The origins of George Wade and Son Ltd.
John and Ann Wade
John Wade, a furniture maker originally from near Crewe, met Ann from Wolstanton, and after a long courtship, as was often the case in rural life/society, they married in 1824. They made a good partnership, John an accomplished cabinet maker, and Ann a successful retailer, selling John’s work to the public at large.
The lure of the city during the late stages of the industrial revolution had proved too much for many like the young Wades. Although they were slowly building up a reputation for their business, the market for their work was unpredictable. So with a family already on the way, they moved into Garden Street, Burslem, within site of the Norman tower of St John’s Church. (Garden Street, off Navigation Road, was parallel to Pleasant Street, and now forms the entrance to an engineering works.)
The area grew, as new pottery businesses sprung up in the area, joining the older more extablished firms. The most well known firms in Burslem at the time included Enoch Wood and Sons, William Davenport & Co, and Samuel Alcock & Co. Initially, John went to work in some of the local potteries. But times could be hard, though, with the country falling into economic depression every few years. In the Potteries there were heavy slumps in demand in 1839 and 1842. There were even riots in August 1842, the fiercest being in Burslem. These were as a result of attempts to cut wages, but the situation was exacerbated first by a local colliers’ strike, which brought most local work to a standstill anyway, and then by Chartists such as Thomas Cooper calling for better conditions and a People’s Charter. The riots were eventually suppressed by the military, who shot into the crowd, killing one and wounding many other workers. With several hundred arrested and little work to be had, a depression settled over the Potteries, from which it took some time to recover.
By the late 1840s, there had been an economic revival, aided by the stability of the Victorian era, leading to long term prosperity, even locally in the Potteries. The Wades, therefore, moved into premises in Globe Street, one of the new streets being erected in the Dale Hall area of Burslem, an area dominated by the huge cathedral-styled St Paul’s church, only recently completed in 1831 (and more recently demolished). With it came John’s own furniture business in Church Street, Dale Hall.
They had learnt from an early age that a more comfortable life could be entertained if they ran their own business, rather than work for others. This was a throwback to the days of cottage industries, when most people ran their own little business, often from home. Although successful businesses could take years to build up from scratch in those days, success itself was a difficult creature to court. A family business, though, even one only barely a going concern, often meant the difference between life and death for their children, particularly in an early nineteenth century industrial town.
On the other hand, large profits could be made, particularly from a pottery business. Quite often an employer, dressed in the finest clothes and living the life of a country squire, had only a few years before been a warehouseman or just an ordinary pottery worker. They soon built themselves big houses, lived in luxurious surroundings, showing off their fast growing wealth.
John patiently plied his trade, producing tables and cabinets. But it was Ann who ran their small shop. This was quite common for the times. In many areas, the wife ran the business often in her husband’s name, the woman being the driving force behind the business. Ann sold a range of furniture and upholstery, made by John and herself, and when she wasn’t producing babies at a rate of knots, she was producing mattresses and embroidered cushions etc at a rate of knots, and taking orders for John. To ease the financial burden of his fledgling business, John occasionally returned to pottery work. This often meant after a long day as a labourer at the local pottery, clogged with smoke and claydust, John then had to knuckle down to producing cabinets to order.
Together the two of them prospered, financially at least, and they produced a good home for their many children. The oldest was George (born 1825), then Mary (1827), Jane (1828), Anne (1831), Joseph (1833), Sarah (1835), John (1836), Elizabeth (1838), Martha (1840), Robert (1842), Thomas (1844), and finally Georgiana (1847)! Despite living in a time when child mortality was extremely high (hence the need for large families), all of their children survived to adulthood, all eventually marrying.
None of the children were initially taught to read or write. Their education, particularly their writing skills, were not deemed important by their parents. But with the passing of time, these skills became more in tune with the changing social structures of the 19th century.
Living in one house, the children lived in cramped conditions, often top-tailing in a single bed. But they were able to help in the running of the shop, and naturally it was hoped that at least one of the sons would take over the shop in the long run. It was not to be. One by one they flew the roost, taking up lowly jobs in the pottery trade with their contemparies. And one by one they starting carving a life of their own; George married Harriet Reade, and went to live with her parents in Tunstall; John married Sarah Kirkham, and set up a home of sorts in 171 Newcastle Street; whilst his sister Sarah ran a greengrocer shop at 299 Newcastle Street with her husband John Grocott.
Joseph Wade
Initially, only Joseph showed any interest in the family business, but no accomplishment as a furnisher. He married a girl called Annie Marie Reade (Harriet’s cousin) and moved to 58 Haywood Place. Annie also showed an interest in the shop, much to John and Ann’s pleasure. She was a dressmaker by trade, and she expanded the business with her skills. Whilst his wife helped Ann with the running of the shop, Joseph followed his father’s example, working days in a local pottery as a potters presser. [A potters presser used a simple mechanism to press the water out of the clay.]
Unfortunately, all this changed when at the age of 57, John Wade died suddenly in 1859 whilst out delivering in Wolstanton. The cause of death was given as debility and exhaustion, undoubtedly caused by overwork, due consequence of his efforts to do two jobs. Life was short enough in the Potteries due to the nature of the work and abundant smoke from the pot ovens. His wife Ann implored Joseph to replace his father in the business, and he naturally felt he couldn’t refuse.
The consequence of this decision was worse for him than his father, particularly as he already worked full-time in a local pottery. Not only did his health suffer, as it had his father’s, but he lost almost all contact with and influence over his children; due to pressure of work, he rarely even saw them.
Joseph knew this state of affairs had to change. By the 1860s, he had forged a plan. Being no furnisher, he decided to adapt the family business into something he did know something about, pottery. As many small pottery firms were opening at this time, this seemed only natural. His idea was to produce creel steps and shuttle eyes, rivalling the Hallen firms on the other side of town. Annie being a dressmaker was not unfamiliar with the workings of textile machinery, particularly their need for porcelain guides. The problem was money.
This was solved by his mother Ann Wade, who, approaching 70 years of age, was toying with retirement. All of her 12 children had married and left home. Her furniture business had been reduced to making mattresses, for which she was still renowned throughout the area. Most of them were being sold not in her own shop but in her daughter-in-law Sarah’s short-lived furniture-dealer business in Waterloo Road. Most of the meagre family wealth would be left to Joseph and Annie Marie, with some going to older brother George (still living in Tunstall) and to younger brother John. So in the early 1860s, she parted company with the shop, and began winding up her business, moving in with her son Thomas’s family at 11 Newport Street. Here mattress making continued, soon taken over by Thomas’s wife, Sarah. Ann by now had remarried, but after the almost immediate death of her second husband (!), she moved in with her daughter Anna Rathbone at her tobacconist shop at 174 Liverpool Road (now Westport Road).
Joseph, however, wasted little time. With his brother John and a colleague named Edwin??? Myatt, he managed to acquire some cottages at the top end of Hall Street, the road linking St Paul’s with the High Street in Burslem. The cottages were close behind the Hill Top Methodist Church, and included numbers 50 and 52. (They have long
since been demolished, and now ironically form part of the Wade Heath & Co car park.) And it was here that the first Wade pottery company, Wade and Myatt, opened for business in 1867. The first of John Wade’s firms opened in the same year (see Chapter 3).
The new works backed onto the Royal Victoria Pottery, then more modestly called the Hill Works, which was inhabited by Morgan Wood & Co, and was later the home of Wade Heath & Co. But the first Wade company was on a very much smaller scale. Like many small potteries of the time, it was run merely at the back of a cottage or terraced house with the windows bricked up. A makeshift sign would be strung up over the back gate or the front door. Often these small pottery firms had small makeshift ovens in their tiny back yards for firing the pottery. Alternatively, they could share a larger bell oven. Their industrial wares were then sold to merchants at market, or shipped straight to the factories in the North up the Trent And Mersey canal. Success meant expansion, although basically this involved buying the next door terrace house and knocking the walls through to create larger premises. In the case of the Wade firms, they owned next door.
As expected, bitter rivalry did indeed materialise between the Wade firm and the Hallens. Wade and Myatt worked long hours just to compete, but it took its toll. Myatt had to sell up to keep himself and the business afloat; his handicapped son, Jesse, had to move in with Joseph’s family. Joseph also sold up, and moved to 124 Liverpool Road. There Annie Marie ran a greengrocer’s shop to help balance the books.
For ten years, the company built slowly and flourished. But just after their oldest son, George, had married and moved to Wolstanton, Myatt died. A year later in December 1881, Joseph Wade also died, aged only 47. Subsequently, Wade and Myatt was thrown into confusion.
Joseph’s son George returned from Wolstanton to try and run the company. But he was an undisciplined youth. He drank heavily, gambled even more heavily, and argued wretchedly with his brothers on how the business should be run. One legend has him drinking the company away until he was so in debt he had to sell. Another has him losing the company in a bet. It was even suggested that he was conned out of it; that he was taken out by members of his family, who got him drunk, and then got him to sign the company over to them.
What is more likely is that his Uncle George and Uncle John decided that rather than let him destroy the company, that they and his family should rescue the company and run it for him.
George Wade Snr.
Uncle George, or George Wade Snr, was the first in a long line of George Wades – there had been four King Georges in a row by 1825 when George Snr was born, though none suitably worthy of being named after. His children would all eventually run pottery firms, his sons John, William and Albert Joseph (AJ) soon starting work with their Uncle John from an early age. But this might not have occurred at all if it hadn’t been for the untimely death of his younger brother Joseph.
Being the oldest son and born in Burslem, it was no surprise that George started work at a local pottery. By the tender age of 14 he was a potter’s apprentice. This was a cut above many of the young workers, who joined the pottery industry just as ordinary labourers, and it is likely that his father may have struck some deal to get him the apprenticeship. He also studied. He had learnt to read at St John’s, where he was taught to read the bible. But then he also found time to learn to write, a skill that was regarded at the time as more prestigious than reading. Of his brothers, only John matched his rudimentary skills.
After several years he progressed to the relatively prestigious job of Potters Thrower. The Thrower was the key position in a pot bank, the title coming from the act of throwing the clay on to the potter’s wheel, before shaping it with his hands as it rotates, powered in those days by just the Thrower’s knee or foot on the runner under the table, before the days of motorised wheels.
In 1852, he married Harriet Reade, a country girl originally from Whitchurch, Shropshire. She was the daughter of William Reade, a well-to-do Tunstall potter. After living with George’s parents in Globe Street for 4 years, George and Harriet moved in with the Reades in Market Street, (now Tower Square), Tunstall.
Tunstall, the last of the six towns to fully develop, mainly at the expense of the nearby declining Goldenhill, was maturing rapidly with improved housing built mainly on open ground instead of in more cramped conditions as in other towns. In 1858 Tunstall felt it had come of age by the opening of its covered market, which soon became known as The Shambles. Part of it later made way for the Town Hall, but the rest is still there, a lively indoor market.
After working in the pottery industry for some years, George decided to follow the lead of the rest of his family by opening up a side business. Although calling itself George Wade, it was mainly run by his wife and family. But it wasn’t a pottery business, it was a drapery.
Opened in 1863, George Wade dealt in linen, woolens and haberdashery in his Church Street (now Dunning Street) premises. Soon he moved to the High Street side of the Market Square, beside the Shambles. But as the market flourished and new buildings sprang up in central Tunstall, so George moved the business to the Tunstall end of Brownhills in 1867. This was a major trading route, connecting Tunstall with the market town of Newcastle-Under-Lyme and also the mother town of Burslem. His brother John, or at least John’s wife Sarah, had set up a furniture dealing business there, and when they moved premises, George moved in.
George Wade the drapery lasted several years till about 1870, but unfortunately did not flourish as George had expected, despite the efforts of oldest son John and daughter Eleanor Reade Wade. But it did make him many useful contacts at the Manchester mills, whilst also giving him a fairly good understanding of their working practices, knowledge that would stand him and the family in good stead in later years. On the closure of his business, the Tunstall Wades moved house to 54 King Street (now Madison Street).
His failings in business did at least bolster his belief in encouraging his children to better themselves. He initially believed that the pottery trade was too good for them. The conditions were still extremely poor, and so was the pay; he’d learnt that from experience, after having worked in the pottery trade all his life. His career had been advanced by an apprenticeship. His children’s, he was convinced, should be advanced by education, leading to more prestigious careers. Oldest son, John, became a writing clerk, Eleanor a milliner, and William a teacher. But his youngest sons provided him with his proudest moments, with son George going on to university and Albert Joseph studying science and technology at the Wedgwood Institute, Burslem.
But whatever his plans were for his children, they were radically changed with the sudden and premature death of his brother Joseph. As Wade and Myatt careered out of control under the unsteady hand of his nephew, George Wade Snr took little interest, extremely loath to get involved. It was his younger brother John who implored him to, claiming that at the very least it would act as a good springboard for the careers of George’s sons. This had a lot to do with the fact that although John was close to George’s sons, he had little time for Joseph’s, particularly the drunken George. Reluctantly, George Snr agreed.
The first thing he did was change the name of the company in 1882 to Wade and Sons, if only to indicate a new beginning. [Maybe his young nephews, Joseph’s children, should have read a bit more into this, as none had sons at that time.] He also made good all the contacts that he and Harriet had made from their short-lived drapery venture. Soon business picked up, and with steadier hands on the wheel, began to flourish. Joseph’s sons, particularly George, were quickly phased out.
The company remained in Hall Street making creel steps and shuttle eyes, with competition again hotting up in the 1880s with the well-established Henry Hallen firm. George’s sons William and Albert soon joined their uncle John’s firm Wade and Co, now firmly established in the High Street of Burslem (previously Rotten Row, and now Greenhead Street). This left their brother George with Wade and Sons. That’s not to say that he actually owned it, as his Uncle John, who curiously enough lived next door at No.52, had a controlling interest in the firm, and at the very least owned or part-owned the premises.
George Wade Snr had by now all but retired. There was no call for pottery throwing in the new business. So he played the part of potters manager for his son, overseeing young George’s ambitious plans. After living in Tunstall for some years, George Wade Snr didn’t much relish the move back into the more densely populated Burslem, where he had grown up. He had little fondness for Burslem, and would not have returned. But to be close to his family, who by now had more or less all migrated to the mother town, he and Harriet and son William moved into 50 Moorland Road, on the corner of York Passage, or Doulton Street as it is called now. (The house has since been demolished, leaving a vacant plot.) Soon afterwards, George Wade Snr died in 1892 at the age of 67.
In his lifetime, he had seen the birth of the embryonic Wade firms. His sons had been well educated, and had assured futures ahead of them, albeit mostly in the pottery industry. Of his other children, his daughter Prudence helped run a grocery/earthenware business in Tunstall, whilst Mary Ann taught domestic science at the newly opened Moorland Road school. But his favourite daughter, Eleanor, caused him much heartache. She had an illegitimate daughter, eventually married the father, and the family moved to Leek. His only other surviving grandchild was a certain George Albert Wade, knighted by the Queen in 1955.
George Wade JP
George Wade JP (1864-1938
George Snr’s third son, George, who eventually became a Justice of the Peace (JP), was born in Tunstall in 1864, before the first Wade pottery companies were founded. Under his father’s disciplined upbringing, he stayed on at school until his late teens, becoming a pupil teacher. He then went to the then fledgling University College of Nottingham in the early 1880s, where he won the Queen’s Prize. He studied natural and applied science, gaining Honours as a member of the advanced class of Hygiene in the Government Science classes section in 1885.
George then returned to the Potteries to help run Wade and Sons with his father. He was a very forward thinking man, and he returned full of ideas and visions from his university days. He was keen to get involved in the new industrial innovations that were only very slowly being introduced into the Pottery industry. He was also a strong supporter of federation for the Potteries towns (that is, unifying the six towns Burslem, Tunstall, Stoke, Hanley, Fenton and Longton to form Stoke-On-Trent), and a stalwart Liberal. (William Gladstone was the Liberal Prime Minister of the time, and he dominated the political stage until the 1890s, when the Conservatives and Lord Salisbury took office.)
When he took over the running of Wade and Sons, the company was still producing creel steps and shuttle eyes. The Hallen firm were leaders in this field, and had as good as cornered the market, particularly with the demise of Wade and Myatt. George knew he had to quickly outmanoever the Hallens to win back precious orders. He went ahead and developed an extra hard brand of porcelain to meet the requirements of the Lancashire cotton spinners for their thread guides. Soon, with the help of his father and a few contacts, he had made a name for himself, and set about other projects.
Gas lighting was still being introduced for domestic lighting, and soon Wade and Sons were producing the gaslight and gas fire burners. When gas lighting was later replaced by electricity, the firm was called upon to make the early insulators (porcelain, of course, being stable, hard and unable to conduct electricity).
George married Maria Start Poxon in 1888, and they moved into 4 Baddeley Street, Burslem. Their first child Daisy Evelyn died tragically at the age of only three. Their second and only other child was George Albert, who was born in 1891, and from an early age he was keen to get involved in the business.
At the turn of the century, George changed the firm’s name to George Wade. He also became heavily involved in local politics, being elected as a Liberal counciller in the Burslem North Ward in 1894, serving on the council until 1903, and again between 1906 and 1910.
He spoke out strongly in favour of federation of the six towns. The issue had been revived in 1888 – after lying dormant for some years – when County Councils were created in the Local Government Bill of that year. The pottery towns were united in their opposition to financial control of the area falling to the Staffordshire County Council. But they were united about little else; local jealousies being strong in the Potteries. It didn’t help that Hanley was large enough to be a county borough, and thus self governing. This Hanley duly became when it was clear that the other towns could not patch up their differences. So initial federation attempts floundered, and even a later attempt at the turn of the century also fell flat. But the underlying issue wouldn’t go away, thanks to a determined set of people like George Wade. Thus, the final five year push to federation began in 1905.
Nowhere was the subject more hotly disputed than in Burslem, as chronicled in Arnold Bennett’s famous novel, The Old Wives’ Tale. In retrospect, this interest was somewhat strange as the issue aroused no great feeling one way or the other among most Pottery folk, local government financing hardly being an exhilarating topic to dwell on at any length. Whereas the other towns were generally in favour of federation, if the right plan could be found, which was proving difficult, Burslem and Tunstall councils were more or less evenly split in support and opposition; Burslem council slightly in favour, Tunstall slightly against. Unfortunately, their ratepayers disagreed with them respectively. Afterall, argued many, the Mother Town had all the services it needed.
As the debate heated up, the opposing sides formed organisations to coordinate what was turning out to be a long campaign. Thus was formed the Association for Promoting the Federation of the Potteries Towns, who adopted the motto “Unity is Strength”. The association’s membership covered a wide spectrum of politics and class. George Wade found himself rubbing shoulders with the Duke of Sutherland (president), Cecil Wedgwood (chairman), Thomas Twyford (treasurer) and Leonard Grimwade (secretary), plus several mayors, aldermen and magistrates. The support of many well known pottery manufacturers was hardly surprising as local industry was at the time being severely threatened by foreign competition. Some companies had amalgamated several factories spread across the many towns of the Potteries, reducing costs and increasing technical skills of the workforce. It seemed only logical to them to do the same with local government. Divisions and differing standards of the six towns did not serve their best interests.
The association distributed portfolios amongst its leading members. George Wade was made education spokesman, a subject which he had become increasingly involved in, particularly after the reports on the conditions of schools that he received from his teacher sister Mary Ann. He had become Chairman of the old Burslem School Board in 1898, and later in 1902 of its successor, the Burslem Education Committee. In this capacity, he had sponsored many reforms in connection with the borough’s elementary education system. He had also been closely involved in the financial dispute between Burslem and Tunstall over the cost of extra-district children’s schooling.
Now as the Association’s spokesman, it was George who pointed out that as education would become a common charge throughout the new federated county borough, it would thus relieve Burslem of part of the high cost of maintaining its technical art school. He also argued that federation would improve teacher training and the provision of secondary and technical education in the area.
Councillor George Wade JP attended many public meetings, making countless speeches on the subject over a period of 20 years. He was often supporting or supported by the Duke of Sutherland, who was renowned for offering his vast Trentham estate to the six towns on federation. The resulting poll in November 1907 of the Burslem electorate in a high turnout (74%) gave a 3:2 vote against federation. This was at least an improvement on the 6:1 defeat they had experienced in 1903, but it threw the council into confusion, claiming it was withdrawing from federation plans.
However, by now the issue was being pushed through Parliament, firstly the House of Commons committees, where George Wade gave evidence supporting federation, and then to a select committee of the House of Lords, headed by Lord Cromer. It was Cromer who pointed out to Burslem that either it come up with an acceptable plan, or be included in the federation by compulsion. This was denounced in Burslem as unprecedented and “unEnglish”, but it did at least succeed in getting Burslem back to the debating table. They brought with them a plan that with several amendments and concessions from all the six towns was the one finally agreed on, with Royal Assent being given to the government bill on 21 December 1908. In March 1910, Stoke-On-Trent came into existence, becoming a county borough in its own right. It also caused the many street name changes observed in this book as the six towns strove to avoid name repetitions. In 1922, it doubled its size with the inclusion of several smaller areas such as Trentham, Chell and Meir. Then in 1925, it became a city. Ironically, the 1974 local government reorganisations saw the transfer of powers back to the Stafford County Council, although they are now returning to Stoke-On-Trent.
George continued to attend education committee meetings held at Hanley town hall, and steady improvements were soon very evident in art and technical teaching. He was a pioneer of the correlation of art instruction in elementary schools with that of art schools. He was responsible for the appointment of special art instructors in elementary schools, and for putting the Burslem Art School well and truly on the map as an art instructional centre.
Other matters were not so easily solved though. Debates in 1920 over municipalising the local tramways, bringing it under central control, showed George Wade strongly in support, with the electorate against. But when it was revealed that the old trams weren’t worth the asking price anyway, the plan fell through.
George Wade though had many more strings to his bow. By 1904 he had moved to a huge mansion of a house called The Mount, in Porthill, on the edge of the well-to-do Wolstanton. Although still a semi-detached, it had extensive gardens and a long meandering drive linking it to the almost rural 2nd Avenue. (Almost in respect to its size, the house is now a retirement home.) He later took over AJ’s house, Heatherlea, in Park Avenue, Wolstanton.
He was secretary of the Newcastle-Under-Lyme Liberal Association, and he was approached several times to stand as a Parliamentary candidate, but always declined. He would more than certainly have been elected as Newcastle’s MP, and maybe Wade history might have been very different. Later in life, he gave his wholehearted support to the National Government, a Tory/Liberal/Labour coalition (in that order) established to cope with the 1930s depression.
Also in 1907 he qualified as a county justice, joining his council colleague Samuel Johnson on the Bench. He was a JP (Justice of the Peace) for both Staffordshire and the city of Stoke-On-Trent. It was generally felt that he was a model magistrate, showing kindness, consideration and sympathy where such were called for, but firmness and correctness where necessary. He also took a keen interest in licensing work. This is particularly worthy of note, in light of a certain encounter with his cousin.
The other George Wade, Joseph’s son, whose drinking had lost him the Wade company that his JP cousin now owned, had moved back to Burslem and become a bricklayer. Sadly, his drinking habits hadn’t changed, and one particular binge landed him in the police cells. The next morning, still drunk from the night before, and for some reason wielding a banana, he was dragged before the magistrate. The magistrate looked up on hearing a bleary but vaguely familiar voice, and was shocked to see his bedraggled and inebriated cousin, struggling with a guard and waving his banana for all he was worth. There was a split second’s silence as he caught his unfortunate cousin’s eye, before the JP called firmly, “Case dismissed!”, motioning his cousin away with his hand.
Rather than face the embarrassment of George Wade vs George Wade, which, banana not withstanding, would have looked good in the newspapers, George JP struck a wise compromise; and afterall his cousin had already spent a night in the cells. His cousin however did not see the error of his ways, and died a couple of years later whilst working at Bennetts works in Shelton.
Whilst all this was happening, he had not let his business slip. George Wade the firm prospered as gas and electricity spread to more and more homes, not only throughout the UK, but also around the world. The firm continued to make pottery fittings for textile machinery and other specialised porcelain articles for industry. His son, apart from his absence during the First World War (1914-18), was soon involved in the day to day running of a Potteries success story. After the war, the firm George Wade became George Wade and Son, and ultimately George Wade and Son Ltd, a private limited company, on June 24 1919. Although all shares in the company were owned by the family, this meant the company and not individual members of the family could be held liable for debt or losses. The company was later revalued on August 31 1921.
However, George’s chief business interest switched to the progress of another firm, The Chromo Transfer & Potters’ Supply Company Ltd. It had originally been established at the Stoke end of Shelton (Newlands Street) at the elaborately titled Eagle Transfer & Colour Works, but later moved to Burslem. It manufactured innovative lithographic transfers and colours for china, earthenware, glass and enamelled iron. Their adverts also raved that they were “agents for the world of … The Minimax Colour Spray! The ideal instrument. No clogging. A perfect adjustment for both colour and air. No repairs. Wear and tear practically nil. Colour changed in one minute. The CHEAPEST Machine and the BEST on the Market. We can interest you!” Despite all this hullaballoo, George was able to explore many of his innovative ideas on pottery manufacture and decoration, along with Edward J. Buckley, his Joint Managing Director, and the venture was very successful and profitable between the wars.
The Manchester Pottery- back of works, showing clay storage
George Wade’s business successes, and the slow demise of the previously highly motivated Hallen family, had by now allowed him to buy out his chief rival in 1905. Initially, he ran both Hall Street and Wellington Street as separate entities, but when the dust had settled, and distributors and buyers were used to the takeover, he bought land beside and behind Wade and Co on High Street, Burslem, and established the Manchester Pottery in 1906. The reason behind this name seemed overtly glib, namely on account of the two company’s respect for the Manchester textile industry that they had served and serviced for so many years. Although some Hallen workers were brought in to work there, effectively Henry Hallen the firm ceased to be.
It is interesting to note that George bought some of the land for the Manchester Pottery from his sister Mary Ann, who had bought the old houses and surrounding land in 1898 with a loan from George Henry Heath, who would later play such a major role in the development of Wade Heath & Co. The rest of the land was bought from Wade & Co.
After the war, he left much of the running of the company to his only son, George Albert, before retiring in 1927. In the mid-1930s he moved to Westwood, a large house on Wolstanton High Street (opposite the entrance to Park Avenue). He spent his remaining years fishing. He was a keen angler, and with his friend J.T.Howson spent many happy hours in pursuit of the sport in the Lake District. However, in 1936 he fell ill, and on New Years Day 1938 he died aged 74. He was buried in the Wade family grave in Burslem Cemetery three days later. He left behind a son who one day would be knighted, and an established company that would one day be a household name.
