Description:The Sutherland Papers contain a huge number of documents relating to mining in North Staffordshire throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Amongst these documents is a volume of mining memoranda dating from 1868-1871 which includes notes on the Duke of Sutherland’s mines in the Parish of Caverswall.
The volume of memoranda features extracts from a lease made in June 1868 between George Granville William Sutherland-Leveson-Gower (1828-1892), the third Duke of Sutherland, and Arthur Sparrow for ‘Mines and Premises situate at Caverswall and Stoke upon Trent Staffordshire’. The details provided in the lease and the accompanying plans and schedules tell us about the development of Caverswall in the later nineteenth century.
The lease granted to Sparrow ‘Land, Dwelling Houses and Tenements situate at Caverswall’ and the mines lying under these lands. Sparrow was also granted ‘all such mines veins and beds of strata lying under the Building and Lands in the Parish of Caverswall’. This gave Arthur Sparrow mineral rights to lands owned by the North Staffordshire Railway Company, allowing him to ‘Dig, Sink and Win Coal and Slack’ on these lands. Sparrow was also granted ‘with the power to erect Steam and other Engines for the purpose of working the said mines’ and allowed to ‘make and Erect Furnaces and all necessary buildings for carrying on the said works and to make coke’ in the Parish of Caverswall.
An accompanying plan shows the land and property in Caverswall and Stoke upon Trent which was granted to Sparrow in the 1868 lease. A number of schedules describe each numbered lot on the plan, telling us about the landscape of Caverswall in the late 1860s. The land included fields and a number of cottages and gardens which can be seen in the areas outlined in blue and pink on the plan.
Click on the images on the left to see the plan of Sparrow’s lands in Caverswall and Stoke upon Trent.