The Potteries

Stoke on Trent, known locally as The Potteries, is made up of six main towns (not five, as Arnold Bennett recorded in Anna of the Five Towns)
Over the centuries there have been around 1500 potteries and even at the beginning of the 20th century there were several hundred.
However, most kilns were coal fired and the 1956 Clean Air Act meant that the vast majority of potteries could not afford to convert and went out of business.
Many more have gone over the past few decades. Taking a walk, along the towpath by the city centre canals,  is a walk through a graveyard of industrial history.