I am talking chimney pots! Yes, chimney pots - I know, the woman’s mad, but look at them. They are beautiful. Symbols of an industrial history.  They can still be put a good use and can even be restored to their former glory.

I originate from Stoke-on-Trent otherwise known as The Potteries - an area famous through the decades for its fine porcelain and pottery. Cups, saucers and plates weren’t the only products produced under the banner of ‘Pottery’, things like transformers, ornaments and chimney pots became as famous, in their own rights, as their more well known ‘cousins’.

In my opinion, one of the last bastions of working class Stoke is Longport and here at the end of Station Street can be found an old Co-op building stocked to its gunnel’s with Chimney Pots - and we are talking in the thousands - all standing tall alongside barrow loads of Victorian wrought iron work and furniture. A wonderful glory hole, a place you can spend hours of pleasurable rummaging! And all of it is for sale.  This is were you will find the business called Cherished Chimneys, a company run by husband and wife team Lance and Steph Bates, a coupler passionate about chimney pots and who search the land to find more to cherish and restore.  They have a vast historical knowledge of the how, when, where and why of these pots and can even reproduce one for you from drawings.

Before I left the UK in 1994 to live in Spain, I had at least three of these chimney pots in my back yard (I lived in an old end of terrace house, right on the edge of one of the local ‘Red Light’ districts) planted up with flowering plants.

Cherished Chimneys have wonderful plans for the future.  They want to create a Museum with a Tea Room within the building, which is a lovely idea and towards this aim they have, I am led to believe, been awarded a Grant from the City Council to put this idea into operation as soon as possible, with an opening date of Easter 2009.

As I am a photographer here in Spain, I have been asked to produce a range of postcards in the manner of the ones I produce here. I sell the oldness of Andalucia, its old doors and windows. They are known as Andalucia’s Secrets.

Cherished Chimneys do not have a website but can be found by typing in Cherished Chimneys into Google.  They can be found between Junction 15 and 16 of the M6, follow the signs for Stoke=on-Trent and then Burslem and then Longport.

Check them out - you will be surprised.