Stoke-on-Trent Potteries

Local coal, clay and marl put the pottery industry here from the seventeenth century, and by the nineteenth the six towns of Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton were producing on a scale that supplied much of the world; Josiah Wedgwood, Spode and Minton all worked here, and bone china and transfer printing were developed in the district. Around two thousand bottle-shaped kilns once stood over the valley, burning coal so heavily that the sky was permanently dirty; the Clean Air Act ended them and about forty-seven survive, the best group at Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton, a complete Victorian works kept with its kilns, workshops and a gallery of Victorian toilets. Middleport Pottery still produces on a canal-side Victorian site, and Wedgwood's museum holds the firm's archive.

What you actually see

• Gladstone Pottery Museum - a complete Victorian works with standing bottle kilns.
• Middleport Pottery - a canalside factory still in production since 1888.
• The Wedgwood collection - the firm's archive and ceramics on one site.
• The surviving kilns - about forty-seven left of some two thousand.

When to go

Year-round; most sites are indoors. The British Ceramics Biennial runs in autumn in a former factory. Factory tours often do not run at weekends when production stops.

Honest expectations

The six towns are spread out and a car or frequent buses are needed between sites. Much of the industrial fabric has been demolished and the city centre is patchy. Working factory tours depend on production schedules and book ahead.

Nearby

Alton Towers and the Churnet Valley lie east; the Peak District is north.