Description:Longton Station in the foreground with the old Phoenix Pottery building behind and the tower of St John The Baptist Church (demolished in 1979) beyond that.
The station, opened in 1848, is on an embankment. The arches on the right carry the lines to the girder bridge over King Street, opposite the Town Hall. The bridge in the centre is a footway to King Street running alongside the Phoenix Works. In the foreground is Baths Road and the photograph was taken from the site of the old Longton Gas Works. This later became the site of supermarkets.
The Phoenix Pottery was built in 1881 for Thomas Forester, a major Majolica producer, and occupied until 1959. Since then it has been a pottery warehouse and later part of a major renovation scheme to accommodate a wide variety of retail, catering, offices and workshop enterprises. There is over 40,000 sq ft of space facing onto King Street. Four of the six bottle ovens in the photograph were demolished in the early 1960s. Other companies associated with the Phoenix Works included John Shaw (Burlington) and Colin McNeal (Zircon sand).