Welcome to Etruria, a great place to visit the canal or park up your bike . Stoke on Trent , Staffordshire , England , GB

Etruria is a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Etruria was the fourth and penultimate site for the Wedgwood pottery business. Josiah Wedgwood, who was previously based in Burslem, opened his new works in 1769. It was named after the Italian district of Etruria, home of the Etruscan people who were renowned for their artistic products. The site covered 350 acres (140 ha) and was next to the Trent and Mersey Canal. As well as Wedgwood's home, Etruria Hall, it included the Etruria Works which remained in use by the Wedgwood enterprise until 1950. The Wedgwood factory is now in Barlaston, a village about six miles to the south of the Etruria site. Etruria Hall was the site of the substantial invention of photography by Thomas Wedgwood in the 1790s. After Wedgwood Much of Etruria became derelict with the move of Wedgwood after the Second World War and the subsequent closure of the nearby Shelton Bar steelworks. Large-scale regeneration began in the 1980s with the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival. Etruria is home to the Etruria Industrial Museum, a scheduled ancient monument, which includes a working steam engine called Princess. The museum buildings were originally a bone and flint mill built in 1857 to grind materials for the pottery industry. Inside visitors can see displays on the history of the site and original machinery. On the first weekend of each month the museum's 1903 coal-fired boiler provides steam to operate Princess which then turns the grinding machinery.