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 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY hard water beneath the town of Burton, and largely utilized for the making of beer, comes in part from that source. 8 The limestone district in north-east Staffordshire does not get the full benefit of the streams that pass through it, owing to the porous character of the rocks, and to fissures through which much of the water disappears. A notable example of this may be seen in the Manifold valley, where the rivers Hamps and Manifold run underground for several miles of their course to reappear again together at Ham. 9 It was along the river valleys that the most important towns of mediaeval Staffordshire were to be found Stafford, for instance, at the junction of several valleys encircled by small hills, Lichfield and Tamworth, respectively the centres of the ecclesiastical and political life of the old Mercian kingdom, Burton on the banks of the Trent, the seat of an ancient monastery dating back to the tenth century. Up to the eighteenth century the population was fairly evenly distributed over the county, with the exception of the barren moorland regions in the north and south. Its economic prosperity depended mainly upon agriculture, carried on chiefly in the well-watered fertile plain which lies between the northern and southern coalfields, and which is still largely an agricultural region. At the present day the greater part of the population is found massed together in two great industrial regions, known respectively as the Potteries and the Black Country, in the neighbourhood of the two great coalfields. It is here that the large towns of modern Staffordshire are to be found, for Stafford is no longer ' the most considerable town in the county, with the exception of Lichfield,' as it was in the time of Defoe (1778). 10 Of the four largest towns, judged by the last census return (1901), three, Wolverhampton, Walsall, and West Bromwich, are in South Staffordshire, whilst the fourth largest, Hanley, is, of course, the chief of the pottery towns, being a county borough, but it was unknown to mediaeval Staffordshire, save as an insignificant part of the ancient parish of Stoke upon Trent. The situation of these North Staffordshire pottery towns is interesting and significant, showing that the manufacture of pottery has from very early times been the staple industry of the district. For though as towns they are of comparatively modern growth, they date back to early times as villages, and they are not situated along the outcrops of the main seams of coal, but extend in an almost continuous line from Longton in the south to Tunstall in the north along the outcrop of the quick burning coals, clays, and marls, which were once used in the manufacture of the coarse pottery of the early days, and are still used for making the ' saggers ' in which the ware is placed for firing in the ovens. Newcastle-under-Lyme is not, strictly speaking, within the Potteries, being situated on a wide strip of barren measures let down by the Apedale Fault between the pottery towns on the east and the 8 H. Evershed, ' Agricultural Surv. of Staff.' Journ. Roy. Agric. Sac. (2nd Ser.), vol. v, 1869, p. 296. 9 See Dr. Darwin's description of these rivers. The Botanic Garden, Part ii, Canto iii, 129 : ' Where Hamps and Manifold their cliffs among On beds of lava sleep in coral cells Each in his flinty channel winds along, And sigh o'er jasper fish and agate shells, With lucid lines the dusky moor divides Till where famed Ham leads his boiling floods Hurrying to intermix their sister tides. Thro' flowery meadows and impending woods, Three thousand steps in sparry clefts they stray Pleas'd with light spring they leave the dreary night ! Or seek thro' sullen mines their gloomy way ; And mid circumfluent surges rise to light.' 10 Defoe,, Tour through Great Britain (8th ed.), ii, 358. 277