Description:This postcard view shows a large brick-built house, the Hollies in Blurton. On the reverse there is a brief message “My old home with all good wishes, am not staying in here after the 6th of January, will write to you. With love from K.J”. This postcard was franked in Hilderstone on 23 December 1909 and sent to an address in Burston, near Sandon.
In 1911 Charlotte and Mary Toft ran a boarding house at the Hollies, next to the Church and in 1916, W. H. Thompson, a solicitor practising in Longton and the Potteries, was living at the Hollies, Blurton.
In the early 1900s and at the time of this postcard picture Blurton was largely a farming community supplying food for the nearby Pottery towns, with St. Bartholomew's Church in a central position surrounded by cottages, a school, farms and smallholdings, Blurton Tileries and a Colour Mill. 1924 Hem Heath Colliery was opened, so bringing a new form of employment to Blurton. Between 1945 and 1958, the land belonging to Blurton Farm and Newstead Farm was acquired for large housing estates which would encroach on the village, to be followed by many more changes with the general expansion of Stoke- on-Trent. The Church remains (April 2021) although many neighbouring cottages and farm buildings have been replaced by the newer housing. Some of the former farm buildings near to the Church were redeveloped as part of the Willow Barns retirement village.