A dozen years ago Stoke-on-Trent joined a consortium of unfashionable cities, including Derby and Dundee, created to encourage tourists to visit their unsung attractions.

I took up the challenge and had an enjoyable weekend, visiting one of the leading china companies, the Gladstone Pottery Museum and Trentham Gardens.

Today there is much more to see in the six towns, collectively known as the Potteries, which form the city and gained national prominence from the early 20th-century novels of Arnold Bennett. It is hosting the British Ceramics Biennial, the UK’s only festival to celebrate the best in contemporary ceramics, which runs until early next month, and is home to several, relatively new, family attractions.

Highlights of the festival range from Jaime Hayón’s vibrant ceramic designs, that owe much to the Spaniard’s skateboarding youth, through to the traditional rural potters of India’s Gujarat region, to the cream of current British artists at displays in Stoke, Burslem and Longton. Forthcoming events at the Gladstone Pottery Museum include an antiques valuation day on Friday afternoon, a workshop to make bone china flowers on Saturday and a masterclass with the ceramicist Neil Brownsword on November 13.

The museum is worth a visit because it is the only complete Victorian pottery factory, with huge bottle kilns, from the days when coal-burning ovens made the world’s finest bone china. The most famous name in the Potteries is Wedgwood and a stunning new museum in Barlaston displaying hundreds of beautiful objects tells the story of Josiah Wedgwood and the company he founded two-and-a-half centuries ago.

There is also a Wedgwood shop, only one of 30 pottery factory shops in and around the city.

Like many industrial cities, Stoke has its “lungs” and the most effective is the Trentham Estate, with Italian parterres, fountains, lakes and trees in autumn best. It is home to Britain’s first monkey forest, 60 unspoilt acres where 140 Barbary macaque primates, a species dwindling in Africa, live in the trees, laze on the rocks, raise their young and remain unfazed by human visitors. The monkey forest is open for the next two weekends before closing for the winter. Stoke’s other big family attraction, Waterworld, has reduced rates on Sundays.

This indoor tropical aqua park features rides including the Black Hole, the Python and Twister, Britain’s first indoor water roller coaster. Almost opposite Waterworld, on the edge of the Festival Park, and close to the Etruria Industrial Museum, is the Best Western Moat House Hotel, where rooms for two with breakfast cost from £67 a night. The four-star hotel has an indoor pool, Jacuzzi, gym, bar and brasserie.

On the Trentham Estate is a Premier Inn, where rooms that can sleep a family of four cost £55 at weekends and £62 from Mondays to Thursdays. Some rooms are available for two-night stays for £58 if booked online at least three weeks in advance. Self-catering breaks are available at Maer Estate Holiday Cottages, a group of attractively converted buildings a few miles southwest of the city. Three-night weekend breaks cost from £295 in a cottage for a family of four to £550 for the four-bedroom Keeper’s Cottage.

britishceramicsbiennial.com stokemuseums.org.uk/gpm
— 01782 237777
visitstoke.co.uk — 01782 236000
bestwestern.co.uk — 0870 2254601
premierinn.com — 0870 4236466
maerestateholidaycottages.co.uk — 01782 680532

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