LAST - Working Victorian Pottery in UK - Middleport Pottery - Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, UK.
N 53° 02.481 W 002° 12.587
30U E 552980 N 5877162
Middleport Pottery, dated 1888, is a Victorian pottery that is located on Port Street in Burslem.
Waymark Code: WMZ5Y7
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/15/2018
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Middleport Pottery, a complex of Victorian pottery buildings received the Europa Nostra Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation in 2015.
Middleport Pottery is an historic Grade II* listed site that was built in 1888 for a well-known local ceramics company, Burgess & Leigh Limited. The initials B&L intertwined can be seen below the date. (
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In 2010 the cost of repairing the buildings was so great that the site had no viable operational future, and closure of the site was threatened.
In June 2011 The Prince’s Regeneration Trust / United Kingdom Historic Building Preservation Trust, (UKHBPT) stepped in to save this Victorian pottery from closure and to ensure that Burleigh pottery would continue to be produced in Burslem. They put together a private and public funding package that allowed the restoration and regeneration of the site. The regeneration of the site took three years and cost £9million, it was opened to the public in July 2014. It has resulted in preserving skills and the safeguarding of 50 local jobs and the creation of 66 more.
Middleport Pottery has maintained unbroken pottery production since its Victorian inception and continues as the last working Victorian pottery in the UK. (
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There are numerous news articles about the restoration of this pottery - some can be seen at the following links.
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