Water Mills

Pleasure in perpetual motion - Moddershall's historic water mills grinding flint and bone for the Stoke-on-Trent pottery trade.

Peter Green meets John Fairbanks who fell in love with the historic water mills of the Moddershall Valley in North Staffordshire as a child. He's long campaigned to rescue them and stop another relic of the industrial revolution crumbling back into the landscape. It might not be glamorous, but grinding flint and animal bone using water mills developed by the likes of James Brindley was a vital component in the production of nearby Stoke-on-Trent's legendary bone -china.