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The Arts Society, Wilmslow Gladstone Pottery Museum & Thursday, March 19th, 2020

The Gladstone Pottery Museum is a Grade ll listed, working museum of a medium-sized coal-fired pottery, typical of those once common in North during the industrial revolution in the 18th century to the mid 20th century. The Gladstone is a complex of buildings from two works, the Gladstone and the Roslyn. The kilns, of which there are less than 50 surviving bottle ovens in Stoke- on-Trent and only a scattering elsewhere in the UK, are protected. The museum is centred on the Roslyn pottery with its two biscuit ovens, two larger glost ovens and two enamel kilns. A tandem compound steam engine by Marshall & Sons, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire is in place but is now turned by an electric motor.

The museum allows the visitor to explore the bottle kilns and exhibits, the principal ancillary rooms: the engine house, the slip room, making workshop. It shows aspects of working with clay- including hands on displays of throwing, moulding and decorating. Colour and gilding is presented as interpretive panels. Galleries explain the history of the tile (pressing, glazing, decoration) and the history of sanitary ware, privies, earth closets and water closets. Gladstone was not a famous pottery but was typical of hundreds of similar factories making everyday ceramic items for the mass market

Ford Green Hall is a Grade II listed farmhouse and historic house museum. The oldest parts of the house date from the late 16th century, with one wing being either added or greatly repaired at some point in the early 18th century. In its grounds, there also stands an 18th-century dovecote which shares the listed building status of the main farmhouse. Originally, the house stood in 36 acres of farmland but this has been gradually encroached upon so that now it is surrounded by comparatively small grounds. Ford Green Hall is a museum furnished as a 17th-century yeoman farmer's house. The museum includes a number of original textiles, ceramics and pieces of furniture. In 2014, Stoke City Council handed over the management to Ford Green Hall Ltd, a charitable organisation led by local volunteers. The museum's collection is "Designated Outstanding" by the Arts Council .

With thanks to Wikipedia, Visit Stoke, Stoke Museums and Ford Green Hall