Longton ('long village') was a market town in the
parish of Stoke in the county of Staffordshire. The town still has a market housed in an attractively renovated market hall. Longton is an ancient village with hundreds of years of history. It was a long, straggling township (hence its name) for centuries until its population doubled in the space of a decade, the 1960s. Coal miners in the
Hanley and Longton area ignited the
1842 general strike and associated
Pottery Riots. The summer of 1842 was a time of riot across the north and midlands of England, including north Staffordshire. The riot impacts employees strike in pottery factories, which were dependent on coal to fire their wares, and many pottery workers had their hours of work reduced, leading to great hardship. On 14 and 15 August 1842 the prominent radical writer and poet,
Thomas Cooper, spoke at a number of open-air meetings in Stoke-on-Trent in support of the local colliers entry. Following his speech on 15 August, a number of men marched through Hanley, Shelton, Stoke,
Penkhull, Fenton and Longton destroying property and encouraging others to join them. The riots continued through the night and the following morning a large crowd assembled in
Burslem. Longton was historically in the
ancient parish of Stoke upon Trent, in March 1865, Longton and Lane End were incorporated as the Borough of Longton, on 31 December 1894 Longton became a
civil parish. On 1 April 1910, the town was
federated into the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent. On 1 April 1922 the parish was abolished and merged with Stoke on Trent. At the 1921 census (the last before the abolition of the parish), Longton had a population of 37,812. Longton and Lane-End are two townships, or liberties, forming one flourishing market town now commonly called Longton, and situated at the southern extremity of
the Potteries, five miles South East of
Newcastle .
Arnold Bennett referred to Longton as
Longshaw, one of the "five towns" featured in his novels set in the
Staffordshire Potteries. A
shopping precinct, the Bennett Precinct, opened in 1962. It is now named Longton Exchange. Pottery ==Industry==