The history of the Abbey Hulton area is in its name. On a piece of land,
just off the main road is the remains of the Hulton Abbey where there was
once a monastery.
The site dates back to the 1200's and some work has been done in the passed
to expose the church walls.
Over the years the land has become overgrown but it's now being tidied up
and restored. Here�s the latest from the site...
History: Abbey Hulton
Description: Abbey Hulton takes its name from the former Hulton Abbey, which
was located about half a mile from Milton, on the east side of the road from
Stoke to Leek, next to Carmountside Primary School. In the Domesday Book,
Hulton is recorded as �Heltone� meaning �hill town�
The abbey, dedicated to St Mary, belonged to the Cistercian order, the White
Monks. It was founded in 1223 by Henry de Audley in what was then a remote
part of the county, in keeping with the traditional kind of site which the
Cistercians chose for their religious houses. The Audleys continued to be
benefactors of the abbey during the Middle Ages, although it was always poor
with only ever a small number of monks. Following the economic pattern of
the Cistercians, the monks of Hulton Abbey were engaged in sheep farming and
they had sheepfolds at Normacot and at Mixon in the middle of the 13th
century, as well as granges at Hulton and Rushton in Burslem. They were also
producing tiles at Hulton in the 14th century.
Sir James de Audley, who was notable for how courageously he fought under
the Black Prince at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, was buried in the choir
of the abbey church in front of the high altar with his wife. There is a
tradition that, when the abbey church was demolished and the tombs opened,
the lady�s hair had continued to grow luxuriantly. Hulton Abbey was
surrendered to the Crown on 18th September 1538 by which time it was worth
only �200 per year and had only nine monks including the abbot. It was
always one of the poorest of Staffordshire�s monasteries.
The abbey site and its lands were sold to Sir Edward Aston of Tixall, near
Stafford, in 1543. He later sold to the Sneyds of Keele in the early 17th
century. Excavations of the abbey site took place in 1884 and again in the
early 1930s. Stone from the abbey complex was used in a number of buildings
in the vicinity, including Abbey Farm. A manor house at Hulton is shown on
the map, which accompanies Dr Robert Plot�s �Natural History of
Staffordshire� published in 1686. In the hearth tax returns of 1666, 30
houses are listed, a little different to the Abbey Hulton of today.
It was the Housing Act of 1919, which was to transform the area. This
facilitated the beginnings of much-needed housing development in many
parts of Stoke on Trent, including Abbey Hulton, which helped to re-house
families from Burslem, and later in the 1930s from Hanley, under slum
clearance programmes. In 1922 Abbey Hulton became officially part of the
County Borough of Stoke on Trent. Originally part of Burslem ecclesiastical
parish, Abbey Hulton now has its own church, St John�s, built in 1963
