Freddie of the five towns

STOKE ON TRENT never misses opportunities to pay tribute to the favourite sons of the Potteries. Arnold Bennett has a wall mounted memorial, Stanley Matthews has a footballing statue, Reginald Mitchell is remembered with one of his Spitfires. It seemed only fair, when the centenary of film was being celebrated in 1996, that Freddie Jones should be accorded a plaque in his native Longton.

Jones has been acclaimed internationally as a character actor. His credits range from epic films such as Antony and Cleopatra and Far From the Madding Crowd to television series such as Pennies From Heaven and Inspector Morse.

When the honour was first suggested, however, he was embarrassed. "I thought I'd made only about 30 films and considered myself unworthy," he says. "I received a fan letter asking me to check a list of my films. I counted 63 altogether twice as many as I'd thought. Some were rubbish, but some were great, including my leading role for Fellini [in And the Ship Sails On]. So I thought, 'Yes, I've thoroughly justified my plaque.' "

And there it hangs, in the newly refurbished Longton Town Hall, beneath the magnificent green tiled staircase, by the covered market where freshly griddled Staffordshire oatcakes teeter in warm stacks. In nearby Burslem, as Jones diced with the pelican crossings, a van driver thrust his head out of his vehicle to shout "Hi, Freddie". Lately of Stratford, Hollywood and Europe, the burly, silver bearded gent with the fedora and raffishly knotted bow tie was delighted to be home again.

"On my return visits, I just walk around on my own and remember places and characters that have gone," he says. "It's what I call my 'ghost hunting'."

As the home of Royal Doulton, Wedgwood and Spode,van cleef fake necklace alhambra, Jones's city was shaped, glazed and fired into greatness. The great legacy of Arnold Bennett, whose first novel was published 100 years ago this year, has been to remind the world of its undying debt to "The Five Towns" of England's Potteries. Stoke on Trent is, in fact, a federation of six towns. Ribbon like, they run a mere six miles from north to south, from Tunstall, to Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton, where Jones was born in 1927.

Thanks to Bennett,van cleef necklace knock off alhambra, there are even more literary references here than in Hardy's Wessex. In Edwardian Burslem, reinvented as "Bursley", the Old Town Hall was where Denry Machin, of The Card, had the temerity to dance with the Countess of Chell. Come the Millennium, it will house Ceramica, a 3.3 million celebration of Burslem as "The Mother Town of the Potteries".

The building itself is the true glory, however, with its columns, carriage arch and sumptuous four faced clock tower. Above it all, a gleaming gilded angel radiates the same purity that pierced the poisonous pall of the towering bottle shaped kilns of pre war Stoke.

"The air was so thick you could chew it at times," says Jones. "When it was moist it contained sulphuric acid from the coal burning kilns. Your eyes stung merely from being out of doors."

Burslem's venerable old pub, The Tiger, features in at least a dozen of Bennett's stories. Historically, it was where Josiah Wedgwood met James Brindley to discuss the logistics of the new Trent and Mersey Canal. Now, at lunchtimes,van cleef arpels alhambra replica necklace, flat capped old gentlemen puff pipes, nursing halves of Bass, while office girls swig from bottles. "You'd get a long row of women,van cleef arpel knock off necklace, sitting there with a sort of smug self satisfaction . . ." Hands clasped across his belly and smiling beatifically, Jones bravely depicted the maturing flower of local womanhood.

"My mother's piano would start and a single disembodied voice would spontaneously pick up the tune . . . As if possessed, the voice of the actor soared to a strangulated, smoke laden soprano that was not of this pub. ". . . then, like Siegfried Sassoon's poem, 'Suddenly everyone burst out singing . . .' "

Downhill in bustling Hanley, outside the Theatre Royal, he recalled his own early performances. "My first sense of the total magic of the theatre was here for one glorious week with a Scout Gang Show. Maybe it was something to do with the terrific dramatic contrast between the vividly lit stage and the dark bowels of back stage."

We paid homage at the statue of Sir Stanley, whom Freddie watched as a boy, and found the inscription particularly stirring: "His name is symbolic of the beauty of the game, his fame timeless and international . . . a magical player of the people for the people." Once, a souvenir hunter stole away with the maestro's bronze ball. So fierce was the outcry that three days later the ball turned up in a telephone box with a scrawled message of apology.

Stoke is rightly proud of its heroes, footballing or otherwise, and of a local industry that dates from 2000 BC. Next year's Spode Bicentenary will commemorate 200 years of producing fine bone china. Royal Doulton, Spode, Wedgwood and Portmeirion all have lavish visitor centres, while a new 6 million centre being created at Wedgwood will be Europe's largest industrial visitor attraction.

"You can always tell someone who comes from the Potteries," Jones maintains. "They're the ones who start lifting dishes in restaurants to see the name underneath."

His father worked in electrical ceramics, and two of his aunts were free hand painters. "The climax of their career was painting a magnificent bone china dinner service for the marriage of Queen Elizabeth that had a superb letter 'E' with a tiny crown all in 24 carat gold," he says. But there was a dark side to life among the saggar makers, jolleyers, jiggers, fettlers and blungers and other trades so peculiar to The Potteries. "The colours and glazes had lead in them, so lead poisoning was always a risk. When ware was placed for firing, they used ground silica to form a buffer between the pieces. So they contracted silicosis."

Hundreds died from a debilitating lung disease known as "potter's rot". In 1900, the average age of Longton's adults at death was 46. One in four children died in infancy.

Of the bottle ovens, only 37 survive from the 2,000 that seared the North Staffordshire skies. Four are preserved at the Gladstone Museum in Longton, as monuments to an age when every cloud had a sulphur lining. "I've been lost 200 yards from my home because of a yellow fog that was almost palpable," Jones recalls.

With mallards and Canada geese resenting our interruptions, we toured Longton's handsome Victorian park where the young Freddie fished, sailed his toy boat and watched costumed pageants. The actor made his own performing debut in a local Church of England Primary School. "It was a recitation, 'Under a toadstool fast asleep, lay a wee dormouse all in a heap . . .' My late mother dined out on it."

The school survives, as does the narrow back to back street where he was born. "I learnt to ride a bicycle along this street. My father held it by the saddle, then let go. I turned around and found that he wasn't there . . ."

The house where the Jones family lived for more than 30 years is no longer standing, but enough of Villiers Street remains for ghosts to be roused successfully: the old lady who brewed herb beer; another who washed and laid out corpses.

"A lady came out when I walked along here once, saying, 'It's Freddie Jones, isn't it?' And then I said, 'Listen, you've not got to be offended . . . but you were one of the very earliest sexual fantasies of me and all my friends . . . We used to wonder at your loveliness and femininity.' She said: 'Are you pulling my leg?' I said: 'No, I promise you, it's the truth.' And she said: 'Well, thank you very much.' "

The actor told how his grandfather once interrupted lunch to go out and help a small boy who had come to the door complaining that his kite wouldn't fly. "He put more tail on the kite and flew it down that little street," he said.

"And that's what I call beauty, love and 'community'. I'm sorry to go on, but that's what it all means to me. It's what I can relate to. I will continue coming back. People always accuse me of being over dependent upon it emotionally, and think that I should forget it. But that's not me. I'll keep hunting my ghosts."The Bennett connection Events to mark the 100th anniversary of Bennett's first novel, A Man from the North, culminate in an Arnold Bennett Celebration Weekend on September 18 20.