Some days out are just work, work, work

By Kate Simon

A blue plaque was unveiled this month at the site of the building where the Match Girls went on strike in 1888 and sparked an explosion in trade unionism. The commemoration has been a long time coming and is perhaps a sign of our current reality check about British history and the role of ordinary people. Good to see that English Heritage, which runs the London blue plaque scheme, is actively encouraging more suggestions for working-class stories to be remembered.

It is a shame that the Bryant and May factory in East London, location of this historic strike, isn’t still standing. But there are plenty of industrial heritage buildings, structures and landscapes around the country where you can appreciate the inventiveness, toil and experiences of the communities whose labour, often carried out in intolerable conditions, has transformed society over the centuries.

Some are still places of work. Middleport Pottery in Burslem (pictured), with its historic bottle kiln, will be familiar to fans of the TV show The Great Pottery Throw Down. This factory is the home of Burleigh, one of many potteries that made Stoke-on-Trent the global capital of ceramics and earned it the nickname The Potteries. Here, crockery, ornaments and industrial ware were produced and shipped out along the canals to Liverpool and from there to the four corners of the world.

Take a tour of Middleport and you can see Burleigh’s craftspeople decorating ceramics using the traditional method of underglaze ‘tissue-transfer’. It’s the only place where this technique is still employed. Opposite the entrance to the pottery, three Victorian terraced houses fitted with period fixtures and furnishings from the 1950s and 1960s opened to the public last month. Titled How we Lived at Harper Street, they’re the final part of the regeneration of the terrace, with other houses featuring exhibitions that tell the stories of the potters and the area since the 1890s when the terrace was built.

At Coldharbour Mill in Devon, production has been continuous since 1797, and you can see current employees at work making textiles, rugs and other woollen goods. John Boyd Textiles in Somerset has been weaving horsehair since 1837 and the original looms are put to use on today’s orders. But industrial heritage attractions that also function as a place of production are rare. Most just demonstrate the processes that took place within their walls. 

That’s the deal at Derby’s new Museum of Making, which opened last year in one of the world’s earliest factories, John Lombe’s water-powered 18th Century silk mill. It’s part of the Derwent Valley Mills UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as the birthplace of the modern factory.

The museum gathers the threads of Derby’s different industries in one place, from the manufacture of Rolls-Royce engines to the production of fabric. While you’re there, don’t miss three works by the artist and photographer Red Saunders, which reveal decisive moments in the struggle for equality, democracy and social justice.

Flaxmill Maltings in Shrewsbury dubs itself the world’s first skyscraper, because the Main Mill was constructed in 1797 using a pioneering iron frame. It’s about to reopen following a five-year restoration project led by Historic England with new exhibits and tours. The mill features in the European Route of Industrial Heritage, a useful website that allows you to plot your way around sites that take your fancy across Britain and beyond.

A rather more unusual historic workplace, a cobalt mine abandoned in the 19th Century, has just been revealed at Alderley Edge in Cheshire. Personal objects and equipment discarded by the miners who worked here, as well as inscriptions on the rocks, have been photographed and catalogued by the cave’s owner, the National Trust, but left in place as a time capsule. While you can take tours of some of the caves, you’ll have to take a virtual look at this newly discovered mine. One for the armchair traveller, beer in hand.

Phil’s beer notes

If you can manage to heave yourself out of that armchair, a trip to Burslem would not be complete without sampling the beers from the local brewer, Titanic, ideally at its original pub, the Bulls Head. Down in Devon, you’ll be looking to quaff your pint under a thatched roof, and the Drewe Arms in the Blackdown Hills has one of those, along with a choice of local ales. A short spin (geddit) from John Boyd in Castle Cary, you’ll find the Stag’s Head at Yarlington serving ales from nearby Wild Beer among others.

Whenever I have to wait for a train at Derby, which seems to happen quite a lot, I always try to nip over the road to one of my favourite pubs, the Brunswick Arms, a multi-roomed haven with its own brewery out the back. Shrewsbury has a lot of good pubs, but for something in the modern idiom try Tap and Can. Opened in 2019, it pours an interesting range of draught craft and cask, plus loads of cans and bottles.