Source: the venue’s website, checked on 02/11/2026.
In 1888 Burgess & Leigh built a model pottery on the Trent & Mersey Canal in Stoke-on-Trent. A bottle oven, brick workshops, a store of moulds: it is the city’s last 19th-century pottery that has never stopped working. Burleigh tableware is still made here.
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A charity, Re-Form Heritage, owns and runs the Grade II* listed site, and uses it to rescue other buildings at risk in Stoke. In 2024 the National Lottery Heritage Fund awarded it £249,954 for a learning centre and energy savings. In June 2026 the designer Christopher Bailey and a small group of investors acquired Burleigh, and production stays on site.
For a team, the factory tour follows the clay all the way to the cup, Monday to Thursday at 10.45am or 1.15pm and Friday at 10.30am, booking advised. It can be added to hire of the Burgess or Peacock room, with a Create with Clay or Paint-a-Pot workshop and a buffet from the Packing House Café. Stoke-on-Trent is on the London to Manchester line.
Photo credits : Amanda Slater from Coventry, West Midlands, UK (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) ; Mat Fascione (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) ; Andrew Woodvine (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) ; Matthew Chadwick (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0) ; Brian Deegan (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
We design and lead a learning expedition that goes through this place. You can also design it yourself with Agent A\lex.
Agent A\lex
