GeoGraph - photograph every grid square

The Bottle Kiln

The Bottle Kiln is an art gallery with craft and gift shops, a buttery cafe and a Japanese Garden. It has been transformed from the original kiln on the site and an information board inside includes this:
"This site was originally an estate sawmill making pit-props for the Newdigate Estate coal mines. In the mid 19th century additional buildings were erected to house a small brick works using materials from a nearby clay pit. The bricks were fired in beehive kilns.

Two bottle-neck kilns were built by the 'West Hallam Art & Earthenware Company' in the early 1920s utilising the earlier buildings and adding further workshops and a boiler house with a square chimney. The pottery failed in 1933. One kiln was demolished in the 1950s causing local concern and the present outer kiln shell was registered as a 'listed' building.

The Stone family purchased the derelict site in 1983. Charles Stone designed and built the present complex of which only the kiln shell is an original building, with substantial help from his sons. The business here has been run by the Stone family ever since."