When Emma Bridgewater was growing up, she loved laying the table at the family home in North Oxford. She said: “The kitchen was the centre of everything and the dresser was covered in mismatched crockery. That was what sparked my interest in china.”

It wasn’t until 1985, when she was looking for a cup and saucer for her mother Charlotte’s birthday and couldn’t find anything she liked in the shops, that she started on the path that would lead her to become a business phenomenon.

Today her company employs more than 200 people and turns over about £8m. Her pottery is instantly recognisable, decorated with polka dots, stars, hearts or elegant lettering, using 19th-century sponge-printing techniques that had all-but disappeared until she revived the Stoke-on-Trent industry almost single-handedly.

It is a remarkable achievement, considering the famous British brands Wedgwood and Royal Doulton are now owned by a US private equity company after being declared insolvent. Sadly, Emma is now the only large manufacturer that makes all its pottery in England.

And even more sadly, Charlotte never knew what the eldest of her five children achieved, having suffered severe brain damage at the age of 53 when her horse fell as she was out hunting.

Emma, 47, inherited her mother’s tenacity, and spent the first half of her career working all hours on her business while bringing up four children. Her husband Matthew Rice, a painter, designer and author, left his bespoke furniture business with David Linley – son of Princess Margaret – to join her in the business as it expanded.

He now runs it full time since she took a back seat due to a flare-up of rheumatoid arthritis.

She said: “Since I stopped working, it has gone into remission."

Her idea of not working would be another person’s idea of a whirlwind life, but she insists that she is now taking things easy.

“I am not running the business. I think that was a specific stress.

“I was living away from home and that was very stressful – living in Norfolk, where there was no direct train to Stoke – and the stakes were high. I was being quite bold with the business and going out on a limb.”

She sold the large Norfolk house, keeping a smaller one for holidays, and settled back in Oxford. She says her children – now teenagers or young adults – very much enjoy living in Jericho.

But now she has taken on a new project, having bought the historic Bampton Castle farmhouse, near Witney, from Jesus College. Having committed to a big research and conservation project, the couple are planning to move next summer, when building work is complete.

“It was a run-down tenant farm with a dairy yard and we are re-landscaping. There is lots of concrete and big modern barns and we are making a lovely garden. Matthew is a really inspirational gardener and he wants to have a big canvas,” she explained.

She says her children will be delighted to move back to the country.

“Having grown up in rural Norfolk, they love biking. And it is not as if we’re in the middle of nowhere. The village is very busy – quite jolly, with lots going on.”

They also have a house in London, where the company’s commercial office is based, and all four houses have a large kitchen, with a trademark dresser decorated with antique and modern crockery, some inherited from her mother and grandmother, mixed with her own designs.

She hopes Bampton Castle will be home to a design studio, once the old barns have been restored, but is reluctant to go into detail yet.

“Exactly how much of what goes on in London or Stoke might move to Bampton has not been decided. We had a small design studio in Norfolk where Matthew and I worked with one or two assistants,” she said.

She has developed a new range of her trademark polka dot pottery in blue to mark the opening of her fifth shop on November 18 at Bicester Village.

Collectors keen to snap up samples will still have to make their way to Stoke-on-Trent, but she promises: “There will be things there that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Bicester, which has a £1m sales target, will be only the second store to offer factory seconds. It will employ four full-timers and at least four part-timers. ib