Churches and Chapels of Stoke-on-Trent

St. Peter Ad Vincula - Stoke

Stoke Town Centre Heritage Trail

St. Peter ad Vincula Church

The name "Stoke" comes from an Old English word meaning "a place", signifying a holy place. A Saxon cross survives in the churchyard, suggesting that this was an ancient sacred site. The first wooden Church was replaced in the year 805. Early 19th Century illustrations of Stoke Old Church show a stone-built structure which mostly dates from the 13th Century, with the addition of a 14th Century tower. Gargpyles from this church were later incorporated in a terrace of houses in the adjacent Brook Street. 

By the 1820's Stoke Church was no longer large enough to accommodate its growing congregation. In 1826 the foundations were laid for the present Church, to be finally consecrated in 1830. The graves of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) and Josiah Spode I (1733-1797) can both be found in the churchyard. 

St. Peter's - about 1893

from an 1893 journal on The Potteries:

"Parish establishment of St. Peter:  

First among the public buildings, which will attract the attention of the visitor are the churches, at the head of which stands the parish establishment of St. Peter. The old parish church of Stoke was situated in the immediate vicinity of Rykenield Street; and the present church, which was rebuilt in 1826-29, stands on glebe land, formerly attached to the old churchyard. It is a very handsome structure in stone, in the Early English style, built from designs by Messrs. Trubshaw and Johnson, of Haywood. It consists of chancel with vestries, rectangular nave, with quasi aisles, and an embattled western tower of four stages, with crocheted pinnacles, and containing a fine peal of eight bells. There are porches on either side of the tower and the interior is surrounded on three sides by galleries. The east window and four others in the chancel are beautifully stained.

The interior of the church is interesting from its many monuments, many of which were removed from the old church, erected to the memory of notable people connected with district. Chief among these is the monument to the memory of Josiah Wedgwood, F.R.S., F.S.A., with a bust by his friend, and former employee, Flaxman. 

Others commemorate the Very Rev. John C. Woodhouse, D.D., Dean of Lichfield, seventeen years rector of Stoke, and a great benefactor to the town and the church, d. 1833; John Tomlinson, patron of the living, d. 1838; Josiah Spode, Esq., d. 1827, and his son Josiah, d. 1839, with emblematic sculpture by William Behnes; John Poulson, twenty-two years sacrit, d. 1691, and Joan his wife, d. 1688, and to the family of Fenton, 1782-92, and many others.

In the churchyard are two stones which bear ample testimony to the salubrity of the neighbourhood. They are to the memory of Sibil Clarke, d. 1684, aged 112 years, and Henry Clark, also 112 years old. The registers of the church date back to 1630. Stoke enjoy the honour of having given its first suffragan-bishop to Shrewsbury, the right Rev. Sir Lovelace Tomlinson Stamer, Bart., D.D., of Trinity College, Cambridge, having been rector of Stoke since 1858. There are also in the neighbourhood other handsome churches, which have been made heads of ecclesiastical parishes by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners."