At the bottom of Fowlea Bank the lane slopes into Brick Kiln Lane passing through the well-known company Potclays Limited where I meet its chairman and managing director Jonathan Noake who gives me a history of his family business.

Potclays

“The company was started by my grandfather William who had been works manager for Twyfords before he retired. His interest was geology and he had ideas about producing inexpensive ball clay without having to go to Cornwall. He went to the South Staffs coalfield and made hundreds of enquiries with local miners about the quality of clay and discovered it was white and plastic enough to suit his ideas. The landlord of a pub called the Swan took him down his cellar and showed him a full seam of high-grade coal under-laid with the clay he wanted. So he bought the local mine and sold the coal and clay to sanitary-ware manufacturers in Stoke on Trent trading under the name The Potter’s Clay and Coal Company at the Swan Works, named after the pub.”

William died in 1939 and his son Warbreck Noake took over the businesses. During the war the company in Brownhills was requisitioned and used as a food storage depot with the manufacturing side producing nothing but coal. But in 1944 Warbreck and his wife Helen formed Potclays as a marketing company. Jonathan continues.

 “After the war a businessman named Bernard Leach developed a successful Japanese and stoneware product using clay on-site in Devon and Cornwall. This opened the gates for communes of hippies who set-up studios getting clay virtually from their back gardens. It was a supply market we eventually cornered with our own clay during the 1960’s and 70’s. From this point Potclays became the major merchant moving into kiln-ware and studio tools. I came into the business in 1969 from which time we stopped supplying to manufacturers altogether but doubled our turn-over each year to become biggest single clay supplier to studio and education outlets and in ceramic hobby-craft goods.”

Some of Potclays works

I ask Jonathan about his connection with Etruria Road and Fowlea Bank.

“In the early 1940’s we rented a yard by the canal basin with a wharf that linked directly to our Brownhills Company. For quite a while we shipped our clay from South Staffs to Etruria by canal barge. We even had our own rail sidings at this time as well. When Downings Brick Company moved to Chesterton from Etruria we bought their site.” 

I recall there was once a large house at Potclays’ entrance.

“That would be Basford Lodge,” says Jonathan. “It was a handsome building that I wanted to develop into showplace offices. But a valuer advised me that it had unsolvable structural problems so we took it down.”

Etruria valley, the old Twyford's Works and Potclays - from Fowlea Bank

Halfway on the bank I meet residents Darryl and Jennifer Porter with their neighbours David and Jill Cartlidge.

“Things have changed a lot on the bank over the years and even more so since the D-Road altered the direction and the movement of traffic. There was a time when if you got behind a bus or a lorry it’d take ages to get up the old bank because of its steepness,” says Darryl.

The Porter’s have lived here for 30 years - “It’s much quieter at the back since the road has been moved away,” adds Jennifer. “Mind you the traffic noise at the front is continuous, but you get used to it.” 

David and Jill on the other hand have lived on the bank for 40 years. 

“We love it for its convenience,” says David. “We use the back rather than the front so I call it Back-Etruria Road.” 

Jill tells of the old days - “Before our time of course,” she smiles, “there used to be tethering posts at the top for the horses. After it was diverted quite a few businesses settled near the top.”

David recalls a dentist’s surgery-cum-house -“A later owner told me that every time he dug his garden over there was always a spade-full of teeth that came out with the soil.”

Coal, clay, teeth; what ever next can be dug from Basford Bank?