Special 'Potteries Bottle Oven Day' events take place at Gladstone Pottery Museum throughout the day:
Places can be booked by calling the museum on 01782 237777
The Last Bottle Oven Firing talk
11.30am Paul Niblett, a member of the organising team for the last firing of a bottle oven in 1978, will be giving a talk all about the final firing. This is an amazing chance to find out what ousters, bungs, bonts and baitings are and hear what it was like to be part of this significant event and the challenges it involved. Lasts about an hour.
Walking with Kilns
10.30am, 1pm and 3.45pm Presentation in the museum’s Twyford Room. This short session will take the public on a virtual tour of bottle ovens using cutting edge technology and showing how HDR photography and 3D visuals are being used by the HAZ project to capture our local history. Admission is free to this event.
Bottle Ovens – The Facts!
2pm Potteries Heritage Society’s Andy Perkin will be quizzing bottle oven blogger and co-author of ‘Bottle Ovens and the Story of the Final Firing’ Terry Woolliscroft in ‘Bottle Ovens – The Facts’. With so many figures bandied around about the number of ovens there were and how many are left, between them they hope to get to the bottom of the issue.
Voices of the Bottle Ovens
2.30pm Potteries Heritage Society present 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 will present a selection which feature bottle ovens and the people who worked in them.
Find out more about Potteries Bottle Oven Day here.