From the 18th century until the 1960s, bottle ovens were the dominating feature of the Staffordshire Potteries. There were over two thousand of them standing at any one time and they could be seen everywhere one looked.

At their peak, in the 1930s and just before the World War II, just over 2100 bottle ovens and kilns existed in the six towns of the Potteries.

In 1951 there were 600-700 and by 1960 there were 157 

In 2025, just 47 structures stand complete with their bottle-shaped chimney. 3 more are in a partial state. 50 in total.

The Clean Air Act and improvements in gas and electric fired kilns sounded the death-knell for the smoky, coal fired oven.

The kilns still standing are all listed buildings

For a comprehensive summary of the bottle kilns of Stoke-on-Trent see: The Potteries Bottle Oven 

Some small factories had only one bottle oven, other large potbanks had as many as twenty-five.

Within a factory ovens were not situated according to any set plan. They might be grouped around a cobbled yard or placed in a row. Sometimes they were built into the workshops with the upper part of the chimney protruding through the roof.

No two bottle ovens were exactly alike. They were all built according to the whim of the builder or of the potbank owner.