Description:The Laurels, which stood on Mount Road opposite the Common Plot, pictured when occupied by Major James Lionel Meakin and his wife, Constance Eveline Meakin.
It was built around 1875 as the home of Samuel Mountford, owner of a brewery in Stoke-on-Trent. On his death in 1910 the house was sold to Major James Lionel Meakin of the Meakin pottery manufacturing family of Darlaston Hall. His wife, Constance Eveline, was well known in local political circles and in 1920 she was elected as Staffordshire’s second woman councillor. She was the first woman to be elected as a councillor for Stone Urban Division and remained closely involved in Stone civic life until her death in 1966. Major and Mrs Meakin left the Laurels for Darlaston Hall in 1924 and from the sale notice we get an idea of the size of the house: four reception rooms, eight bedrooms, extensive gardens with a Gardener’s Cottage, and four acres of grazing land. It was an imposing building, with a three-storey tower topped with decorative ironwork. For the next few years the house was occupied by Hugh Worthington Adams, a solicitor. On his death in 1928 the house was sold again. This time the owners were Frederick Martin Grose (of Potteries clay merchants Grose and Stocker) and his wife Norah Louise. Frederick was a prominent local sportsman, being a fine tennis player, but died relatively young, leaving the house to his widow. When she died at the end of the Second World War the house gradually declined. After the war it was subdivided into apartments to house demobilised servicemen, but by the 1950s it was standing gaunt and empty and the site was purchased and demolished.
In 1967 the plot was sold and anew house built on the site, also called the Laurels, using the old footings.