Pottery & Archaeology Tour

In early October this year Gillian and
Alan McMillan led a group of potters
on a tour of potteries, Fine Craft
Galleries, archaeological sites, castles
and the museums of Stoke-on-Trent.
Almost every day we visited well-
known potters in their studios and
watched some part of their process.

The tour in a 16-seater minibus took
us from London, west to the beautiful
counties of Wiltshire, Dorset,

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Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, with
stops for walks around fascinating
ancient sites, and in picturesque towns
to see the best Craft Guild Galleries.
Finding remote country potters led us
on what became a ‘Leach pilgrimage,’
with the town of St. Ives at the south-
ern tip of Cornwall as the delightful
Mecca.

The tour was completed with a side

trip up the Wye Valley in Wales, with
visits to Chepstow Castle and Tintern
Abbey and well-known potter Walter

Potters Guild of British Columbia Newsletter

Keeler, and a motorway drive to “The
Potteries” of Stoke-on-Trent. The last
day there completed the adventure
with a look at the history of ceramics
in England at the Hanley Potteries
Museum and the experience of a 19th
Century coal-fired pottery factory at
the Gladstone Museum where we
were thrilled to see some of the last

brick bottle kilns.
Gladstone Pottery Museum

Gillian McMillan

Clockwise from top left:

Clive Bowen sliptrailing.

John Leach at Wheel

Richard Batterham pulling a handle
Jonathan Garratt throwing a flowerpot.
Walter Keeler at wheel

Photos courtesy Gillian McMillan

January 2006