Windstars and Cinder
H.G. Wells and the Inspiration of the Potteries
Known as the father of science fiction, H.G. Wells is as famous today as he was in his heyday of the 1890s. What isn’t so well known however, is the time he spent as a younger man amidst the burgeoning industrial landscape of the Potteries; and how that experience helped inform the imagery of his best-known work, The War of the Worlds, and also change his own worldview forever.
A Great Deal to Answer For
On October 30th, 1938, the CBS Radio Network broadcast news that a Martian invasion of Earth had begun. At least, that was what many believed they were listening to. As panic filled the homes of those who were tuned in, police officers descended on the CBS studios to demand an immediate end to the transmission. The network, initially sceptical of the situation developing across the nation, was then ordered to realise an on-air statement confirming that the horror of the piece was, without doubt, a work of fiction. In the days following, the star of the radio production, actor Orson Welles, would find himself fielding questions about the incident at a press conference where he would feel compelled to offer a personal apology; such was the power, four decades after its initial publication, contained within H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.
The novel, set at the time of its release in the 1890s, through to the early twentieth century, is presented as a non-fictional account of an invasion from Mars by an alien race that has depleted its home planet of natural resources. As they attack the south of England (the locations were changed to US cities for the radio play) a genuine horror is unfurled for the reader, from which virtually every subsequent alien-attack narrative in the Hollywood cannon has drawn its inspiration. Reading it today, over 125 years on from that first edition of 1898, there is still something in its grounded, observant tone, that can genuinely chill.
It is the work of a master writer; and a writer with more than one classic in his locker. Three years prior to its release, Wells had established himself as a major novelist with his breakthrough work, The Time Machine; a book that would popularise the notion of time travel in the public consciousness with much the same gravitas that his later work did with respect to the idea of alien invasion.
Although the image of the pure novelist is very much the picture that time has crafted for us regarding Wells, he was a man of wide-ranging interests. He was an active and provocative socialist, held titles such as President of the Royal College of Science Association, and published non-fiction works on varied subjects. His A Short History of the World would become a central pillar to household learning and recreation throughout the 1920s and 30s and in fact, such a tour-de-force was the book, that Albert Einstein would personally recommend it to his students. Often considered a political idealist, and at times during the rise of Fascism in Europe, viewed as unbearably naive by his contemporaries, Wells could be a seriously divisive figure too. He was, it is widely reported, to have been a serial adulterer.
But this piece is not a love letter to the writer, nor is it an inquisition regarding the character of the man. Rather, it is a portal into the fleeting moment in time for the extraordinary mind of Wells, when, 10 years before the publication of his most famed work, he would spend several months in the city of my birth, Stoke-on-Trent. It was a time in his life from which much of the future imagery of that most well-known novel would be drawn, the contrasting ideas of values apparent in its predecessor The Time Machine would take shape, and a time that would directly inspire a harrowing, Potteries based short story entitled The Cone.
The discovery that the tiny unassuming patch of Stoke-on-Trent, namely the area around the settlement of Etruria - literally where I grew up - could have played such a significant part in his story, has made this piece the subject of personal fascination for me. Now, as I delve from my twenty-first century view obfuscated by ring roads, retail parks, and derelict pubs, I will ask how - and why - he was once so inspired by the place.
The Dark Road North
Born in September 1866 in Bromley, Kent, Herbert George Wells set out from humble origins. His father, Joseph, was a shopkeeper and his mother Sarah, a housekeeper. They had briefly held their own business premises, from which they sold china goods, but it didn’t last, and most of the family's income came from Joseph’s secondary role as a county cricket player. By the time Wells was 10, an injury had put paid to Joseph’s cricketing days, and soon, bereft of funds, his elder brothers were placed in apprenticeships to supplement family income. Wells though, had already cultivated an avid interest in books, and his evidently inquisitive mind had led his parents to make every effort they could to foster an educational route into his teenage years.
As the autumn of 1879 rolled in, he had been given a place at the National School in Wookey, Somerset, in a hybrid role by which he could continue his own education whilst assisting in the teaching of younger children. It would prove a short-lived sojourn, and by the new year, following the dismissal of his mother’s personal contact at the school, Wells was seconded away with his other brothers for a life in trade.
He would spend three years with a draper, and a short time as a chemist's assistant, before a second opportunity arose for an educational role, courtesy of Midhurst Grammar School. His academic talents must have been a considerable beacon to attract such continued attention, and from that point on, he progressed rapidly. Winning a scholarship to the School of Science - which would later form part of Imperial College London - he stayed in education there until 1887, when he took a fixed position as a teacher at Holt Academy in Wrexham, North Wales; and it was there, whilst playing cricket, that he would sustain an injury that would, during his initial recovery, lead to the contracting of a severe respiratory condition. It would be the moment his life changed forever.
Having returned south to his mother, grievously ill and believing himself close to death at just 21 years of age, in March 1888, he received an invitation to stay at the new house of his friend William Burton, who now worked at the Wedgwood laboratory in Etruria. The change of scene, and - somewhat surprisingly given our traditional image of Victorian Stoke - the clean air, was deemed a welcome distraction for the sickly Wells. He likely thought the jaunt north to provide the last great trip of his life, and so, on 7th April, he headed to London to purchase writing materials and then travelled on directly to the station at Stoke, and finally, Etruria.
As Wells made his way up from Etruria station towards Basford, where Burton and his wife had taken up residence in the aspirational neighbourhood of Victoria Street, he enjoyed his first view of a world that would come to imprint itself on his sense of imagination for the rest of his life; for the scenery of Stoke-on-Trent in 1888 was a wildly different landscape than the one we have today. It is perhaps better to cease talk of ‘Stoke-on-Trent’ for now, with the city not actually becoming designated such until 1925. Much better I think, is to talk of ‘The Potteries’, a collection of semi-rural settlements now being fleshed out by the mass industrialisation of the pottery industry and the infrastructure required to service their rapidly expanding populations.
From the elevation of Basford, Hanley (already becoming marked out as an unofficial city centre), Shelton and Etruria would cast themselves to the eye of Wells as he looked out across the Fowlea Valley. And the word valley, with its picturesque connotations, is perfectly apt. Meadows, corn fields, rural cottages, and trackways, scattered alongside the pot banks and factories; and looming over it all, the huge steel working complex of the Granville Works (latterly Shelton Bar). That is the sifting, vital scene that mapped out beneath Basford Bank in the springtime of 1888, as the young man made his way up the hill to his new lodgings with the Burtons.
A Potted History
Now, I may well be over romanticising here, but when I hold this idea in my mind - of the receding rural world clashing with the new, all-conquering fires of industry, transforming the once quaint settlements in its midst forever - I can’t help but think of the ‘scouring of the shire’ in The Lord of the Rings, when Saruman repurposes the lush, green lands for his diabolical industrial ends. I had been aware of wider Potteries history, of the fact Etruria’s housing had started out as homes for the workers of Josiah Wedgwood, but the realities of the world had always seemed impossible to picture. It is in this paradox of greenery and industry that I have found the reason for the suggestion that a trip to the Potteries would help Wells in respect of his health.
At Basford, the new properties were grand houses for the middle class. The air, up above the smoke and fire of the factories below, was indeed clear. But there was likely a second motivation too for Wells in his trip north, that can go easily under appreciated. At the time in question, the mix of ambitious business owners, chemists, and scientists rubbing shoulders alongside the working classes, was a source of real interest for the politically minded. The brutality of the Industrial Revolution had given way to something a little more considered, albeit only just, and those lives that now grew up around the wheels of industry were perhaps for the first time, that little more able to actually live. Change brought possibility, and even if that did not ultimately translate to lasting positive impact, as Wells walked the mile or so up to Basford, the sense of this new world would be all around him. To understand how such a situation had come into existence in the first place, however, we must consider a little of the history of Stoke at large.
There had been a small-scale pottery industry in the area since the early 1600s, thanks to an abundance of clay and coal in the local geology, but in 1720, potter John Astbury from Shelton made a game-changing breakthrough. Mixing ground flint with the local red clay, he found that, for the first time, he could make cream-coloured pottery, which came to be known as ‘creamware’. Over the next 50 years or so, soon-to-be world-famous names began to take root in the area, but of course, none would become more revered or more famous than one of the earliest creators and exponents of pottery from the region; Wedgwood.
Born in 1730, Josiah Wedgwood’s family had long been established in the local industry, but it was his experiments and fortitude that would create ‘Wedgwood’ the brand at the Ivy House Works in Burslem. So successful had Josiah’s business become by his mid-30s that in 1766 he would buy his own landed estate, which he then renamed Etruria after the ancient Italian region synonymous with fine craftsmanship. Soon after, he would open his new Etruria Works complex. As the Potteries became increasingly known for its inherent mix of skill and variety, and buoyed by the lines laid for the London and North Western Railway, the issue of quality pottery in the scattered villages and towns of North Staffordshire became an industrialised - and unfathomably profitable - concern.
By the time Wells arrived, Wedgwood had long since been established as the leading pottery name in the world, and the area of Etruria and its surrounding settlements had grown in direct correlation to this boom. But it was not all grand designs and artistry. Make no mistake, by day the place was a buzz of industry and ideas, but by night, with its burning pits, this was about as dangerous a place as you could find outside of London. Ultimately, it would be these darker facets of his Potteries’ experience that would come to fascinate the mind of Wells more than anything else.
Above: a postcard from the 1840s showing the vista of Basford and Eturia
Below: 18 Victoria Street, still there today, with its dedication to Wells clear to see
A Spectrum of Experience
During his stay, Wells would largely divide his time between writing in his room at Victoria Street and exploring the local area; indulging his interests in the world of industry and the clash of the senses found when that ever-present shadow cast itself over the fading beauty of the rural world that weaved around it. In his own words, he found;
‘…the strange landscape of the Five Towns with its blazing iron foundries, its steaming canals, its clay whitened pot-banks and the marvellous effects of dust and smoke-laden atmosphere, very stimulating.’
It was in the Potteries that we find a curious trail of imagery and ideas that would seep into his most masterful works, including a moment in The War of the Worlds, where the narrator describes the aftermath of one particularly brutal alien attack, and how ‘…that black expanse set with fire…reminded me, more than anything of the Potteries at night’. But aside from these more famous tales, Wells also began work on another work at the same time, originally intended to be an expansive novel based entirely on, and set within, the Potteries enclave. A full realisation of that work was later abandoned, but he did complete The Cone, a short story with a dark theme, that is rooted in the very locale of his tenure.
In the story, Rout, an artist visiting the area, is staying with Horrocks, the manager of a local steelworks, on a mission to study the sights of such a facility for his art. Whilst there, Rout strikes up an affair with Horrock’s wife. The manager of the steelworks begins to suspect, and whilst out walking with Rout in the local landscape, the tale begins to take on a decidedly menacing air. It is on this very journey that we get our mainline into the experience of Wells’ evening explorations;
‘A blue haze, half dust, half mist, touched the long valley with mystery. Beyond were Hanley and Etruria, grey and dark masses, outlined thinly by the rare golden dots of the street lamps. Here and there, a pallid patch and ghostly stunted beehive shapes showed the position of a pot-bank, or a wheel, black and sharp against the hot lower sky. Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half-invisible trains shunted. And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, stood the great cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces.’
Along the way, as they walk by the railway line, Raut is jolted onto the tracks by Horrocks, but it isn’t until they enter the factory itself, and Horrocks shows him the ‘cone’ - a covering over the mouth of a furnace suspended by iron chains - that his murderous intention is made terribly clear. Casting Raut from the walkway above, the artist clings to the chains as the mouth of the furnace is filled, the gases rise, and he is cooked alive. From Wells’ own commentary, we can see how the cinder-scape of the Potteries he inhabited, largely powered by the Granville Works, would colour his imagination on his walks about the area;
‘I prowled alone, curious and interested, through shabby back streets and mean little homes; I followed canals, sometimes of mysteriously heated waters…I saw the women pouring out of the pot banks…the slag heaps, and surveyed across dark intervening spaces, the flaming uproar, the gnome-like activities of the iron foundries.’
This is the macabre, dark edge of the spectrum so contoured in the mind of Wells during his time at Basford and Etruria. An alluring, deadly, otherworld of fire and steel. But that is only one part of the story of his experience. The other, could not be more different. Of all his favourite places in the area, perhaps none would make more of an impression on his personal psyche than that of Etruria Woods. This last catchment of ancient woodland, which would have once formed part of the Royal Forest of Lyme, clung to the valley below Basford, and it was there, one afternoon in the early summer of 1888 that Wells had what seems to have been a genuinely life-changing experience.
At the time, all known commentary of Wells describes him as a man in the midst of genuine and severe illness. We shouldn’t be fooled by the subsequent knowledge we have of his rich vein of writing in the period. The Wells of 1888 isn’t yet the world-famous author. He’s a budding young writer yes, but one consumed with the idea that he might not be long for the world. The injury sustained in Wrexham, and the affliction which followed (no exact diagnosis is known), had puzzled the medical professionals that had treated him. Yet there is a feeling amongst accounts of the time that his obsession with this mystery condition was perhaps as much an inhibitor for him as the condition itself - which may go far in explaining what happened next.
The industry around him was a welcomed distraction. The company at Victoria Street, a much-needed friendly space. And the natural world nestled between the steelworks, pot banks, railway-lines, and mines, it would turn out, something of a saving grace. Increasingly, his meandering walks began to empower his sense of self, and ultimately, the thought of possible recovery. And, when one day out walking in one of his favourite spots in ‘Trury Woods’, he came across a young girl picking flowers, there was something in the experience that profoundly affected him, acting to lift him directly from the doom-ology of recent months and into a new, brighter mood. In his Certain Personal Matters, published in 1898, he reflects how;
‘One day in the springtime, I crawled out alone, carefully wrapped, and with a stick, to look once more - perhaps for the last time - on sky and earth, and the first scattered skirmishes of the coming army of flowers. It was a day of soft wind, when the shadows of the clouds go sweeping over the hills. Quite casually I happened upon a girl clambering over a hedge, and her dress had caught in a bramble, and the chat was quite impromptu and most idyllic. I remember she had three or four wood anemones in her hand. ‘Wind Stars’ she called them, and I thought it a pretty name. And we talked of this and that, with a light in our eyes, as young folks will. I quite forgot I was ‘Doomed Man’. I surprised myself walking home with a confident stride that jarred with the sudden recollection of my funereal circumstances.’
Wood anemones, with their sweet white colour and their 7-pointed star shape, are traditionally one of the first wildflowers to blossom in spring. This however, was likely mid-June and something that puzzled me until I realised that in the mid-1880s, annual spring arrival had been significantly delayed in Europe thanks to the fallout from the volcanic eruption at Krakatoa in 1883. Incidentally, Wind-Star seems to be a long-lived local term for the woodland wildflower, potentially being connected to a piece of lost folklore regarding how the flower only blooms in stormy weather.
From his experience with the girl in the woods, Wells grew stronger, and recounted in his autobiography how soon after he wandered out into a ‘little patch of surviving woodland amidst the industrialised country called Trury Woods…and lay down among the wild hyacinths’ as he pondered a return south.
He returned to London, fully recovered, just two days later.
A View Across the Valley
The miraculous recovery, inspired by the beauty of Etruria Woods, and the raging world of industry around it that so captivated Wells, are all set firmly within localities that I have known my whole life, and so naturally, I wondered; how much of the world from Wells’ time was still there to be experienced today?
18 Victoria Street, where Wells lodged with the Burtons, still exists, and actually displays a small plaque commemorating his time in residence. The walk down to Etruria too, is still somewhat intact; the sweeping cut thorough of the A500 none-withstanding. The original route between Basford and Etruria is Fowlea Bank, now known as Basford Bank Close, running for a stretch at the rear of the houses lining the main street, down to Bank Terrace. From here, as in Wells' day, Etruria Hall, the former home of Josiah Wedgwood, can be seen standing proud on the other side of the valley.
Perhaps it is this very viewpoint, from beside the remaining houses of Bank Terrace, across the junction of the A500 and sweeping down the other side, from which we can best picture the world as it was back in 1888; that land of cottages, industry, and corn fields. And into that hollow below, the remains of Etruria Woods, its last remnants today, nestled away, bordering the roadside just off the A500 roundabout.
The valley may be much changed since the time when Wells stood in that very spot, yet the sense of the world he inhabited is still somehow there. Following his return to London, Wells would never visit again, but for the rest of his life, the experiences of his stay would never be far from his mind. Here in the Potteries he had, quite unexpectedly, found a world all of his own, and one that he would carry forward with him; his memories flashing between the raw beauty of the woodlands and the fiery cinder heaps of late nineteenth century Etruria. Without his time in Stoke, it is no exaggeration to say, science fiction literature, and the ideas it has gifted our modern world, would have been less vivid, less profound, and perhaps, less viscerally horrifying.
For as Wells relaid in his autobiography, it was, ‘at Etruria, that my real writing began'.
Eli Lewis-Lycett 2025