The area was named by Josiah Wedgewood when he built his new pottery works here in 1769 (it was named after the region of Etruria in Italy in an early example of somewhat fanciful marketing). By the early 1970s, the pottery works had been moved, and the old canal was caught in the doldrums between commercial and leisure traffic.
Note: We viewed Alan’s photographs with great interest and were most impressed by their quality.
During the late 1960s, David photographed the Trent & Mersey and the Caldon Canal for a group of canal enthusiasts opposing British Waterways’ plans to close the canal and turn it into a feeder channel for the Trent & Mersey Canal.