John Tams, Crown Works Potteries - Longton, Stoke-on-Trent - April 2011

[jST]

Visited with Zero.

Speed exploring at it's finest. After a little poke around another couple of pottery works without fruit, we headed over to Tams and only had an hour's parking paid for due to the lack of pound coins so we had to jog round this one... Zero still wasn't tempted to go hand held shooting (it's the future)

Quite a small pottery works in comparison to some of the larger sites in Stoke and surroundings. It had been bashed around a bit, especially in the offices above and around the kiln floor. I don't think I've seen such an enormity of left over paper work... quite astounding as it was strewn asunder throughout the entire upper floors of the buildings.

A lot of unused fired pottery (mostly mugs and teapots) remained, as did their moulds which were interesting to examine.

Some history of the company and Crown Works.

In 1864 John Tams and William Lowe were two pottery companies who came from a partnership "Tams & Lowe" which split up in 1874.

John Tams then formed the company on his own, in 1903 became John Tams & Son and in 1912 John Tams Ltd.

Tams Group Limited was formed in April 2000. It was a management buy in of part of the former John Tams Group PLC, which went into receivership in February 2000.

Tams Group Limited bought the rights to Tams, Royal Grafton and Grafton Living. Marketing these brands and still manufacturing in Longton, Stoke on Trent - in 2002 was the biggest ceramic employer in Longton and one of the biggest mugs manufacturer in Europe.

The company operated from the Crown Works on The Strand in Longton and also had the Blythe, Sutherland and Atlas works in Longton - and a warehouse at the former Monarch flatware site in Fenton. In 2006 the group went into receivership and finally closed.

Some photos:





















Thanks for stopping by

[The Littlest Jellyfish]

Great work as usual. I'm like the kid who got expensive toys for Christmas and just wants to play with the cardboard box they came in, cos my favourite of all these is the Sarsons in the canteen!

[Satsukisan]

Great processing

[Nicola]

Great work as usual. I'm like the kid who got expensive toys for Christmas and just wants to play with the cardboard box they came in, cos my favourite of all these is the Sarsons in the canteen!

That was my favourite too

[skin]

Lovely take on this.

[Canonite]

Nice work!

[Only2Eyes]

Lovely stuff mate, like it a lot.

[BA]

Very nice
Lots of stuff still left in there