Meakin Estate, Waterloo Road, Cobridge
In 1878 Henry Meakin of The Grove Burslem, engaged George B Ford to prepare plans for the layout of his estate, on the east side of Waterloo Road for housing. Ford’s layout plan showed the creation of four new streets between Waterloo Road and Elder Road - Warburton Place (later Elm Street) which led to the Villa Pottery originally built by the Warburton family; Station Road (later Rushton Road) which led to Cobridge Station on the Loop Railway line; Derby Street (later Kirby Street); and Grove Street.
The land was divided into building plots which were offered for sale by Charles Butters at the Queen’s Hotel, Cobridge, on 4 March 1879. The development of the estate was controlled by the building conditions attached to the sale of each plot. Amongst other things they specified the value of the buildings to be constructed along Waterloo Road and restricted their use to private dwelling houses. Plans for houses were to be approved by George Ford who was actively involved in various ways in the estate during the 1880s.
One such purchaser was Enoch Bennett, the father of the novelist Arnold Bennett, who bought a building site on Henry Meakin’s estate for £200 in 1879. Here he built a house costing £900, at No. 205 Waterloo Road (Listed Grade II). This is a large three-storey brick house with an elevation much embellished with terra cotta. It has two bay windows at the front and six bedrooms. There is no information about the architect but it may well be that it was designed by George Ford. The Bennett family were recorded occupying the new house in the 1881 census and Arnold bennett lived here until 1888 when he moved to London.
George B Ford may have been the model for Osmond Orgreave, the architect, who featured in Arnold Bennett’s book, Clayhanger. In his book Bennett provided a detailed and generally accurate description of the process of estate development in “Bleakridge” (Cobridge):
“A house stood on a hill. And that hill was Bleakridge, the summit of the little billow of land between Bursley and Hanbridge. Trafalgar Road passed over the crest of the billow. Bleakridge was certainly not more than a hundred feet higher than Bursley; yet people were now talking a lot about the advantages of living ‘up’ at Bleakridge, ‘above’ the smoke, and ‘out’ of the town, though it was not more than five minutes from the Duck Bank. To hear them talking, one might have fancied that Bleakridge was away in the mountains somewhere. The new steam-cars would pull you up there in three minutes or so, every quarter of an hour. It was really the new steam-cars that were to be the making of Bleakridge as a residential suburb. It had also been predicted that even Hanbridge men would come to live at Bleakridge now.
Land was changing owners at Bleakridge, and rising in price. Complete streets of lobbied cottages grew at angles from the main road with the rapidity of that plant which pushes out strangling branches more quickly than a man can run. And these lobbied cottages were at once occupied. Cottage-property in the centre of the town depreciated. The land fronting the main road was destined not for cottages, but for residences, semi-detached or detached.
Osmond Orgreave had a good deal of this land under his control. He did not own it, he hawked it. Like all provincial, and most London, architects, he was a land-broker in addition to being an architect. Before obtaining a commission to build a house, he frequently had to create the commission himself by selling a convenient plot, and then persuading the purchaser that if he wished to retain the respect of the community he must put on the plot a house worth of the plot.” - Arnold Bennett - Clayhanger
