Power In The Potteries: From Black To Green

The traditions and techniques of making pottery established by the pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were still largely in place by the middle years of the twentieth century. Coal firing was still dominant, and the cycle of loading, firing and unloading kilns meant that at there was at least one of a firm’s bottle oven’s being charged with coal and discharging the smoke that led to the Potteries maintaining an atmosphere and environment of smoke and grime. Smog, smoking bottle ovens and chimneys. The coal industry and its circle of coal mines around Stoke - its huge workforce of miners, its waste tips, coal being transported by steam trains consuming more coal. Coal being shoveled into bottle oven fire mouths. Add to that the steelworks at Shelton Bar - its blast furnaces, the slag heaps and the tipping of slag turning the evening sky to carmine.

But the 1960s to 1980s saw monumental reclamation schemes to remove the pit tips and slag heaps, marl holes and dereliction - creating new parks, walkways and open spaces - culminating in one of the biggest reclamation schemes in Europe: the National Garden Festival in 1986. This had been the site of Shelton Bar steelworks, and is now Festival Park.