Stoke on Trent Part 1

We’ve been meaning to go to Stoke on Trent for a while, as time is getting short for the 2016 visit.

We need more plates for our everyday service (the kids, on the few occasions they have washed up over the years have done so with heavy hands) and we often manage to find a few Christmas presents while we’re over there.

Additionally, I’ve been looking for some decent single plates for food photography on Pies and Prejudice and I haven’t had a Staffordshire oatcake for a while (about 20 years now I actually think about it). Now I have a food blog, today seemed like a good day to break the oatcake drought.

Staffordshire oat cake

I also thought I might get some pictures of urban landscapes, as Stoke still has a great stock of old industrial sites.

For once, everything seemed to (almost) go according to plan.

Aynsley provided slim pickings, though we did replenish our everyday service. Portmeirion was also a bit flat, though we did get a few pictures of a bottle kiln.

That’s a bottle-shaped kiln, not one for making bottles, there are 47 still standing, and they are all listed buildings now, though they aren’t all actually bottle-shaped.

Julia and bottle kilns at Portmeirion shop

3 bottle kilns

THe squre one is a calcining kiln

Our third call was also disappointing (so many places seem to be in decline or making their pots in China) so we looked at the map we’d picked up from Aynsley and typed a postcode into the satnav.

That was how we ended up at Middleport Pottery, and that’s a story for part 2.