Wild thing

Here's a pretty tiled entrance sign in Stockport's lovely old market place. I believe Wild was a shoe shop - the building is now part of the excellent Stockport Story museum. It's in an interesting part of town: the beautiful Victorian covered market has a great vintage fair once a month. The atmospheric Staircase House museum is next door. And once you've done all that you can treat yourself to a fantastic Art Deco afternoon tea in the Plaza. All this just seven miles out of Manchester. If you're coming from that direction, why not treat yourself to a trip on the fabled 192 bus route too?

On the tiles

Beautiful tiled office sign at Manchester's Victoria Station. The station dates from 1839 and was recently refurbished. Its fantastic ticket hall and tiled map are worth the visit alone.

In at the deep end

This sign is at the luscious Victoria Baths in Hathersage Road, Manchester. Opened in 1906, the baths are a sumptuous celebration of public bathing. With three swimming pools, a Turkish bath, slipper baths and a laundry, the facilities were described at the time as the most splendid in the country.

Victoria Baths closed in 1993, and a gutsy restoration campaign has worked hard to get the building open and to restore the glory of the stained glass, mosaic floors, terracotta and tiles that make it so gorgeous.

If you’ve not yet visited, you’ve probably seen it without realising, as the Baths have often starred as a TV location (Life on Mars,  Floggit, Antiques Roadshow and Peaky Blinders to name a few). They run an imaginative programme of arts events, open days and vintage fairs – but it’s worth a visit for the tiles alone. Find out more here.