The most frequently suggested interpretations derive from a crossing point on the Roman road that ran from present-day Derby to Chesterton or the early presence of a church, said to have been founded in 670 AD.

[9] An early proposal for a federation took place in 1888 when an amendment was raised to the Local Government Bill which would have made the six towns into districts within a county of "Staffordshire Potteries".

When the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent initially applied for city status in 1925, citing its importance as the centre of the pottery industry, it was refused by the Home Office as it had fewer than 300,000 inhabitants.

Methodical and highly detailed research and experimentation, carried out over many years, nurtured the development of artistic talent throughout the local community and raised the profile of Staffordshire Potteries.

Central to the RAF's success was the Supermarine Spitfire designed by Reginald Mitchell who, whilst born at 115 Congleton Road in the nearby village of Butt Lane, had his apprenticeship at Kerr, Stuart and Company's railway works.

It lies on the upper valley of the River Trent at the south-west foothills of the Pennines,[31] near the uplands of the Peak District to the north-east and the lowlands of the Midlands and Cheshire Plain to the south and west.

As well as Newcastle-under-Lyme, which adjoins it to the west, other nearby towns include Crewe, Nantwich, Alsager, Congleton, Biddulph, Kidsgrove, Stafford, Uttoxeter, Eccleshall, Cheadle, Stone and Leek.

[36] Stoke is at the centre of the Stoke-on-Trent Green Belt, which is an environment and planning policy that regulates the rural space in Staffordshire surrounding the city and Newcastle-under-Lyme, and extending into Cheshire.

These include the Trentham and Goldenhill golf courses, Hem Heath Wood Nature Reserve, Meir Heath, Barlaston Common, Caverswall Cricket Club, Park Hall Nature Reserve, Chatterley Whitfield Country Park and Enterprise Centre, the villages of Baddeley Edge and Ravenscliffe, Bucknall Reservoir, Caldon Canal, the River Blythe, and the Head of Trent, Wedgwood Museum and estate, Strongford Treatment Works and Trent Vale Pumping Station.

Amongst the more notable are Bet365,[55] founded by local businessman and Stoke City chairman Peter Coates,[56] and formerly Phones4U, a large retailer of mobile phones started by John Caudwell,[citation needed] until it ceased trading in September 2014.

Vodafone has a large call centre on Festival Park and the UK subsidiary of the lubricant manufacturer Fuchs Petrolub has its head office at its factory in Hanley.

[citation needed] In 2016, Stoke-on-Trent was ranked the second-best city to start a business by Quality Formations, based on several factors including commercial property, energy, virtual offices, public transport and financial access.

[84] He promoted Sunday schools as a method of improving children's education, advocated the equal treatment of women and men, and was involved in the temperance movement.

Former Stoke City and England footballer Stanley Matthews and former darts world champion Phil Taylor were the first names to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

[131] They were followed by former Port Vale footballer Roy Sproson and England's World Cup winning goalkeeper Gordon Banks (who spent five years with Stoke City).

[citation needed] World champion squash player, Great Britain and England international Angela Smith, was born in the city and was largely responsible for the ladies' game going open.

[citation needed] From the half-timbered farmhouse vernacular of Ford Green Hall, through the 18th-century canal-side Wedgwood estate of Etruria one of the hubs of the Industrial Revolution, to 19th-century country house estates e.g. Trentham Hall and railway buildings such as Stoke Station and more lately in the 20th century, the expansion and renewal of industrial, civic and amenity buildings including Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, the architecture of North Staffordshire has a history expressive of locally acquired or manufactured building materials: quarried stone, coal and clay for brick and tile-making, ash, sand gravel and cement for concrete, and also cast iron steel and timber.

Bottle ovens (used for early pottery manufacture), canal-side and railway-related mill, factory, or warehouse buildings evolved – within the tightly knit street pattern of each of the six townships – from transport links and adjacency to local generationally skilled labour.

Post-WWII pottery factories developed a style typified by open-plan manufacturing areas, surrounded by wide expanses of window-walling from floor to ceiling, allowing good daylighting for intricate tasks such as lithography, fettling and decoration.

In 1966, Stone (Staffordshire) born Cedric Price had proposed a Potteries Thinkbelt design which sought to make use of decommissioned railway routes following the Beeching Cuts and the scarred landscape of coal mining to provide linked learning centres for a technical industry-based curriculum.

Welcoming visitors to the city as they alight from their train at Stoke-on-Trent station is a statue of Josiah Wedgwood,[141] the centrepiece to the Grade II listed Winton Square area.

The inscription below the sculpture reads: "Fire is at the root of all things visible and invisible" – a reference to the industrial heart of The Potteries: ceramics, railways, steelmaking and mining.

CAPO, a modern interpretation depicting the head of Josiah Wedgwood by Vincent Woropay was originally commissioned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council for the 1986 National Garden Festival.

The 6.8-metre-high (22 ft 4 in) steel sculpture cost £100,000 to build and features 3,000 tags bearing the initials of people who promise to share the story of the 1942 Lidice Shall Live movement.

Located on Bethesda Street on the approach to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Hanley, the work was commissioned by the Arnold Bennett Society, and funded by the Denise Coates Foundation – then, gifted to the city.

[166] Shelley's Laserdome nightclub in Longton played a pivotal role in the house and rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, helping launch the career of Sasha and featuring regular appearances from Carl Cox, until it was eventually shut down by Staffordshire Police.

[167] The Void, a Hanley nightclub, developed a sister relationship with Sankey's Soap in Manchester, helping the latter to revive its fortunes during the late 1990s via the promotion of a club night called Golden.

His father, Anthony Hudson, was from the area, and he spent a few of his early childhood years living in the city before moving to his mother's native United States in 1970.

[citation needed] A local cartoon strip called May un Mar Lady (Me and my Wife), published in the newspaper The Sentinel and written in Potteries dialect, first appeared on 8 July 1986 and ran for over 20 years.

Alan Povey's Owd Grandad Piggott stories, which have aired on BBC Radio Stoke for several years, are recited in the Potteries dialect by the author.