Spode Under the name 'Spode Ltd' the same factories and business was continued after 1970. In 2006, the business merged with Royal Worcester. The merged company entered administration on 6 November 2008. The brand names and intellectual property were acquired by Portmeirion Group on 23 April 2009. On 23 April 2009, Portmeirion Pottery purchased their rival Royal Worcester and Spode brands, together with some of the stock, after they had been placed into administration the previous November. The purchase did not include Royal Worcester or Spode manufacturing facilities. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are now made at
The Unicorn and the Wasp Holloway in it, a reference to the companion of the same name in the 1996 "Doctor Who" TV film. The Unicorn and the Wasp "The Unicorn and the Wasp" is the seventh episode of the fourth series of the revived British science fiction television series "Doctor Who", which was aired by BBC One on 17 May 2008 at 19:00. Set in an English manor house in 1926, shortly before the disappearance of crime fiction novelist Agatha Christie (played in the episode by Fenella Woolgar) the episode is a murder-mystery storyline where a shapeshifting giant wasp, in disguise as one of