldozers levelling the most important parts of it.