Once upon a time, for a fortnight every summer, Stoke-on-Trent more or less closed down. The potbanks shut, and so did the pits, the railway depots. Michelin and the steelworks all downed tools at roughly the same time. The Six Towns emptied out towards the coast. What could have caused this? Well, they called it the Potters’ Holiday, also known as the Potters’ Fortnight: for generations, it was the fixed point of the Staffordshire year.
Here’s what it was and what happened to it.
A Shifting Celebration
The dates for the Potters’ Holiday shifted over the decades. In the 1960s, the shutdown was at the start of August. Later, it settled into the last week of June and the first week of July, and which of those counts as the real Potters’ Holiday is a subject of genuine debate. But the way they spent it was almost identical: most Potteries households headed for the North Wales coast – think Rhyl, Llandudno, Prestatyn and Colwyn Bay – while others made for, where else, but Blackpool. Local history collections such as Potteries Photographs’ archive of Wakes Week memories show the faintly amusing phenomenon of the entire city leaving for the same stretch of coast in the same fortnight.
The few who stayed behind were not left out. Pat Collins’ travelling fair came to Hanley during the holiday every August, setting up on waste ground between Regent Road and Harding Road and later at the top of Hanley Park.
A week in Rhyl or Blackpool offered a reliable set of pleasures those days, and bingo was among the most dependable of them. The game ran in the holiday camps and the seaside halls, with a surprisingly deep connection between these disparate elements. The business that later would become Buzz Bingo operated games at two dozen Pontins holiday camps alongside its high street clubs. For many Potteries holidaymakers, the bingo game that once meant a trip to the coast was as much a part of the fortnight as the fish supper. Of course, they no longer need to take a train to partake in it: the same game now runs year-round online and in clubs alike.
What Caused The End of the Fortnight?
Predictably, the Potters’ Holiday faded as the industry that created it contracted. As the potbanks closed down for good, a single citywide exodus stopped making sense, and what was once a unique occasion turned to a standard hodge-podge of summer leaves across the workforce. These days, potteries are the destination rather than the starting point: the Historic England tour of Stoke in eight places runs from Middleport Pottery to the old Chatterley Whitfield Colliery.
You can’t quite imagine an entire city’s worth of people pouring into these venues to visit them, but if you’re creative enough, it is a fun thought experiment to imagine the reverse of a long-forgotten holiday in coastal England yore.
