Place:Brown Edge, Staffordshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Brown Edge is a village and civil parish in the Staffordshire Moorlands district of Staffordshire, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,406. The village is on the fringe of The Potteries Urban Area, and is about 5 miles north-east of Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent.

Brown Edge lies within the boundaries of the ancient Saxon kingdom of Mercia. However, before 1800 the village consisted of no more than several farm cottages, some of which survive today. Throughout the 19th century, the village remained largely untouched by the pottery and mining industries of Stoke-on-Trent and it was not until only around 1950 when the villagers began working in local mines such as Chatterley Whitfield.

Brown Edge was a chapelry within the ancient (ecclesiastical) parish of Norton-in-the-Moors and was considered to be a part of Norton-in-the-Moors civil parish until 1965. In 1965 the civil parish of Norton was abolished and the western section was absorbed into Stoke-on-Trent, while the eastern section, Brown Edge, became a civil parish of itself.

A 19th century description

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Willenhall from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"BROWN-EDGE, a chapelry in Norton-in-the-Moors parish, Stafford[shire]; near the Manchester and Birmingham railway, 3 miles N of Burslem. It was constituted in 1844. Post Town, Norton-in-the-Moors, under Stoke-upon-Trent. Rated property: £1,300. Population: 670. Houses: 131. The property is much subdivided. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield. Value: £155. Patron: the Bishop of Lichfield. The church is good."

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