Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town in Staffordshire, England, and is the principal settlement in the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is part of Stoke-on-Trent Built-up Area and North Staffordshire.

Transport Links

Newcastle-under-Lyme is served by the M6 motorway to the south and west of Newcastle and by the A500 road to the north and east. There are access points from the M6 at junctions 15 and 16, to the south and north respectively. The A34 trunk road runs through Newcastle from north to south and was the main road between Birmingham and Manchester until the M6 motorway opened. There is a large bus station in the town centre.

Newcastle does not have a railway station within the town, however Stoke-on-Trent railway station is located between the town centre of Newcastle and city centre of Stoke-on-Trent, serving the Potteries as a whole.

Local Attractions

The Stones – Newcastle-under-Lyme’s market open 6 days a week. There is an antiques market on a Tuesday, and bric-a-brac sale on a Thursday. The town sees a general market the remaining days of the week (excluding Sunday).

Alton Towers – theme park and water park about a 40 minute drive from Newcastle-under-Lyme. Fun for all ages, the original theme park was built in 1980.

Biddulph Grange Garden – beautiful landscaped gardens half an hour outside the town. Features include a Dahlia Walk and Rhododendron Ground.

Little Moreton Hall – a moated half-timbered manor house 9 miles north of the town. Parts of the house date back to the 1500s.

1100s-1800s

Newcastle is not mentioned in the Domesday Book, as it grew up around the 12th-century castle, but it must have rapidly become a place of importance because a charter, known only through a reference in another charter to Preston, was given to the town by Henry II of England in 1173. The new castle was built to supersede an older fortress at Chesterton about two miles to the north, the ruins of which were visible up to the end of the 16th century.

In 1235 Henry III constituted it a free borough, granting a guild merchant and other privileges. In 1251 he leased it at fee-farm to the burgesses. In 1265 Newcastle was granted by the Crown to Simon de Montfort, and subsequently to Edmund Crouchback, through whom it passed to Henry IV. In John Leland's time the castle had disappeared "save one great Toure".

Newcastle did not feature much in the English Civil War, save a Royalist plundering. However, it was the hometown of Major Thomas Harrison a Cromwellian army officer and leader of the fanatical Fifth Monarchy Men.

The governing charter in 1835 which created the Newcastle-under-Lyme Municipal Borough absorbed the previous borough created through the charters of 1590 and 1664, under which the title of the corporation, was the "mayor, bailiffs and burgesses of Newcastle-under-Lyme."

Recent

When Stoke-on-Trent was formed by the 1910 amalgamation of the "six towns" (Stoke, Hanley, Fenton, Longton, Burslem and Tunstall) Newcastle remained separate. Despite its close proximity, it was not directly involved in the pottery industry, and it strongly opposed attempts to add it in 1930 with a postcard poll showing residents opposing it by a majority of 97.4%. Although passed by the House of Commons, it was rejected by the House of Lords. Newcastle sent two members to parliament from 1355 to 1885, when it lost one representative.