Stoke-on-Trent, famous for its Victorian pottery industry and making the world’s finest bone china, lives in the shadow of its past glories. Today Stoke is a city dominated by its intractable struggle to reverse industrial and economic decline and the City Council has tried to reinvigorate the region by drawing on the city’s industrial heritage. Affectionately nicknamed ‘The Potteries’, the area is now probably most famous for its unfortunate nickname ‘Brexit Capital’ or for being the birthplace of footballer Stanley Matthews and singer Robbie Williams (right). But the emphasis on its pot-based industrial past overlooks another important and continuing aspect of its cultural heritage. For in the 1960s, while the number of potbanks was declining daily, the city also boasted twelve flourishing Spiritualist churches.

The earliest written evidence of Spiritualism in Stoke-on-Trent is from a newspaper article in the Staffordshire Daily Sentinel in 1873. Since then, the city has enjoyed a rich and vibrant Spiritualist history with some well-known faces. It was birthplace and home to the longest serving President of the Spiritualists’ National Union, Gordon Higginson, who was born in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent in 1918. His mother, Fanny, was already an established medium at Longton Spiritualist Church and, like her, he went on to serve there until his death. Today Longton Church’s website claims it ‘is one of the leading centres for Spiritualism’, and Stoke-on-Trent is still home to three highly active Spiritualist churches enjoying healthy congregations and playing a significant role in their local communities.

Dearly departed

Most religious traditions have a view on what happens to us after death, but Spiritualism is unique in that it is based around the belief that the human soul, mind and personality continue to live ‘in spirit’ and that it is possible to communicate with those spirits via ‘mediumship’. Mediums, such as Fanny and Gordon, will transfer information from a spirit to a living recipient, thereby aiming to provide evidence of survival beyond death. The Spirit World, accessible through such mediumship, is full of departed souls, spirit guides and angels ready to share their support and insights to ease our earthly woes.

In the Victorian era, this possibility of spirit communication and psychic phenomena attracted the attention of scientists and intellectuals globally, but it was during the First World War that Spiritualism reached a new height in Britain. With countless young men failing to return from the front, many bereaved families sought mediums to obtain some sort of closure, in the form of a message from spirit. This might be to reassure remaining loved ones that they were safe and happy – even reunited with others in spirit – and sometimes to share an important piece of information previously unknown to those left behind. Sir Oliver Lodge, also born in Stoke-on-Trent, had several séances in the area, one of which was with medium Annie Brittain in Hanley shortly after his son Raymond died at the front on 14 September 1915. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also visited Annie Brittain, particularly after the death of his son Kingsley at the Somme in 1917, and the death of his younger brother Innes in February 1919, a brigadier general in the First World War.

It was also Annie Brittain who told medium Fanny Higginson from Longton that she would have a son who would become a famous platform medium; and we already know about what her son Gordon went on to achieve! With this rich history, is it any wonder that even Stoke-on-Trent’s very own Robbie Williams once said if he hadn’t made his career in music, he might have been a Spiritualist medium instead (the angels would have loved that, Robbie!).

You can find out more about the history and present day role of Spiritualism in Stoke-on-Trent by visiting Talking With The Dead, based on research carried out at The Open University. Here you will be able to view archive images of Spiritualism in Stoke-on-Trent, listen to stories about what it’s like to live with angels and spirits in everyday life, and look at our Spirit Trail which maps all the sites that have been registered for Spiritualist worship and services across the city since 1870. You may be surprised at what a magical and enchanted history this seemingly very prosaic city hides!

If you enjoyed this why not visit our free interactive, Beyond belief: talking to the dead?