Retrospective - Closing Time

We often visit Stoke when in the UK. Noi likes to look at her 'China Bone' and we've bought a few pieces over the years from the Potteries. On our original sortie there the first of the famous five towns we found ourselves in was Burslem, the northernmost. We parked near a small factory outlet for Royal Doulton on Nile Street which had a couple of antique shops nearby in which Noi got heavily involved in discussions over a Royal Albert tea service, which we didn't buy.

Burslem's glories were fading then. The rather grand town hall stood empty, but next to it was a modern building named Ceramica, a kind of museum of the Potteries. There was a sense of something remaining and the faint possibility of renewal. Now those glories have gone completely. The factory outlet closed at least four years ago, but the closing down sign remains. Ceramica was empty when we went just before Christmas. (For refurbishment? No information.) The antique shops are boarded up and the boards themselves are decaying.

Three years ago we went into an arts centre there. On display were poignant photographs of workers making their way home form the final shift when the last working factory for Royal Doulton in Burslem closed. That had been just a year or so previously. This year the centre was closed (or looked it. We didn't try to get in. I didn't want to see the same pictures still there, just older.)

We stood on the hill that rises above the empty town hall. A cliched but all too real chill wind was blowing. Two days before Christmas and hardly a soul around. Still, I suppose this is what comes everywhere in the end, at that moment when history has passed you by.