The North Staffs Railway Traffic Committee decided in October 1850 to convert the existing water bailiff’s house into an inn which we know today as the Hotel Rudyard and also to erect a cottage for the labourers at Rudyard; this is now a private dwelling. In 1869, a Mr Henry Platt took over the tenancy...
One has to imagine a time when what was really quite an isolated community in the Staffordshire Moorlands was almost overnight converted to a tourist destination owing to the arrival of the railway. Throngs of people arriving from the towns and cities required entertainment and refreshment and the generally low paid inhabitants grasped at the opportunity to...
Horton St Michael’s is a small rural village First School set in the heart of the Staffordshire Moorlands, close to Leek. It currently has 82 pupils on roll, from a varied catchment of mixed socio-economic groups, largely consisting of a farming community, drawing on the two villages of Horton and Rudyard. Increasingly, pupils are attracted from further afield from...
Rudyard falls within the parish of Horton but has always shown an independent streak in denominational preferences. Quaker house meetings were held in the area in the 17th century and the first Methodist society was formed at Bank House in 1791. With the encouragement of Horton Parish Church the society held meetings only on week...
Rudyard village consists primarily of four roads which meet at the mini-roundabout in front of what was the Railway Hotel, a location known in the past as Harper’s Gate: Rudyard Road (B5331) arrives from the A523 Leek to Macclesfield road, under the railway bridge, across the feeder canal and up the hill Lake Road runs...
Before the Reservoir The village of Rudyard as we know it today is largely the result of the creation, at the end of the 18th century, of a reservoir in the valley drained by the Dunsmore Brook, to supply the Caldon Canal. Before this time Rodehyerd, or Rudierd as it was known, consisted of scattered...
