Shards

On our walk we came across a green metal table. There were fish and chip wrappers discarded on it at one end, but also these pottery shards, like an archaeological dig. I didn’t want to disturb them but I took a photo. If you live in Stoke-on-Trent you might look at the backstamps on the back of pottery. I just zoomed in on the mug base it has a green lion printed on it, a scroll or banner shape under that and then just about decipherable ‘Maddocks and Sons Ltd’ there were other words below I couldn’t read. People who look at the bottom of pots sometimes say they are part of the ‘turnover club’. I haven’t looked at the image much yet but I can see a dark band that would encircle a plate with a white interlinked chain on it. Perhaps these came from the waters edge? The small lake at Westport, next to the table, looks to have a lower water level than normal so they might have been scavenged from there.

Potteries

The ‘Potteries’ is the name people call the city of Stoke-on-Trent in the North Midlands of England.

Built on the coalfields of the area, with an abundance of water and clay, it was an ideal place to start making pottery in factories during the industrial revolution. Bottle kilns, or ovens (so called because of their shape) were built across the six towns of Stoke-upon-Trent, Hanley, Burslem, Tunstall, Fenton and Longton. The six towns were bought together as a Federation in the early twentieth century and this created the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

The Potteries Museum and art gallery is crammed with beautiful ceramics and is situated in the Cultural Quarter of the city centre which is in Hanley. Also worth a visit are the Gladstone Pottery museum in Longton and Middleport pottery in Middleport (near Burslem). There are many places to visit here. Hopefully they will all be open again soon.