New on Archive.org, to borrow…

Warriors, warlords and saints: the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

Historic Staffordshire (1896, 1975 reprint).

Diary of a hunter (1981, ferreting memoirs in Staffordshire).

Psychiatry in North Staffordshire 1808-1986.

The North Staffordshire Railway in LMS days.

People of the Potteries (At last, I’ve been able to see it. It will be noted in my forthcoming update of my bibliography of North Staffordshire folklore, re: the ‘white rabbit’ ghost of Etruria Grove, and the chapter “Bemersley” with its details of a Mow Cop innkeeper and early ‘magic methodist’ named Zacchariah Baddeley).

From the latter book, on the Fowlea Brook at Etruria…

1) From “A Etruria ghost”

“Etruria is much changed from what it was forty years ago [i.e. 1820s-30s]. [Apart from the curving line of houses that formed Etruria, as seen on the Henry Lark Pratt painting…] The whole country was open, and some parts may be described as wild. The sloping hills of the ‘wood’ [later known as ‘Etruria Woods’ by Warrillow?] with its low brushwood and gorse, hemmed the village on one side, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by a marshy meadow which lay between it and the village. The rushes that grew here were a favourite resort for curious birds in winter, and now and then even sea birds would find their way to the place. [The latter still happens today]. One thing helped to make it a safe shelter for such visitors — the brook that runs through the valley would sometimes, after heavy rain, be swollen to a lakelet, filling the whole meadows, and even finding its way to the doors of the cottages.”

From “Alfred Bourne”

“… Foulhay brook. How different was that brook then than now. In the days of which I write its waters were as clear as spring waters, and its embankments studded with willow trees.”

Presumably this then gives the name. On the 1775 Yates map the Fowlea at Etruria is marked as “Fowl Hay”. In other words, ‘the wildfowl(-rich) hay-meadows’.