On the banks of the Trent and Mersey canal in Stoke, labourers in hard hats were starting on a restoration project yesterday to save Britain’s oldest continuously working china factory.
The 150-year-old Middleport factory, a striking building with a traditional brick-built bottle kiln, was taken over last year by the Prince’s Regeneration Trust, a charity set up by Prince Charles, which, with lottery funding and other support, is leading the £9m restoration.
“We don’t see this as a working museum, as some have suggested,” says Ros Kerslake, chief executive of the Prince’s Regeneration Trust. “It’s about keeping a successful ceramics business going in its traditional home.”