Stoke-on-Trent Audio Tour: Fired Earth

Explore Stoke-on-Trent at your own pace

Stoke proper - a square kilometre between the Minster, the Spode works, the station, and the canal - was the engine room of the British ceramics industry. This tour is not about the great potters' families. It is about the throwers and paintresses, the kiln-firers and flint-grinders, the navvies who cut the canal and the boatmen who legged through Harecastle in the dark, the railwaymen who carried the finished ware south and the hotel staff who fed and housed them. It is about Potter's Rot, the workers' cottages Josiah Spode II built at minimum standard in Penkhull Square, the named casualties on the North Staffordshire Railway's war memorial, and the memorial school that Herbert Minton's workers' skills paid for.

Photo: Leonardo Zorzi, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 9 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 3.3 km (2.0 miles)
• Stops: 8 landmarks, including Stoke-on-Trent railway station, Winton Square, North Stafford Hotel, Winton Square, Stoke-on-Trent, Stoke Town Hall, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent
• Audio: up to 20 minutes of narration
• Starts at: Stoke-on-Trent railway station, Winton Square

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Where you will stop

• Stoke-on-Trent railway station, Winton Square
• North Stafford Hotel, Winton Square, Stoke-on-Trent
• Stoke Town Hall, Glebe Street, Stoke-on-Trent
• Stoke Minster, Stoke-on-Trent
• Trent and Mersey Canal towpath, Stoke-on-Trent
• Spode Museum Trust, Church Street, Stoke-on-Trent
• Herbert Minton Building, London Road, Stoke-on-Trent
• Penkhull Square, Stoke-on-Trent

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Leonardo Zorzi, Dan Stephens (Unsplash); AudaTours.