The Etruria Industrial Museum preserves Jesse Shirley's 1857 bone and flint mill — the last steam-powered mill of its kind in Britain. The James Stirling-built beam engine, named Princess, still runs on steam-up days and you can watch the great flywheel turning and the millstones grinding the calcined bones and flint that went into the bone china and earthenware produced across Stoke.
The mill sits at the junction of the Trent and Mersey and Caldon canals, with a small museum about the wider Etruria area — once a model village for the Wedgwood works, now mostly demolished. The setting beside the canal makes the visit feel less like a museum and more like stumbling across a working artefact. Open weekends April to October; steam-up days are advertised in advance.