Alton or Alveton, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Alton or Alveton, a village, a township, and a parish in Staffordshire. The village and township is most charmingly situated on the Churnet river. It has a station on the North Staffordshire railway, and a post office, under Stoke-upon-Trent. Acreage, 2243 (including 16 of water); population, 1089. The parish includes also the townships of Parley, Denstone, and Cotton. Acreage, 7534; population, 2064. The manor belongs to the Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot. Alton Towers, the seat of the Earl, is a splendid edifice in a variety of styles, built in 1814 and subsequently enlarged, and contains a magnificent hall, an armoury 120 feet long, a picture gallery 150 feet long, a chapel by Pugin with stained windows, and other rooms. The gardens connected with it are richly ornate, and contain a Choragic temple, a Chinese conservatory, an imitation Stonehenge, a pagoda 95 feet high, and a Gothic temple commanding an extensive view. The ruins of a castle of the De Verduns, of the time of Henry II., stand on a rock by the Churnet, 300 feet high. The Roman Catholic chapel of St John's, convent, and school, are situated near the castle. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; value, £240. Patron, the Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot. The church was partly rebuilt in 1830, restored in 1862, and again in 1885. There are chapels for Wesleyans and Primitive Methodists, and a working men's club and reading room. There is a Roman Catholic college at Cotton and a Protestant college near Denstone.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient County	Staffordshire
Ancient County	Staffordshire
Civil parish	Alveton
Ecclesiastical parish	Alveton St. Peter
Hundred	Totmonslow
Hundred	Totmonslow
Poor Law union	Cheadle
Poor Law union	Cheadle

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

The register dates from the year 1681.

Findmypast, in association with the Staffordshire & Stoke on Trent Archive Service have the Baptisms, Banns, Marriages, and Burials online for Alton

Churches

Church of England

St. Peter (parish church)

The church of St. Peter is a building of stone, in the Norman and later styles, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles and an embattled western tower, containing a clock and five bells; the church was partly rebuilt in 1830, at an expense of £1,200, and restored in 1862: the tower and the north arcade formed part of the original church, a Norman building, erected in the 12th century by Bertram de Verdun, lord of Alton, and given by him to the Abbey of Croxden: the tower was completely restored in 1885 and the bells rehung, the chancel being at the same time restored at the expense of Charles Bill esq. M.A., J.P. lay rector, who also erected a stained east window in memory of his father, J. Bill esq. (d. 1853): the west window was erected in 1887 to the memory of Dr. Fraser, late vicar of the parish: in 1884 a new clock was placed in the tower: the church was restored in 1885 at a cost of £900, and affords 300 sittings.

Country Seats

Picture, description, and ownership details of Alton Towers, near Cheadle, Stafforshire. - The seat of the Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot, extracted from "A Series of Picturesque Views of Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen, of Great Britain and Ireland"

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Alton or Alveton from the following:

Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Denston)

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Staffordshire is online.

Maps

Online maps of Alton or Alveton are available from a number of sites:

Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
Google Streetview.
National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
OpenStreetMap.
old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Staffordshire newspapers online:

Villages, Hamlets, &c

Cotton or Lower and Upper Cotton
Denstone
Farley