The Roman road called Rykeneld Street passed directly through the Cliffe Vale area, although the exact route it ran along is unknown.

The more elevated core of the hunting park became a landed estate and farm, and it is marked on the 1st edition six-inch (152 mm) Ordnance Survey map (circa 1860) as "Cliff Ville".

The nearby Armitage Shanks sanitaryware pottery, established at the Excelsior Works in Cliffe Vale from 1912, closed in 2007 and moved to a new factory at Middlewich.

New housing developments mean that Cliffe Vale will once again have a significant residential population by 2008, of around 400 people living in an 'urban village' of upmarket apartments.

Industry today consists of: Imerys, located on the Cliffe Vale rail terminal (aka Newcastle Junction), which handles three freight trains per week of Cornish china clay and thus supplies most Stoke-on-Trent potteries with clay; a large timber yard and timber wholesaler; the making of hand-made oak furniture; a dairy produce processing unit; a small estate of light industrial units in restored Victorian train sheds of the former North Staffordshire Railway.

At the eastern edge of Cliffe Vale is the 29-acre Hanley Cemetery (1860 to present-day), originally the south part of the grounds of Chatterley Hall.