The Course of the Trent—A Lowland Stream—Etymological—A Fish-Stream—The Source—The Potteries—Burslem, Etruria, and Josiah Wedgwood—Stoke-upon-Trent—Trentham Hall—Stone—Sandon—Chartley Castle—Ingestre and its Owners—The Sow—Tixall—Essex Bridge—Shugborough—Cannock Chase—Rugeley—Beaudesert—Armitage—The Blyth—Alrewas—The Tame—Burton-upon-Trent—Newton Solney.
Some of our chief English rivers seek out paths for their waters, the motive of which is by no means easy to explain. Father Thames, indeed, goes about this work in a fairly businesslike way. Born on the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds he makes his way to the sea by a tolerably direct course. Not so Trent. Rising on the western slopes of the backbone of England, one would have expected that, like the Weaver on the one side of it, and the Dane on the other, it would have made its way towards the estuaries of the Dee or the Mersey; but it flows first of all nearly south, parallel with the trend of the great hill district of Derbyshire and North Staffordshire, and then after this has sunk down to the lowlands of the latter county, Trent bends towards the east, until the hills are left behind, when it sweeps round to the north, and so makes its way towards the Ouse and the Humber. Thus its course, like that of Dee, still more of Severn, may be roughly likened to a fish-hook. But, unlike these rivers, and like Thames, Trent, throughout its whole course, is a lowland rather than an upland stream. The hill region already mentioned is, indeed, drained by some of its tributaries, and its western slopes give birth to the little stream which first bears the name of Trent, and for a time traverses the North Staffordshire coalfield, but the river soon enters the district composed of sandstones, gravels, and marls (referred by geologists to the Trias), and as these are but rarely either hard or durable, the scenery is neither bold nor conspicuously varied. Such change as it exhibits is due rather to difference of productiveness than to diversity of physical features. In regard to the latter the extremes are only from level plain to undulating hills of moderate elevation, but the former affords every variety between barren moorland and densely wooded or richly cultivated ground.
Michael Drayton thus explains the etymology of Trent, and assigns to it a mystic significance when he tells the tale of
... A long-told prophecy, which ran
Of Moreland, that she might live prosperously to see
A river born of her, who well might reckoned be
The third of this large isle: which saw did first arise
From Arden, in those days delivering prophecies.
To satisfy her will, the wizard answers, Trent.