This autumn, the former Twyfords Etruria Works on Garner Street has finally come down. For most people it was simply the burnt-out factory with the giant "1 Love" graffiti, one of the most recognisable derelict sites in Stoke-on-Trent. But the ground underneath it has one of the most unexpected stories in the Potteries. Before Twyfords made a single toilet here, this corner of Etruria was already famous. Right next door, at W.R. Renshaw’s Phoenix Works, the enormous trains of Barnum & Bailey, "The Greatest Show on Earth", were built and spent their winters. I went down to record some of the demolition, and while the walls came down I dug into the history of this small but remarkable patch of Stoke. Here is what stood here, and what we are losing. Twyford's Etruria Works in the 1940s ## Before Twyfords: the Greatest Show on Earth Long before anyone made a toilet on Garner Street, the land next door belonged, every winter, to the circus. And not just any circus: Barnum & Bailey, "The Greatest Show on Earth". ## Sign up for The Red Haired Stokie Unravelling the secrets of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire's past Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. In 1897 James A. Bailey, who had run the show since P.T. Barnum's death in 1891, decided to take the whole circus to Britain and Europe for five years. There was one problem. American circus trains were far too big for British railways, so he needed a new one, and he ordered it from Stoke-on-Trent. Barnum & Bailey poster of 1898, boasting of "four trains of 70 long railway cars built at Stoke on Trent from American plans". The real number was 67, but circus posters were never known for understatement. Historic poster. ### Built by Renshaw's of Stoke The order went to W.R. Renshaw & Co of the Phoenix Works, railway carriage and wagon builders whose works sat between the Fowlea Brook and the main railway line in Etruria, right beside the land where Twyfords would later build. Renshaw's built 67 cars for the show: seven sleeping cars, a private saloon for Bailey himself, stock cars for the horses and menagerie, three elephant cars with roofs that partly opened, a camel car, a double deck pony car, a baggage car, and 35 flat cars to carry the circus wagons. Leading the way was an advertising car, which ran weeks ahead of the show to plaster each town in posters. At 57 feet long, they were the longest railway carriages yet built for Britain's railways. The designs drew heavily on American practice, helped by an engineer from the carriage builders Barney & Smith of Dayton, Ohio. The animal and wagon cars ran on smaller wheels than usual to keep the floors low enough for tall loads to squeeze under British bridges, and most of the cars had American style couplings, so special buffer cars were needed to hitch them to British locomotives. The Advertising Car under construction at Renshaw's works in Stoke-on-Trent, to a design by a Barney & Smith contractor. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com.Inside the Advertising Car while it was being built. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com. Like many a building job in Stoke, it ran late. When the circus set off on its British tour in April 1898, opening in Manchester, the new trains were not ready and borrowed rolling stock had to do the job. The first sleeping cars caught up with the show in Birmingham at the end of May, and the last of them, along with Bailey's private car, were delivered on 16 July 1898, just in time for the trip north to Edinburgh. Advertising Car No. 1, painted white with bold lettering. It held an office, beds for eight advertising men and a boiler for mixing poster paste. It later did the same job for Buffalo Bill's Wild West as it toured Europe from 1903 to 1906. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com.Sleeping car No. 50 with members of the circus staff. The seven sleepers were painted dark lake with gold lettering. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com.A circus train behind a pair of locomotives, with the flat cars carrying the show wagons at far left. The short van behind the engines was probably a buffer car, with a British coupling at one end and an American one at the other. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com. ### Winter quarters in Etruria Between tours, the circus trains wintered at the Phoenix Works, beside the main line in Etruria, in the very works that had built them. The circus toured Britain in 1898 and 1899, then in March 1900 the whole train was shipped to Hamburg and spent the next three years criss-crossing Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Low Countries, France and Switzerland. Local accounts recall the circus parading through the city, a procession said to be a mile long and to take 20 minutes to pass. The circus winter quarters at Stoke-on-Trent, at the car builder's works. Historic image via the Barnum & Bailey European train roster, themetrains.com. When the circus sailed home to New York in 1902, it left its train behind. Around fifty of the cars went on to carry Buffalo Bill's Wild West around Britain and Europe from 1903 to 1906. Afterwards some came back to North Staffordshire to carry miners at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery, while others were simply scrapped. The Phoenix Works itself carried on as a wagon works, and its name was still on the maps decades later, right beside the Twyfords factory. The Phoenix Works (wagon works) sits between the Fowlea Brook and the railway, right beside the Etruria Pottery, as the Twyfords Garner Street factory is labelled. The circus trains were built and wintered at the Phoenix Works. Ordnance Survey map, 1944 to 1975 series. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland. ### The one that survived Remarkably, one Renshaw sleeping car still exists. In 1908 it was sold to the Alexandra (Newport) Dock and Railway Company in South Wales, converted into a passenger coach, and passed to the Great Western Railway in 1922. Taken out of service in 1926, its body spent years as a holiday chalet at Totnes before being rescued. Today it is in the care of National Museum Wales, in storage at Nantgarw awaiting restoration and not currently on public display. The surviving Barnum & Bailey sleeper, later Alexandra (Newport) Dock and Railway coach No. 3, in storage at National Museum Wales, Nantgarw. Image: National Museum Wales. So the next time someone tells you Stoke only made pots, you can point out that we also built the trains for the Greatest Show on Earth, and that their winter home sat right next door to where Twyfords made the toilets. Twyford's Etruria Works, Garner Street, Stoke-on-TrentThis is Twyford's Etruria Works on Garner Street, built in 1912, extended and modernised in the 1950s. The factory was built as an addition to Twyford's Cliffe Vale works, less than 1 mile away. It occupied ...View Full Resource on Staffordshire Past Track ## Twyfords moves in: the Etruria Works The Garner Street works were built in 1912 on land bought by Thomas William Twyford, the man who turned his family's pottery business into an international name in bathroom manufacturing. He built it right next door to the Phoenix Works, just across the Fowlea Brook from where the circus trains had been built and stored. The factory was built as an addition to Twyfords' main Cliffe Vale works, less than a mile away. Where Cliffe Vale became famous as the home of some of the earliest one-piece ceramic toilets, Etruria gave the company the extra capacity it needed as demand for proper sanitation grew through the twentieth century. Twyford's Etruria Works in the 1920s By 1939 the Etruria Works had 16 bottle ovens in operation, firing both biscuit and glost ware. Like so many Potteries factories, it was radically modernised in the 1950s, when the bottle ovens were swept away in favour of more efficient kilns and the factory was extended. The view across Garner Street, with the holders of the Etruria Gas Works behind, became a familiar part of the Etruria landscape. ## Closure, decline and the 2012 fire Production at Garner Street finished in 1990, when Twyfords moved all of its manufacturing and warehousing to its factory in Alsager. Parts of the buildings stayed in use by other businesses until 2004, but after that the site was left empty. On 28 December 2012 a devastating fire tore through the vacant factory. The buildings never recovered. Over the following years the site became a magnet for fly-tipping, urban explorers and graffiti artists, and a growing safety concern for the city. Planning permission to demolish the remaining factory buildings was eventually granted, and the demolition crews moved in during 2026. As The Staffordshire Signal put it when the plans were approved, it is hard not to feel that we are about to lose another piece of Stoke's story. A site that was nothing short of crucial in the history of sanitation has gone, and with it one of the last big physical reminders of Twyfords in Etruria. ## The "1 Love" graffiti For many people who never set foot inside the factory, the Twyfords site is best remembered for one thing: the huge "1 Love" graffiti painted high on the brickwork, in giant black and white letters. It was a favourite of urban explorers and drone photographers, and over the years it became something of an unofficial landmark in its own right. I photographed it framed between concrete beams while the demolition worked through the building beneath it. Broken windows, smashed brick and twisted rubble sit just below the letters, and the pigeons were still perched along the parapet. It will not be there much longer, if it is not gone already. 1 Love, Twyfords Etruria Works This photograph is available as an archival print and to license for editorial or commercial use. Buy the print or license the photo, or read about image licensing. ## Recording the demolition Demolition is never pretty, but it is history happening in front of you. Once a building like this is gone, it is gone, and the photographs become the record. The gallery below shows the demolition as I saw it. ## Do you remember Twyfords in Etruria? Did you, or someone in your family, work at the Garner Street works? Do you remember the bottle ovens, the factory in its working days, or the night of the fire in 2012? I would love to hear your memories and see any old photographs, so please share them in the comments or get in touch. Stories like these are exactly what keeps our local history alive. Modern photos: Jenna Goodwin / The Red Haired Stokie. Historic images as credited. _Sources: the Barnum & Bailey European train roster at themetrains.com; National Museum Wales collections; Twyford Bathrooms History; Ordnance Survey maps via the National Library of Scotland._ ## Sign up for The Red Haired Stokie Unravelling the secrets of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire's past Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

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For thousands of motorists every day, the former Twyfords factory is impossible to miss. Standing prominently beside the A500 through Etruria, the vast brick complex has long been one of the first buildings people see when entering Stoke-on-Trent. Once a symbol of the city's industrial strength, it has instead become one of its most prominent reminders of decline. Now, that chapter is set to come to an end. Planning permission has been granted for the demolition of the remaining factory buildings after they were described as an eyesore, paving the way for the site to be cleared. On paper, the decision is understandable. The buildings have stood empty for years, suffered extensive fire damage, been blighted by illegal waste storage and have deteriorated significantly. Safety concerns have grown while the structure has continued to decay, making redevelopment increasingly difficult. But the prospect of demolition brings a sense of disappointment to me. Looking at the scale, character and history of the site, it's difficult not to wonder whether it could have become something far greater. Rather than clearing another piece of Stoke-on-Trent's industrial heritage, could this have been an opportunity to create one of the city's most ambitious residential and commercial developments yet? But it seems Stoke-on-Trent is once again choosing the quickest solution instead of the most ambitious one. And for anybody thinking that we should be glad to see the back of the crumbling, graffiti covered industrial mammoths, may I draw your attention to the history sitting behind it. Twyfords traces its roots back to 1849, when Thomas Twyford began making sanitary pottery in Hanley. It was his son, Thomas William Twyford, who transformed the firm into an international name, opening a purpose built "model" factory at Cliffe Vale in 1887, considered so advanced at the time that government inspectors held it up as a pattern for factories across Staffordshire. It was here that the world's first one piece flushing toilet was developed, and Cliffe Vale went on to serve as the company's flagship works for over a century, helping cement Stoke on Trent's reputation as the global centre of ceramics and sanitaryware, before production finally wound down in 1994. The Etruria site now facing demolition is a different, though no less storied, part of that history. Built in 1912 on land bought by Thomas William Twyford, the Garner Street works were constructed using buildings that had previously served as winter quarters for the Barnum and Bailey circus, an unusual footnote for what became one of the city's major sanitaryware factories. Like so many of the Potteries' great manufacturers, production here eventually declined, and the site was later split into smaller industrial units. It was this building that suffered a devastating fire on 28th December 2012, after which the site became notorious for the illegal stockpiling of combustible waste. The Environment Agency eventually stepped in after years of enforcement action, with tens of thousands of tonnes of waste having to be removed before the site could even begin to move forward. For former Stoke Central MP Jo Gideon, the site resulted in countless hours of casework and campaigning before any kind of outcome was achieved. Few would argue the site, in its current condition, can remain as it is. Yet around the country there are growing examples of historic industrial buildings being transformed rather than erased entirely. Perhaps the most obvious comparison is Capital&Centric's work in Manchester, where former mills, warehouses and factories have been converted into thriving mixed-use neighbourhoods combining apartments, business units, cafés and public spaces. Closer to home, the developer has recently delivered the Goods Yard site, which started out as a three-storey warehouse, craning goods between the train line and canal with a vaulted basement below. Now, it includes 174 rental homes, 30,000 sq ft of workspace, independent bars, eateries, coffee shops and a lush, green public square. Projects like these prove that regeneration does not always have to begin with a clean slate. They show that heritage can become an asset rather than an obstacle. The Twyfords site occupies a strategic location within the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone, sitting beside one of the city's busiest transport corridors and only minutes from Festival Park, Hanley and Stoke railway station. With Stoke-on-Trent facing continued pressure to deliver more housing while also seeking to revitalise brownfield land, it is difficult not to imagine what the site could have become. A carefully restored complex could have delivered hundreds of apartments alongside flexible commercial space for start-up businesses, creative industries, cafés and independent retailers - creating a neighbourhood that celebrated Stoke's industrial identity rather than replacing it. Of course, restoration comes with significant cost. Years of neglect, fire damage and illegal dumping have left the buildings in an exceptionally poor condition, and those challenges may ultimately have made demolition unavoidable. But the conversation remains an important one. Too often, regeneration is framed as a choice between preserving heritage or delivering new development. The best schemes prove those two ambitions are not mutually exclusive. As the diggers eventually arrive at Twyfords, another landmark of Stoke's industrial story will disappear from the skyline. Whether demolition is the right decision or an unavoidable necessity will continue to divide opinion. But perhaps the bigger question is whether the city can become bolder in recognising the potential hidden within its remaining industrial heritage before more of it is lost forever. I will continue to report on and cover in-depth Staffordshire’s regeneration, and the city's response to its ongoing heritage emergency. #### Enjoyed this story? The Staffordshire Signal is a not-for-profit, community-funded publication. Every tip helps keep local journalism free, independent, and focused on the stories that matter across Staffordshire. Every contribution supports reporting, photography, and storytelling across the county. ### Join The Staffordshire Signal on WhatsApp Never miss a single breaking update, local news story, community event, or deep dive. 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