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I have just started reading Margaret Drabble’s biography of the Potteries writer Arnold Bennett. Its first sentence reads like this: ‘Arnold Bennett was born in a street called Hope Street. A street less hopeful it would be hard to imagine.’ This reminded me of a tract I read years ago entitled, I think, ‘The Street called Hope’. It was written by Arthur Dean – again I think that that was his name. He became an evangelist but he was converted through an open-air meeting in the very same street and the tract told his story. At the top of Hope Street, on the edge of the city centre of Stoke on Trent, on the corner with Newhall Street, stood a substantial church building, its pediment proclaiming Hope Congregational Church, though it actually faced on to Newhall Street. When we arrived in 1966 this was the home of Bethel Evangelical Free Church.
The history of the building was unusual and problematic. There used to be a large Congregational church building called The Tabernacle not too far away. In about 1810 one of its deacons was convicted of being drunk in charge of a horse in Market Square. This resulted in him being disciplined. There was, I believe, a bit more to the story than this, but the nub of the matter was that he had his supporters who eventually left The Tabernacle and in 1812 Hope Congregational Church was built (I think this must have been before the Band of Hope was established!).
In 1966 (the biography was published in 1974) the bottle kilns of Dudson’s Pottery stood at the bottom of the Hope Street, though I don’t think they were still in use. Up one of the side streets you found pre-fabs still occupied, left over from the 2nd World War. A variety of mainly little shops jostled each other and everything had an atmosphere of grime so characteristic of those days. Margaret’s Drabble’s words are not surprising, yet the street led up to a place where the hope of the gospel was made known and still is. Hope Congregational building has gone but in 1977 a new building was opened – but that’s another story. (See www.bethelhanley.com/ )
The history of the building was unusual and problematic. There used to be a large Congregational church building called The Tabernacle not too far away. In about 1810 one of its deacons was convicted of being drunk in charge of a horse in Market Square. This resulted in him being disciplined. There was, I believe, a bit more to the story than this, but the nub of the matter was that he had his supporters who eventually left The Tabernacle and in 1812 Hope Congregational Church was built (I think this must have been before the Band of Hope was established!).
In 1966 (the biography was published in 1974) the bottle kilns of Dudson’s Pottery stood at the bottom of the Hope Street, though I don’t think they were still in use. Up one of the side streets you found pre-fabs still occupied, left over from the 2nd World War. A variety of mainly little shops jostled each other and everything had an atmosphere of grime so characteristic of those days. Margaret’s Drabble’s words are not surprising, yet the street led up to a place where the hope of the gospel was made known and still is. Hope Congregational building has gone but in 1977 a new building was opened – but that’s another story. (See www.bethelhanley.com/ )
