Minkstone Works bottle oven

3D Model

This grade II listed, up-draught, coal-fired, skeleton-type pottery kiln is located on a former pottery factory site in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent. In north Staffordshire, the use of coal-fired, bottle-shaped ovens in the firing of pottery dates back to at least the late-17th-century, and variations on this basic design persisted until the mid-20th-century, when the Clean Air Acts in combination with new gas- and electric-fired alternatives eventually led to their demise. This example, present by at least 1947, was originally enclosed within a building and consists of a firing chamber with a series of 8 firemouths around its base. An enclosing structure supporting the bottle-shaped chimney stack is separated from the firing chamber by a small gap, distinctive of skeleton-type kilns. It is one of 50 surviving pottery ovens and kilns in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, known generically as ‘bottle ovens’, that are subject to survey as part of the Stoke-on-Trent Ceramic Heritage Action Zone.