Energy prices are shattering Britain’s remaining potteries

The ceramics industry of Stoke-on-Trent is one of the great survivors of the Victorian era. At its height, some 70,000 people were employed by the likes of Wedgwood and Spode to work in the potteries. Despite the Clean Air Act of 1956 – which banned coal-fired kilns – the deindustrialisation of the 1980s and the struggle to compete against the rise of cheaply made Chinese goods, the industry lives on and still employs around 7,000 people, manufacturing everything from teapots to tiles for the London Underground.

Stoke can at times seem...