Description:A postcard view of the main entrance to the North Stafford Hotel, Winton Square. Stoke-on-Trent.
The North Stafford Hotel faces Stoke Station across Station Road and was originally called The Railway Hotel. The hotel and the station were designed and built together and the hotel opened for business in August 1849. It cost nearly £9,000 to build. An 1851 advert said: "Families and Commercial Gentlemen will find every accommodation: Coffee, Commercial, Billiard and Smoking Rooms and Hot, Cold and Shower Baths".
This Grade II* listed building is Elizabethan and Jacobean in style. It is built of brick with black diamond decoration and with ornate windows and gables. This design is seen in many North Staffordshire Railway station buildings. To the left and right of the hotel building are six houses on Winton Square, built in the same style as the hotel and station, to house senior railway officials and employees.
In front of the hotel is a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The statue is 2.5 metres (just over 8 feet) tall and stands on a 2 metre (6 foot) stone plinth. Made of bronze, Wedgwood is holding the Portland Vase. It was erected by public subscription and unveiled in August 1863. The apparent reason for siting the statue here rather than anywhere more central was that it would be on the boundary of Hanley and Stoke-on-Trent, both of whom laid claim to being the home of Wedgwood.
At the Unification of the City of Stoke-on-Trent, the first meeting of the new council on 31 March 1910 was held at the North Stafford Hotel, Stoke,
This Wrench Series postcard was franked on 22 August 1908 in Goldenhill and sent to an address in Alsager, with the following message: “Dear Grandmother, With best wishes for a Happy Birthday, with love from Percy”.