People get very confused about the church of St John the Baptist on the edge of the Wedgwood estate in Barlaston.
It’s assumed the church must be something to do with the original Josiah – as Barlaston Hall, for which St John’s serves as an estate church, is also 18th Century. In fact, the Wedgwood firm only bought the Barlaston estate in the 1930s.
However, inside, if you could get inside, there are indeed memorials to the Wedgwood family. Very confusing.
It’s also assumed that St John’s was closed in 1980 because the hall next to it went into ruin then for a few years. Actually, the building was literally undermined by subsidence from the coal-working deep underneath it...
It’s all rather abandoned now, despite being near an estate of new luxury homes; and the vandalised clock tower is a sad symbol of that state of affairs
That is a sad sight.
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