Middleport Pottery: heritage and current manufacturing side by side

In Brief. Middleport Pottery is a late 19th century pottery factory on the Trent and Mersey canal in Stoke-on-Trent. Now a visitor attraction, the charity-owned site still hosts a Burleigh Pottery factory, but also serves both as a heritage site with tours of the factory and a collection of art and craft studios. I took the interesting 90-minute tour, that featured both the history of the site, built as a state-of-the-art Victorian factory, and the current factory that uses a blend of traditional crafts with some modern equipment. The Kiln Yard, featuring a Bottle Oven. What's Here? Located next to the canal, for the efficient importing of coal and clay, and the smooth exporting of finished pottery, the Middleport Pottery was designed as a best-in-breed pottery in its day. Now most of the original buildings remain, largely preserved and restored during the 2010s, and different parts of the site have been put to different purposes. This includes the return of pottery ...