Places to explore near Stoke-on-Trent

Working Hanley pottery famous for its spotted and printed ware, offering factory tours, decorate-your-own sessions and a garden café.

1.8 km N

Britain's last steam-powered potters' mill at the junction of two canals, its 1857 bone-and-flint grinding engine still fired on steaming days.

2 km NW

The last complete Victorian pottery factory in Britain, its cobbled yard ringed by bottle kilns telling the story of the Potteries in Longton.

3.6 km SE

Italian gardens and lake by a lost mansion.

4.7 km S

The only working Victorian pottery left in Stoke, a canal-side Grade II* factory still making Burleigh ware, with tours and a café.

4.8 km NW

Wedgwood's visitor estate at Barlaston with a factory tour, decorating studio, museum of the firm's ceramics and a tearoom.

5.2 km S

Sixty acres of Staffordshire woodland roamed freely by 140 Barbary macaques, walked on foot along a forest path on the Trentham Estate.

5.9 km S

Brindley's mile-and-a-half canal tunnel under Harecastle Hill, its water stained orange with ironstone; boats pass through Telford's later parallel bore.

8.9 km NW

Heritage steam line running through the wooded Churnet Valley from Cheddleton, nicknamed 'Staffordshire's Little Switzerland'.

11.4 km NE

Twin waterwheels on the Caldon Canal that once ground flint for the pottery industry, a preserved working mill open to visitors.

11.9 km NE

Sham ruined tower folly perched on a gritstone summit on the Cheshire border, a National Trust landmark with vast Cheshire Plain views.

12.6 km N

Tiny estate village of thatch and timber, its church and the black-and-white White Lion inn scene of a Civil War massacre.

13.6 km NW · Cheshire

Fantastical Victorian world garden, Egypt and China.

14.2 km N

Gloriously wonky moated Tudor timber-framed house.

14.7 km N

Two-mile reservoir in wooded hills near Leek, ringed by a shore path and served by a miniature steam railway, its name borrowed by Kipling's parents.

16.2 km NE

Quiet village gathered round a triangular green and the great church of St Mary, near Congleton.

16.9 km N · Cheshire

Britain's first national park: gritstone edges in the Dark Peak, limestone dales in the White.

18.1 km NE

Popular reservoir below the Roaches with a shore trail, visitor centre and grand views up to the gritstone edge.

18.6 km NE

Pair of intricately carved Saxon stone crosses from the 9th century standing in Sandbach's cobbled market square.

20 km NW

Steep gritstone tor at the southern end of the Roaches, a bold outcrop with sweeping views over Tittesworth Reservoir.

20.9 km NE

Fifteen-lock 'Audlem Flight' climbing the Shropshire Union Canal through the village, a favourite towpath walk.

22.2 km W

Spectacular gritstone escarpment on the Dark Peak edge, its wind-carved crags climbing to 505m with views to Wales and a hidden pool below.

22.3 km NE

Jagged gritstone ridge beside the Leek–Buxton road, its tilted pinnacles including the famous winking 'Winking Man' rock.

22.3 km NE

Deep mossy chasm hidden in woodland above the Dane, a fairytale cleft of dripping rock linked to the Green Knight and Lollard worship.

23.2 km NE

Cold War regional-government bunker near Nantwich, a 35,000-square-foot underground complex kept secret until 1993, now a museum.

23.7 km W

Hushed village of pools and old halls, its timbered Gawsworth Hall and church of St James rising above a picturesque mere.

23.8 km N · Cheshire

A sixty-foot symmetrical cave mouth punched through a limestone crag above the Manifold valley — occupied since the Stone Age, photographed since the Victorians.

23.9 km NE

Heathland and forest, an accessible AONB.

23.9 km SE

Medieval salt town on the Weaver, dense with black-and-white timbered buildings and crowned by St Mary's, the cathedral of south Cheshire.

24 km W · Cheshire

Brindley's Grand Trunk of 1777 — Potteries bottle kilns, the Anderton Boat Lift and the long darkness of Harecastle Tunnel.

0.1 km N · Staffordshire, Cheshire & Derbyshire

From the Potteries into the wooded Churnet valley, one of the most rural endings of any English canal.

1.4 km N · Staffordshire

A Victorian municipal park by Thomas Mawson, opened in 1897 with a lake and bandstand.

1.4 km N

The Potteries' first public park, a Jubilee gift of 1887.

4 km SE

A country park in Staffordshire.

6.1 km NW