Gladstone Pottery Museum

By the mid-18th century, the area around Stoke-on-Trent now known as the Potteries had become the world leader in china manufacturing technology. Spode, Wedgewood, Minton and Royal Doulton became household names.

Josiah Wedgewood is the man credited with kick-starting the astonishing success story. As well as a manufacturing technology leader, he also pioneered new working methods of mass-production and he was also a visionary who pre-figured today's move towards private motorways and toll-roads by bankrolling, first, the building of public tramways, and latterly the development of canals with the opening of the Trent & Mersey Canal in 1777.

At the peak of production in the mid-19th century, the output of the five 'towns' within the Stoke potteries - Burslem, Longton, Turnstall, Hanley and Fenton - was to be found on dining tables the world over. At the same time its workers were struggling under a constant 'pea-souper' fog of pollution caused by smoke from the thousands of coal-fired and notoriously inefficient bottle kilns.

Sadly, very little of this world-beating industrial heritage survives. Stoke-on-Trent itself - both in the Hanley centre, and the individual local centres like Burslem - has been greatly affected by the blows of successive factory closures.

The best place to understand the story of the Potteries is the award-winning Gladstone Pottery Museum (01782 319232). In 1974, this - the last complete traditional pottery - was saved from demolition by an enthusiastic local preservation group, and it is now run by Stoke-on-Trent Council.

At this working pottery, you can see craftsmen and women throwing and turning clay on a wheel and also decorating porcelain - though the actual firing is done off-site in modern electric kilns, and the distinctively bottle-shaped brick kilns are not used. It is a fascinating 'live' museum which also includes an excellent short video history presentation, and a tea-room.

In the immediate vicinity of the museum there are a number of factory outlets for the remaining potteries in the Stoke-on-Trent area. Other related attractions include the Etruscan Bone & Flint Mill - ground bone and flint were important ingredients of the glazing process of bone china - at the junction of the Trent & Mersey Canal and the Caldon Canal. Stoke-on-Trent City Museum & Art Gallery (01782 202173) also houses an important collection of the area's wares.

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