The River Trent winds its way through north Staffordshire, where six towns once known simply as The Potteries evolved into the heart of Britain’s ceramics industry.
From the late 1600s, a fortunate mix of local clays, plentiful coal and entrepreneurial potters transformed this corner of the Midlands into a global centre for everyone from kitchen-table retailers to exclusive porcelain collectors.
The Six Towns
By the early eighteenth century, six settlements clustered along the Trent and its tributaries had each developed a distinctive character:
Burslem
Often called the ‘Mother Town’, Burslem was home to many of the earliest small-scale kilns. Its potters
pioneered creamware – light-coloured earthenware prized for its pale, uniform finish.
Hanley
As production expanded, Hanley came to dominate mass-market ware. Large factories produced transfer-printed designs that made decorative dinner services affordable for the rising middle classes with their growing taste for luxury.
Tunstall
Known for its high-quality stoneware and ornamental art pottery, Tunstall firms often experimented with coloured glazes and shape innovations.
Longton
Ironstone china – robust, durable tableware – became Longton’s hallmark. Its factories found a balance
between sturdiness and style, winning favour in both domestic and export markets.
Fenton
A smaller centre, Fenton specialised in decorative pieces and limited-run items, allowing it to cater to niche tastes and designer collaborations.
Stoke-on-Trent
Hard-paste porcelain and bone china took root here, with factories driving technical advances in translucency and the finest detail.
Although each town carved out its own niche, competition and co-operation went hand in hand.
In 1910, the six towns formally united as the county borough of Stoke-on-Trent – not just to streamline local government, but to present a single, stronger identity on the world stage.
Key Types Of Ware
The Staffordshire potteries produced a huge range of ceramics, making use of
local resources and responding to changing tastes:
Earthenware
Fired at lower temperatures, earthenware remained the region’s bread-and-butter. From plain red terracotta to refined creamware (Josiah Wedgwood’s special formula), earthenware balanced affordability with decoration. Evolutions such as pearlware (with its subtle bluish tinge) and transfer-printed wares featuring detailed scenes or floral motifs) appealed to wide audiences.
Stoneware
Ironstone china, developed in the early nineteenth century is strong and crack resistant, making it good for heavy-use applications, from mixing bowls to pipework, but also with decorative potential. Decorated with underglaze painting or moulded reliefs, stoneware bridged function and style.
Porcelain and Bone China
At higher firing temperatures, Staffordshire factories mastered both soft-paste and hard-paste porcelain.
The introduction of bone china – mixing fine white clay with calcined animal bone ash – yielded an even whiter, slightly translucent material.
These premium wares found favour in aristocratic homes and foreign courts and fine bone china is often seen as the high water mark of quality pottery.
Sanitary Ware
At the less glamorous end of the spectrum, in the late nineteenth century, many potteries branched into sanitary ceramics – sinks, toilets, baths and urinals – responding to public health reforms and the demand for glazed, easy-to-clean surfaces.
Factories adapted their kilns and glazes to produce vitrified sanitary ware that was durable, hygienic and visually compatible with domestic interiors.
This helped sustain the industry well into the twentieth century.
Famous Staffordshire Names
A handful of companies came to symbolise Staffordshire’s pottery prowess:
Josiah Wedgwood & Sons (est.1759)
Perhaps the best-known name in pottery, Wedgwood combined scientific rigour with marketing flair.
His creamware Queen’s Ware became a staple across Europe, and he secured royal patronage from many European royal households.
Spode (est. 1770):
Josiah Spode perfected underglaze blue transfer printing and refined the formula for bone china, laying the groundwork for modern fine china production.
Minton (est. 1793)
Thomas Minton’s firm gained acclaim for its huge variety of ornate designs, as well as contributions including murals for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and decorative floor tiles in public buildings from the Houses of Parliament to the US Capitol.
Royal Doulton (roots from 1815)
From a successful start in sewage pipes and sanitary ware, Doulton expanded into studio pottery in the early twentieth century, with a huge range of stoneware jugs, vases and more.
Aynsley
Famous for delicate floral patterns and teasets, Aynsley china became an afternoon tea favourite with the
British Royal family. Burleigh: Middleport-based Burleigh producede arthenware tableware well into the late twentieth century, preserving eighteenth-century decorative style.
Moorcroft (est. 1897)
Renowned in particular for its ‘tubelined’ hand painted art pottery, Moorcroft pieces are highly collectible thanks to their rich, jewel-like glazes and distinctive floral designs
From Boom To Reinvention
Staffordshire’s pottery heyday spanned the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the twentieth century brought challenges. Overseas competition, rising costs and changing consumer habits led to factory closures and consolidation.
Yet the region’s expertise proved adaptable. Many firms shifted focus into new areas and new applications:
Technical Ceramics
Factories began producing insulators for the burgeoning electrical industry, laboratory ware for science and specialised ceramics for engineering uses.
Sanitary and Domestic Ceramics
Even as decorative demand waned, sanitary ware – now integral to modern bathrooms – provided a
steady market. Major manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent, including Armitage Shanks, supplied bathroom suites and toilets to the world, and you’ll see their name in bathrooms to this day
Designer Collaborations
To appeal to new audiences, surviving potteries partnered with contemporary designers, producing limited edition ranges that married heritage techniques with modern aesthetics.
Apprenticeship schemes and heritage centres, such as the Potteries Museum in Hanley and Middleport Pottery in Burslem, help preserve traditional skills. These popular visitor destinations host demonstrations
of throwing, decoration and firing, displaying techniques that have changed little in 300 years.
A Living Legacy
Stoke-on-Trent remains the world’s most famous ceramics centre, even if the scale of production is
much reduced. The city’s six towns each show traces of their industrial past: Georgian terraces built for kiln workers, former factory sites converted into workshops, and street names recalling long-vanished
potbanks.
Visitors can tour working factories, browse studio galleries and follow the ‘Ceramic Mile’ on the Trent and
Mersey Canal, where wharves once teemed with earthenware bound for export.