"From its boundary with the City General Hospital the geography of Trent Vale is shaped like a triangle with Springfields and Penkhull in the north falling to the Trent Valley through Boothen and Oakhill. It’s a mishmash of old hamlets with a lot of tree-lined streets, some edged with Sutton Trust Houses."

• The area east of the church, including Harpfield Road and the streets around The Crescent, and most of the streets between London Road and Rookery Lane were built up by 1922, and by 1939 both these areas had been extended and new estates laid out between the Newcastle road and the Lyme Brook. 

• The years since 1945 have brought further development in the southern part of the area.

• By 1791 there was a tollgate, known as Knappers Gate, at Spittles where a road from Penkhull, the present Newcastle Lane, joined the main road. This still stood in 1878. 

• A hilly side road led from the highway along the present Rookery Lane just south of the Black Lion Inn at Trent Vale, up Brisley Hill (now Trent Valley Road) to Penkhull and thence down Honeywall to join the road from Derby to Newcastle at Cliff Bank.

Trent Vale - A History of the County of Stafford Vol 8 

• The modern Trent Vale developed by extending along the Newcastle road from Hanford Bridge, developed as a residential district in the early 19th century. 

• By the 1830's there were several 'villa residences . . . snug, rural boxes', as well as brick and tile yards on the Newcastle-under-Lyme Canal, and in 1843–4 St. John's Church was built. 

• Although there are still some 19th-century cottages along the Newcastle road and in the Flash Lane area, Trent Vale consists mainly of extensive 20th-century housing, with a strip of meadow land along the Lyme Brook. 

The invasion of Britain under Claudius in 43 A.D. is dated fairly accurately, but the interesting fact is the site at Trent Vale can be positively dated just a few years later. Trent Vale must have been an important staging post where soldiers garrisoned.  It is more than likely that this site was a military depot.

The Fort and Pottery Kiln at Trent Vale

During the period 1929-1935, a number of pits containing Roman material were uncovered during marl-digging. The finds included coarse and samian pottery of mid-late first century; coins of Augustus, Claudius, Nero and others; parts of a bronze bowl and a beam balance; and several fibulae.

Excavations conducted between 1955-7 revealed traces of a timber building, and a well-preserved updraught pottery kiln, still loaded with 8 rough cast globular cooking pots and lids. Quantities of mid-late first century pottery were found.
In 1958 more evidence of timber buildings was found, together with first century samian and military metalwork. In 1970 a pair of ditches each about 3½ feet (1m) deep, with a typical Roman military V-profile were discovered during levelling operations for a factory unit 1¼ miles (2km) SSW of the City centre. These ditches are thought to represent the south-eastern defences of a Roman fort on the east bank of the River Trent. This camp was presumably the first in the area.

Roman Britain
roman-britain.orgt

• A steam tramway was started between Stoke and Longton in 1881 and extended to Hanley and Burslem in 1882. A branch-line was extended to Trent Vale in 1899–1905.

• The Newcastle-under-Lyme canal was opened in about 1800 to provide for Newcastle and the works near it a link with the Trent & Mersey canal and to 'assist the agriculture of the neighbourhood of the said canal by a supply of lime at less expense'. 

• The canal was never a profitable venture, and under an Act of 1921 the stretch from Newcastle to Trent Vale was filled in. The remainder also had been filled in as far as a point just north of Church Street by 1938, when a further Act allowed the stopping up of the canal as far as Aqueduct Street by Stoke Town Hall.

A square brick building with stone dressings and a central pediment, the symmetrical two-storied front is of five bays, the windows having stone lintels with raised keystones. The central first-floor window is emphasized by a stone architrave, the doorway below it being flanked by Corinthian pilasters and surmounted by a semicircular fanlight and an enriched frieze.

The church of St. John the Evangelist on Newcastle Road, Trent Vale, was built to the design of George Gilbert Scott between 1843–4 at a cost of £1,260, of which £250 was given by the Kirkham family,  £255 was given by the Diocesan Church Extension Society and the rest raised by subscription. 

It was made a parish church in 1844 shortly after its consecration.

It was described in White's Directory of Staffordshire, 1851, as "a neat plain structure, which was erected by subscription in 1843, at the cost of £1260 and has about 400 sittings, two thirds of which are free." 

During the First World War house building came to a standstill in England, with the result that there was a serious housing shortage by 1918 - especially in Stoke-on-Trent which had a serious overcrowding proble.

The Housing Act in 1919 offered a generous subsidy for the building of council houses and Stoke-on-Trent set up a Housing Committee to tackle the twin problems of slum clearance and rehousing. The committee agreed to purchase 30 acres on the Stoke Lodge Estate for £4,400. 

The principal estate road, "Harpfield Road", ran from the junction of Flash Lane and Newcastle Road to a central circular feature called "The Crescent" where it met the other main estate road, "Keelings Drive", named after the original landowners. 

Andrew Dobraszczyc notes

After the Stoke Lodge estate was completed by the council the rest of the housing development was continued by The Sutton Model Dwellings Trust who built estates for the poor across England including Trent Vale in Stoke-on-Trent.

• William Richard Sutton (1833-1900) was the founder of the UK's first door-to-door long distance parcel service and founder of the William Sutton housing trust.

• His will bequeathed almost all of his considerable wealth into a charitable trust to provide ‘model dwellings and houses for occupation by the poor of London and other towns and populous places in England’.

Sutton outing, Trent Vale estate, Stoke-on-Trent

The Sutton Trust engendered a real sense of community in its estates. Each estate had a Sutton Fund, which residents would pay into. The fund was often used for trips to bingo evenings, evening dances, tennis and cricket tournaments, and often annual trips to the seaside for children.