Description:Placing at Burgess & Leigh's pottery, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent. Loading saggars in the bottle kiln. Saggars are placed in ‘bungs’ about 16 feet high in concentric circles. The ladders are known as ‘osses’ and were removed before the kiln was fired.
Established in 1851, Hulme and Booth's Central Pottery in Burslem was taken over in 1862 by William Leigh and Frederick Rathbone Burgess, trading as Burgess & Leigh. The works moved first in 1868 to the Hill Pottery in Burslem and then in 1889 to the present factory at Middleport. During the 1920s the company expanded its tableware production and began using the ‘Burleigh’ trademark.
Middleport Pottery is still producing Burleigh ceramics and in 2014 a new visitor centre and factory tour was opened by the Prince's Regeneration Trust. It is the only totally intact working Victorian pottery in Stoke-on-Trent.