Besides these, Pirehill has six market towns: Burslem, Hanley, Lane-End, Stone, Eccleshall, and Abbots Bromley.

It seems likely that such moot and mustering sites were chosen as being remote and bare, from which approaching forces would be easily spotted.

[4] Presumably this was to unify Staffordshire's forces with those of the neighbouring hundreds, and thus to meet invaders in force, invaders who might either: i) be travelling as war-bands up the River Trent, navigable to Stone; or ii) renegades invading from Wales and seeking the vital upper Trent crossing at Stone; or iii) pressing down in larger numbers from Northumbria, in which case there would be an urgent local need to fall back south to Stone.

Old English pirige, pyrige 'pear-tree' may be possible phonologically, but seems less likely for other reasons [5] A later authority, David Horovitz, suggests in his PhD thesis A survey and analysis of the place-names of Staffordshire (2003) that it "not inconceivable" that name might also have come from the Latin pyra, meaning bonfire, and "that the name could record the early use of the hill as a beacon".

From the beginning, Staffordshire was divided into the hundreds of Pirehill, Totmonslow, Offlow, Cuttleston and Seisdon.

The large parishes of Adbaston, Eccleshall and Seighford, had townships in both divisions, an inconvenience which divided many of their parochial affairs between the two chief constables.

[7] By that time there had been centuries of improvements to the land, and the hundred was deemed remarkable for the fertility of its soil, for the beauty and variety of its scenery and the number and magnificence of its stately halls (the seats of the nobility and gentry), as also for the extent and importance of its growing manufactures such as the distinctive pottery making district - the long chain of towns and villages called the Potteries, a renowned place of china and pottery manufacturing.

The number of the inhabitants nearly doubled during 1801–1831, as a vast population growth occurred in the Potteries and at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stone and Stafford.