Every August 29th
the date in 1978 when a Potteries bottle oven
was kindled for the very last time.
was kindled for the very last time.
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| #PotBOD |
Virtual Events for Potteries Bottle Oven Day 2020
Details here>
Gladstone Pottery Museum
Potteries Heritage Society
What happened on Potteries Bottle Oven Day 2019?
The LAST BOTTLE OVEN FIRING talk11.30am Paul Niblett, a member of the organising team for the last firing of a bottle oven in 1978, gave a talk about the final firing.
WALKING WITH KILNS
Presentations in the museum’s Twyford Room took the public on a virtual tour of bottle ovens using cutting edge technology and showing how HDR photogrammetry and 3D visuals are being used by the HAZ project to capture our local history.
BOTTLE OVENS - THE FACTS
Potteries Heritage Society’s Andy Perkin queried the many figures bandied around about the number of bottle ovens there were and how many are left.
VOICES OF THE BOTTLE OVENS
The Potteries Heritage Society presented extracts from the Revealing Voices project audio archives and the Last Bottle Oven Firing Tapes. Recordings made over 40 years ago by Radio Stoke producer Arthur Wood and Terry Woolliscroft who was one of the organisers of the last firing. The audio has been carefully restored, digitised and catalogued by the project team. Andy Perkin presented a selection which featured bottle ovens and the people who worked in them.
LITTLE LONGTON BOTTLE OVEN BUS TOUR
Saturday 31 August. Visitors joined short tours to see most of the remaining bottle ovens in Longton on board a PMT vintage bus. Information provided on-board by your 'conductor'.
Throughout August
The Last Bottle Oven Firing Display. Curated by those who took part in the last bottle oven firing in 1978 it explained the process of preparing and coal firing a bottle oven to produce pottery. It shows how the staff and volunteers at Gladstone Pottery Museum took on the challenge of firing an oven one last time so the process could be recorded for posterity.
What happened on Potteries Bottle Oven Day 1978?
On 29th August 1978 a traditional Potteries bottle oven was kindled and fired for the very last time. The event was organised by the 19 staff and 72 volunteers of Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, and hit the national headlines in print and broadcast media. It was a proud day for the Potteries and was described as 'its biggest cultural event of the 20th century'.Huge brick-built bottle ovens and kilns, integral to a pottery factory and essential in pottery manufacture, were once the dominant feature of the Potteries landscape. At their peak, around 2,000 existed in the City of Stoke-on-Trent. Most potters' bottle ovens were fired once a week, some twice. At each firing at least 10 tons of coal was burnt in each oven, with some very large examples consuming over 30 tons per firing. Oven firings could last over 72 hours and filled the air with thick, black, choking smoke.
Ultimately, the Clean Air Act of 1956 put a stop to their use and sealed the fate of the traditional coal-fired oven.
By 1960 there were less than 200 operable coal-fired bottle ovens in north Staffordshire. New kilns, fired with gas or electricity, had replaced them. By 1963 all bottle ovens were redundant and the skills of the people who used them were gradually being lost.
Now only 47, complete with their bottle-shaped chimney, remain standing. The bottle oven chosen for the final firing formed part of the Hudson & Middleton works in Normacot Road, Longton. The bottle oven still exists today.
For the Last Bottle Oven Firing it was filled with 1174 saggars containing specially made commemorative pottery. The eight firemouths around the oven were then filled with rolled newspaper, dry wooden sticks and 4 cwt (200kgs) of coal. At precisely 12:37 the first firemouth was kindled and over the next 31 hours about 12 tons of coal were burnt to raise the temperature in the oven to around 1050°C to fire the pottery inside.
The firing was an outstanding success. The resulting pottery was fired to perfection. The glazed surface was lustrous and bright. The pottery and saggars used in the firing were sold to raise much needed funds to help preserve the bottle ovens at Gladstone Pottery Museum which, today, is a multi-award-winning tourist attraction in the region.
Potteries Bottle Oven Day - the day the last oven was kindled - so special for the people of the Potteries.
https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/potteries-bottle-oven-day/