Alton Towers
— — a gothic ruin with roller-coasters in the garden.
Not only on a wall.
“A theme park in the grounds of a 19th-century Earl's estate in Staffordshire. The ruined gothic house of the Earls of Shrewsbury still stands on the hill, gardens cascading down to a valley that now holds Nemesis, Oblivion, and the Smiler. The original gardens were laid out from 1814; the rides came in the 1980s. Both share the site. It is one of the strangest landscape juxtapositions in England.
Alton Towers, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Alton Towers is a theme park in Staffordshire, England, about 25 kilometres east of Stoke-on-Trent and 250 kilometres northwest of London. It sits on roughly 200 hectares of the Alton estate, once the seat of the Earls of Shrewsbury. The grounds hold the ruined gothic mansion known as the Towers, the historic gardens laid out from 1814 by the 15th and 16th Earls, and the modern theme park, which opened in its present form in 1980 under the Broome family and is now operated by Merlin Entertainments.
The Towers is a Grade II*-listed gothic mansion designed in stages from 1814, principally by Thomas Allason and Augustus Pugin, for Charles Talbot, the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury, and his successor John Talbot. The house was stripped of fittings in 1924 and partly de-roofed; the remaining shell is conserved as a ruin. The surrounding gardens, including the Pagoda Fountain, the Italian Garden, and Her Ladyship's Garden, predate the theme park by more than a century and are independently listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Alton Towers is reached by car from the M1 or M6, or by train to Stoke-on-Trent or Uttoxeter with a shuttle onward. The main park runs from late March to early November, with the Scarefest event in late October and the Fireworks weekend in early November. The major coasters, Nemesis from 1994, Oblivion from 1998, Rita from 2005, and the Smiler from 2013, sit in the lower park. The gardens are walkable on a standard ticket and are quieter on weekday mornings.