Gladstone Pottery Museum

We visited the Gladstone Pottery Museum at the weekend. It's the last remaining complete 'bottle kiln' pottery factory in Stoke on Trent. The area is also known as the Potteries due to it's heritage as the home of companies such as Wedgwood, Portmeirion, Spode etc.

The Gladstone factory was saved in the 1970's not because it's special, but because it was typical of the thousands of small factories that existed in the city during the 18th, 19th and early 20th century. It has been carefully preserved and restored so that it provides a fascinating insight into what conditions were like for workers during it's glory days in the late 19th century. Children as young as 7 worked 12 hour days in roasting hot furnaces, women frequently died in their teens of lead or arsenic poisoning and the average life expectancy of a pottery worker was 41. Still think your work is bad?

The process for producing crockery was slow, inefficient, dangerous and unreliable, but the quality of the finished product was remarkably high. The craftsmanship, effort and ingenuity required to create a simple cup or plate amazed me and I now have a totally different view of the china that commands such high prices today. I think if more people understood the manufacturing process for something they take for granted, companies like Wedgwood would face a brighter future than they do today.

I even got to 'throw a pot'. It isn't the best pencil holder you'll ever see, but I'm proud of it!

If you are ever in the area wondering what to do, it was a great day out for the whole family, including grandparents and small children.