Description:You do tend to think that Longton goes back to early Victorian times and the Victorian potters, but it is much older than that. Having a chance to look at some of the Sutherland Papers I have found out a lot more about Longton during earlier years. one document dated 1800 relates to a meeting between potters held at the White Lion in Lane End. It seems that most of the meeting was about coal supplies as all round the longton area coal was being mined. It is hard to visualize that there was not much more than fields, farming, the small coal workings and the getting of clay for the potteries.
Some of these workings had been set up in about 1745. In this period Lane End was not much more than a small village with a Church.
As to the White Lion it may have been on the site of a later public house which still has a lions head over the door but is no longer a pub. I thought as I was reading through the Sutherland Papers from this period, for the potters to get to this meeting it could only be on horse back, not by carriage or coach. In one of the letters I read it refers to going to Brighton and the mail going to Stone on the coach at what must have been The Crown which is still there today.
The Foley is mentioned in a lot of letters addressed to the Foley Coal office to Mr. Burgess from Mr. Loch, the Chief Agent for the Sutherlands. They seemed to keep a close interest in the people and the things going on all round the area concerning mining, including the state of the roads. At this early time the toll road was still in the area and there were a lot of complaints on the state of the upkeep of the road concerning damage caused by carts carrying coal, and a lot of complaints appear in the Sutherland Papers relating to a Mr. Smith who mined in the area. Mr. Smith did not seem to take much notice when asked to repair the damage as reports suggest he had a very poor job done.
The image above shows the Resolution of a Meeting of Earthernware Manufacturers held at the White Lion, Lane End (1800)