Cawarden delivers an integrated service to re-engineer a complex 13.5-acre site for a Staffordshire housing development scheme.

The demise of Stoke on Trent’s pottery industry has left large areas of land and redundant buildings requiring demolition and remediation.

The former home of the Royal Doulton pottery had previously been demolished, and the large parcel of land it stood on had been left bare for several years – before being purchased to construct around 200 new homes.

Cawarden was employed to remediate the huge sloping site to allow the developers to begin construction. The site, totalling almost 13.5 acres, was required to be excavated to a depth of 3 metres, before being reinstated in compacted levels. Several hidden complexities presented the team with a number of challenges.

Dating back to the 1800s, a large number of existing structures from years of pottery manufacture had been left below the surface and covered over by previous contractors. 

Cawarden, working with archaeologists, uncovered an array of vats, kilns, rooms and deep structures from the former pottery works. Some of the largest kilns measured over 40 metres in diameter.

Whilst the area is well known for its pottery production, coal was also a huge industry with the area being home to several deep mines. Cawarden excavated a shaft head and sub-contractors capped two shafts located on the site. The ground surrounding the shafts was then drilled to a depth of 40 metres and injected with an expanding grout system to stabilise the numerous seams leading from each shaft.

On-site crushing operations meant all material from the site could be recycled and reused to backfill the excavated area in layers.

Before the handover of reinstated sections of the site, Cawarden designed and developed an innovative 250-metre-long, 15-metre-high, permanent and highly specialised retaining wall structure. This would provide a stable platform for the construction of the new housing development.

A large building that housed the former Royal Doulton factory shop still stood on the site. Situated adjacent to the buried remains of a former church, we excavated the church remains and had them documented before demolishing the building.

Interested in learning more about our work on this project?

Check out our feature in Demolition & Dismantling Magazine here