Cresswell, Staffordshire

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This article is about the village near Stoke-on-Trent. For the village near Stafford, see Creswell, Staffordshire.

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The Izaak Walton pub

Cresswell is a village in Staffordshire, England. It is approximately one mile SE of Blythe Bridge and has a population of approximately 300.

The "Izaak Walton" public house and restaurant is named after the seventeenth-century fisherman whose book The Compleat Angler is still in publication today. Legend has it that Walton, who was born in Stafford, fished in the River Blithe, which is near the pub. Cresswell has an old Roman Catholic community, which after the Reformation worshipped not at Draycott in the Moors parish church, but in a private chapel in the local manor house called Paynsley Hall. During the English Civil War the hall was first held for Charles I, then garrisoned by Parliamentarian forces before being destroyed.^[1] In 1791 Roman Catholicism was legalised in England and St. Mary's Catholic Church was constructed to serve the local Roman Catholics. The church is now served by the clergy of St. Augustine's, Meir, Stoke-on-Trent.

Although it is still a rural area, the village is the home of the Blythe Colour Works, which was established to produce under-glaze colours for the pottery industry. Cresswell is also the home of Blythe Cricket Club.

Cresswell formerly had a railway station on the Crewe to Derby Line, but, although trains still pass through the village, there are now no stations between Blythe Bridge and Uttoxeter. In the twentieth century there was also a short line from Cresswell to Cheadle (Cheadle Branch Line).