Middleport is a residential and industrial district of the town of Burslem in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, England. Middleport lies to the west of Burslem, between Burslem town centre and the Newcastle-under-Lyme district of Porthill. To the north is Tunstall and to the south Cobridge and Etruria. Middleport blurs into Longport and both are often referred to under the common name of 'Middleport'.

Middleport is primarily residential, with distinctive Victorian terraced houses. However, it also a working industrial district and contains several potteries: ranging from Burleigh (http://www.burleigh.co.uk/), the oldest working Victorian pottery; to the art-driven Lorna Bailey (http://www.lorna-bailey.co.uk/); to Steelite (http://www.steelite.com/), a modern mass-production ceramics producer.

The Trent & Mersey Canal and a key path of the National Cycle Network run through Middleport. Since 1990 the canal area has benefited from around £1m of Groundwork funding, and £4m of Townscape Heritage funding. Clarice Cliff's Newport Pottery, where she produced some of her most famous work, was adjacent to the Trent & Mersey canal and an artist-designed 12-foot steel markerpost identifies the location. Middleport contains one of the nation's richest stretches of canalside industrial heritage.

Middleport piloted a community wardens service in 2002 & 2003; as a result, crime dropped by 80-percent, and the service has since been rolled out across Stoke-on-Trent and is now set to be adoped in deprived areas nationally.

Middleport is an area that is strategic to the ongoing regeneration of the city, as it sits in the centre of a ring of imminent projects totalling around £250m: the Chatterley Valley scheme, the Etruria Valley scheme, the regeneration of Burslem town centre, and a proposed major park & ride interchange & business-park on the site of the old Shelton Bar steel rolling-mill.

Middleport features in several of the novels of Arnold Bennett, and the film version of his The Card was filmed in Middleport with Alec Guinness.

Middleport Park Bowling Club have a national reputation and have won several national trophies.

Links

• Middleport (http://www.middleport.org.uk/)