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Etruria Industrial Museum - Jesse Shirley's Etruscan Bone and Flint Mill

We visited Stoke's Etruria There is a purpose built reception and exhibition hall housing a small, but interesting, information area downstairs with histogram Industrial Museum and the historic section of Jesse Shirley's Etruscan Bone and Flint Mill in early August 2007 as part of our summer cruise. The old bone and flint mill was commercially active from 1857 to 1972 and the company, Jesse Shirley & Sons is still operating from an adjacent 'modern' plant supplying ground materials to the pottery industry. The museum nestles in the area south of the junction of the Trent and Mersey Canal and the Caldon Canal at OS: Grid SJ 873468 with moorings immediately outside reception and free car parking off Etruria Vale Road (B5046). There is alternate access off Lower Bedford Street

Entrance charges applied at the time of our visit. There is a purpose built reception and exhibition hall housing a small, but interesting, information area downstairs with histogram; video area and activity zone. A short promenade takes you to the main historic 'exhibit' area on a wharf off the Trent and Mersey. The museum was officially opened to the public by the late 'Fred' Dibnah on 6th April 1991.

The Etruscan Bone and Flint Mill have an 'almost' working Flint Mill with examples of: the materials, cattle bones and flints that would have been delivered to the site by canal barges. There is a Crusher Room where another raw material, Cornish stone, would be reduced to a size suitable for further processing and a Gear Room where vertical and Cattle bones that would have been delivered to the site by canal barges. horizontal shafts transferred the power to the Pan Room, in which the flint and bone was combined with water and ground to a 'slop' paste. The adjacent c.1903 boiler in the Boiler House created the steam to power the 1820s beam engine 'Princess' that has been housed in the Engine Room since 1857.

Gear Room where vertical and horizontal shafts transferred the power to the Pan Room The museum holds 'Steam Days', one weekend in each month, when volunteers fire up the boiler and bring 'Princess' to life!

Other 'dead' buildings on the Etruria Industrial Museum site include: a Gauging Dock (which can only be seen from the canal junction, waterside), Canal Warehouse, Maintenance Yard (used by BW as a working area), Check Office and Forge.

There is a Crusher Room where another raw material, Cornish stone, would be reduced to a size suitable for further processing Other seemingly original buildings are used by boaters at the BW Water Point for shower and toilet facilities.