Westport Lake is known to many as a 1970s reclamation scheme that fell into decline before recent housing developments nearby provided the incentive to spruce up this watery sheet and its surroundings. However, its history as a Potteries playground stretches back over a century. An advert in the Staffordshire Sentinel in June, 1890 ran:
“Come and see the little steam launch on Westport Lake, also some forty rowing boats. The lake is so safe as all should be knowing, You can get out and walk if you’re tired of rowing; It’s the best place in the Potteries for recreation, And only Five Minutes walk from Longport Station.”
The historian Ernest Warrillow confirmed that at the turn of the century, the lake became something of a fashionable resort, with boating being very popular. A small house by the lakeside was the home of the resident boatman and reputedly the scene of many cock-fights. In 1898, Lifeboat Saturday was celebrated at the lake when a self-righting lifeboat “looked tremendously out of place in the still waters.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, local firms would dump ceramic shraff around the periphery of the lake, giving railway commuters a ghastly glimpse of the very worst of the industrial Potteries. For many people, perhaps seeing our area for the first time, it was a positively dismal introduction. Even the reclamation scheme was not viewed as a complete success by some, with historian Bill Moorland remarking in his 1978 book, Portrait of the Potteries that this was “the scene of a triumphant reclamation scheme that has gone wrong, because the concentration of nasty bacteria in the mud of its bottom makes it lethal to paddling children and big boating boys alike.”
Even so, Westport Lake over the years has been a magnet for joggers, dog walkers and those who love nature. Some years ago, I took a sequence of photographs of a group of fishermen landing a massive pike. The lake has been a haven for all sort of fowl including mandarins, tufted ducks and grebe. To see a heron taking off from the lakeside has often been a pleasure for me on one of my early morning jogging sessions around Westport!
A Potteries playground
Labels: Articles by Mervyn Edwards, Burslem, Westport Lake
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