History Monthly Extra: Adie’s Alley

Hope you’ve been enjoying Philip Leason’s excellent series on the meaning and history of Stone’s street names. We set a bit of a teaser in Part 1 – from where does Adie’s Alley get its name? Philip – the chairman of Stone Historical Society – explains all…

Adie’s Alley gets it name from the shop of Thomas G. Adie & Co which was located where Hammersley’s bakery is today. The business was established in 1820 and they were stationers and printers and also sold fancy goods such as Royal Worcester porcelain, Royal Doulton etc. Many of the old postcards of Stone were produced by Adie’s. For the visitor to Stone they also sold crested pottery souvenirs, but as the town did not have an official crest in those days they either used the crest of Earl St. Vincent or that of Staffordshire and just painted “Stone” underneath. Originally the printing works were at the rear of the shop and in fact there is a hand-operated crane which was used for the paper etc that is still in existence within the building today.

In 1906 the company transferred the printing works to the Victoria Printing works in Mill Street. They printed illustrated booklets, guides etc but their most popular publication was Adie’s Annual, which listed information on the town and a list of names of all the residents.

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The business was sold in 1942, the shop being purchased by WHSmith and the printing works by R.W. Hourd & Son of Stafford. From 6th November 1948 until it was later printed at Stafford, the “Stone Guardian was printed at the works. In 1952 Hourd’s closed the works and most of the staff moved to Stafford.

The old printing works was later used as part the adjacent glass factory until the early 1970s when they were leased to the Stone Royal Naval Association as a club and its headquarters, and was renamed “St. Vincent House.” The premises later became the Combined Services Club until 1997 when it closed and the building was demolished to form part of the supermarket site.

If you haven’t seen the first two parts of Philip’s history of Stone street names, here are the links: Part 1 / Part 2

The Stone Historical and Civic Society meets on the third Wednesday of each month from September to June in St Michael’s Hall, Lichfield Street, at 7.30pm. For further information contact Philip by emailing p.leason@btinternet.com