Middleport Pottery (Burgess And Leigh)

SJ 8649 SW, 613-1/11/104

STOKE ON TRENT, MIDDLEPORT, PORT STREET (south-west side), Middleport Pottery (Burgess & Leigh)

(Formerly Listed as: PORT STREET Middleport Pottery: Bottle Kiln in premises occupied by Burgess Leigh Ltd.)

20/08/79

II*

Pottery works. 1888-1889. Brick and terracotta with plain tiled roofs. Main range housing printing shops, offices and show rooms, to Port Street, of two storeys and 34 bays, articulated by advanced gables at intervals, with pediments carried on terracotta scrolls containing Diocletian windows. All windows have double-ring cambered heads, and are grouped in pairs or singly giving a rhythm to the facade. Entrance beneath pedimented gable to the right, with double stepped brick arch and narrower foot-door alongside. Cartouche in pediment with date and name: "Middleport Pottery". Terracotta eaves cornice. Axial stacks. A series of workshop buildings arranged within the rear yard still enables the original production processes to be traced, with the former engine house to the east, the preparation and making areas adjacent and to the north, and the single surviving biscuit kiln at the centre of the site, with a broad circular hovel. Production process finished at the western side of the site, and there is a surviving warehouse range and loading cranes alongside the canal. The factory was built as a new complex for an established company and was seen at the time as a model factory designed with a logical production plan incorporating linear movement with some sideways movement reflecting the quantity and range of production on the site. (Stoke on Trent Historic Buildings Survey; Baker D: Potworks: London: 1991-: P.89-93).

Listing NGR: SJ8603749304