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The American, Cobridge


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Historian Fred Hughes writes....   

I wonder what mischievous irony was afoot when someone decided to convert an old pub into an alcohol-prohibited meeting place? It’s about as capricious as turning a church into a tavern or a prison into a leisure centre. But as more pubs become obsolete we are just as likely to find ourselves sipping a cappuccino where we once supped beer. Take, for instance, the topsy-turvy world of the American Hotel in Waterloo Road Burslem.

The American in Waterloo Road, Cobridge
The American in Waterloo Road, Cobridge

 

 
“Alcohol is strictly banned in the American,” declares Emma Robertson, communications manager for the community trust Brighter Futures. “This policy is enduring. And even though the name harks back to its previous pub life, its function comes from the temperate New York Clubhouse, a social resource offering mutual support to communities where lives have been affected by mental illness. Brighter Futures chose the American Hotel for its size to host and inspire similar social contact. This has enabled an enlargement of shared programmes and has widened the scope of its membership.”

The role of Brighter Futures is to assist people in recovering their self-esteem within a cohesive community. A programme of supported self-help strategies addresses social exclusion and homelessness as well as mental health and substance misuse. For club members it encourages a new start influenced by American social structures but set inside an old English pub. Now, how divergent is that?  

“The building is fitted with American decor and American themes. Members from all over North Staffordshire are welcome to use its facilities,” says clubhouse network manager Susan Preston. “Essentially we are a day-service provider of life skills. The American is an informal walk-in clubhouse that runs an arts group, a music society and provides online IT instruction. It is where people can come together and take part in shared activities; not unlike a pub I suppose.”

The American Clubhouse
The American Clubhouse


Emma tells me that the name of the pub may not originate, as often thought, through its proximity to the former neighbouring Washington Pottery but from trade union meetings held here to promote an emigration society.

“I was told that the first pottery emigrants to America were able to buy land in Wisconsin if they won a lottery that was held in the American back in the early 1800’s,” she says.

 “Not far off being true,” agrees historian Steve Birks. “The Potters’ Emigration Society was founded in 1844 following a period of industrial unrest inflamed by the activities of the Chartists. An early union leader was Welshman William Evans who came to the Potteries for work and became a principal agitator for worker’s rights. He was the first editor of a union newspaper that evolved into the celebrated Potteries Examiner. Emigration was pushed by Evans to encourage the purchase of land in America where a new colony of potters was to be settled. The society acquired a bulk of stock and each member was offered one share for £1. The plan was to raise enough money through a savings club to buy 12,000 acres of farmland in Wisconsin. Once the land had been bought each shareholder was entered into a draw with the successful ticketholders each winning 20 acres of land. The lottery Emma is referring to took place at Hanley Meat Market but some draws may have taken place at the American Hotel. It was a pioneering step which ultimately failed a few years on. Nevertheless the town of Pottersville was founded in Wisconsin; and I think there are still some ancestral connections between Stoke-on-Trent and Wisconsin from those times.”
 


Before Waterloo Road opened around 1815 the main road out of Burslem was through the meandering backs of Commercial Street. There’s good evidence to show that an inn formerly stood on the site of the American. But then the inn faced the opposite direction towards an ancient lane between Burslem and Hanley.

“Our backs clearly have the markings of it once being the front of a public house,” says Susan. “Of course the old front is now our backyard, used as a terrace for outdoor activity.”
 

In 1833 the famous potter Enoch Wood hosted a dinner at the new swanky American Hotel recently built on the new road. As the leading Burslem citizen of his times, Wood paid tribute to the growth of the town remarking on the ‘splendid new inn’ where sixty years earlier he had been accustomed to travelling a lonely route to Hanley across boggy fields.

“The Staffordshire Advertiser announced the lease of the American a few years later,” says Steve. “It was described then as a lavish and superior hotel with ample stabling, ‘situated on the great thoroughfare leading from Burslem to Hanley’. In addition to extensive accommodation it even boasted a large billiards room.”

From the 1970’s to its closure as a pub in 2000, the American became a centre of West Indian culture as successive Jamaican licensees turned it into a legendary blues and reggae venue. These days it is much more than an old pub with a new use. It is a new kind of New World reconciling itself with old Industrial Britain.


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next: The Royal Oak, Penkhull
previous: The Angel, Hanley

11 Apr 2009