the Six Towns
noun[plural]- six former towns in the Potteries region of the English Midlands. The towns were Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Fenton and Longton. They were close to each other and were important centres of the pottery industry from the seventeenth century until, in 1910, they joined together as one town, Stoke-on-Trent. Fictionalized as ‘the Five Towns ’, they became well known as the setting for the novels of Arnold Bennett.