The Last Firing: What the Fall of Denby Tells Us About British Manufacturing

Denby Pottery made its last pieces in the past few days. After 217 years in business, the final pieces went to the kiln on the same Derbyshire site where it all began two centuries ago. It’s the kind of ending that feels symbolic — and it should, because it is.

If you grew up in a certain kind of British household, you’ll know Denby. That heavy, satisfying stoneware. The earthy glazes. The casserole dish that sat on the hob every Sunday and somehow never chipped. It wasn’t fancy — it was better than fancy. It was built to last, and it did. For a lot of families, Denby wasn’t just kitchenware, it was furniture. Passed down, added to, argued over when someone broke a mug. The kind of thing you didn’t think about until it was gone.

Denby entered administration on 31 March 2026, with more than 500 jobs at risk. The company had filed notice weeks earlier, citing sharply higher energy prices, rising employment costs, and weaker demand in homeware. On the surface, it looks like a business that couldn’t keep up. But dig a little deeper and a more troubling picture emerges — one that’s less about Denby specifically and more about what happens when policy fails whole industries.

The energy problem nobody fixed

Denby runs three large gas-fired kilns that operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Before 2022, the company’s annual energy bill sat at around £1.25 million. By the time it entered administration, that figure had risen to between £2.5 million and £3 million — a doubling of costs with no corresponding rise in revenue to absorb it.

You might expect the government’s energy relief schemes to help with exactly this kind of situation. They don’t. Trade body Ceramics UK reports that gas accounts for around 86 per cent of the sector’s energy use — which disqualifies roughly 90 per cent of its members from the government’s electricity-focused relief schemes. The British Industry Supercharger, designed to support energy-intensive industries, was built around electricity consumption. Pottery runs on gas. The support simply doesn’t reach it.

Denby’s own chief executive said publicly that if the company had been included in the Supercharger scheme, it may well have made the difference between survival and administration. That’s a damning line. Not “it might have helped” — it might have been the difference. And yet the scheme remained out of reach.

Not just Denby

This isn’t a one-off story. 2025 proved to be a disastrous year for British pottery, with Royal Stafford and Moorcroft both collapsing — following the earlier closures of Dudson in 2019, Wade in 2022, and Johnson Tiles in 2023. Denby is the latest and most prominent name to go, but it’s part of a pattern that’s been building for years.

A petition calling for the government to extend energy relief to the ceramics sector gathered around 65,000 signatures within weeks of its launch. The government responded after it reached 78,000 — short of the 100,000 needed to trigger a parliamentary debate — hinting at potential future support. Hints, unfortunately, don’t keep kilns running.

What gets lost

There’s a tendency to frame stories like this in purely economic terms — jobs lost, revenue gone, brands acquired for parts. But what’s harder to quantify is the knowledge that disappears with it. The skills required to throw, glaze, and fire stoneware at Denby’s level aren’t learned quickly, and they’re not easily rebuilt once a workforce disperses. These were people who spent decades developing a feel for clay and heat that no manual can fully capture. That expertise doesn’t go into administration — it just quietly vanishes.

The story of Denby isn’t really about pottery. It’s about what happens when industrial policy is designed for the sectors that shout loudest, and heritage manufacturers quietly absorb cost after cost until they can’t anymore. By the time the petition reaches 78,000 signatures, the kilns are already cold.

Somewhere right now, someone is having a nice warm tea in a Denby mug that belonged to their nan. They don’t give it a second thought. Maybe they should.