his story starts with the lengthy and convoluted journey made by some- thing as small and insignificant as a black pebble. It is excavated, sailed over high seas, carried by river, burnt in a kiln, crushed to smithereens in a water mill and transported by canal to a bottle oven. This small piece of flint - along with thousands of tons of similar pebbles - made a journey of almost 200 miles to eventually be mixed with clay and turned into earthenware pottery. I took a step back in time to join our imaginary pebble on the section of its journey through the Peak District - at Cheddleton Flint Mill in the Churnet Valley, then travelled its route along the Caldon Canal to the Potteries.
     A peasant-type pottery industry began in the area in the early 1700s, when people made a roughish ceramic known as Staff- ordshire slipware. This cottage industry was changed by the introduction of flint in the 1740s, enabling white earthenware to be pro- duced for the first time. Flint came from the south-east of England via the North Sea, the River Trent and the Trent & Mersey Canal to Cheddleton on narrow boats, each laden with 20 to 30 tons. The pebbles were off-loaded into a kiln and burnt to turn them white, before being transferred into 12 feet diameter grinding pans inside the mill, ready for grinding by runner stones of Derbyshire churt.
     The process was carried out dry at first - till it was realised that dust, choking the lungs of millers, gave them a further life expectan- cy of just 18 months. The problem was solved by mixing the pebbles with water - hence the grinding pans swirled with something resembling gritty milk at the end of the process. The grit that was too fine was useless waste and allowed to run off into the river, turning the Churnet chalky-white downstream.
     A mill has operated at Cheddleton since around 1150, when a waterwheel-driven corn mill was built for Lord de Cheddleton. An adjacent flint mill, the North Mill, driven by a separate waterwheel, was added in 1783 when the Caldon Canal was built.
     So great was the demand for flint from local pottery manufacturers that the corn mill was converted to flint milling around 1825. Neither mill was ever mechanised, both remaining water powered throughout their working lives. One miller alone could run the mills, though the hours were long.
     One of the millers employed at Cheddleton was Ralph Wood, known as 'the honest miller of Cheddleton' as he snubbed the trend to 'sell you short of a bushel'. Ralph's two sons were the first to manufacture Toby jugs in nearby Burslem. Joseph Nicholls was the last miller at Cheddleton and, after his death in the early 1960s, the mills closed. No one could be found to replace him - such were his poor conditions of employment.

     Joseph's daughter, Irene, still lives with her husband in a cottage across the mill yard. She was born in the house that is now the fascinating miller's cottage museum. "We had a very happy childhood here, and life was good," she explained. "Father worked awfully long hours and I would help him a bit when he was stuck. A few families lived close-by and all the children would get together and play in the mill yard. Dad never had holidays other than the odd weekend off, when we'd go and see relatives in Birmingham - that was as far as I went as a child."
      The site is now managed by the Cheddleton Flint Mill Industrial Heritage Trust, which works to preserve the mills for all those interested in the history and development of ceramics - a sizeable number, judging by the 10,000 visitors recorded last year. The 12 people who work there are all unpaid volunteers and care passionately about the place - none more so than Ted Royle, a volunteer since 1966 and awarded the MBE in 2002. "I always have great satisfaction coming here," he said. "People show appreciation, and their enjoyment means my time is well spent. I work here because I see it as a place worth keeping."
     Back to our flint pebbles. After being ground to grit, they were dried off - either by heat from a fire or naturally in a sun-drying pan - before being loaded by hoist onto a narrow boat. They were transported by canal to one of hundreds of bottle ovens in the Potteries to be turned into some item of ceramic pottery that was the fashion of the day.

     Another exhibit at Cheddleton is the narrowboat 'Vienna', a typical example of canal craft used for the commercial carriage of bulky items, such as flint. With wrought-iron sides and a three feet thick elm board bottom, Vienna measures nearly 72ft long and weighs over 25 tons when loaded. Incredibly, it took just one 'horse-power' to move her. Her tiny cabin measures eight feet six by six feet and was registered as a suitable dwelling for a family of four!
     To trace her regular journey, I followed the same route in 'Grace', offering 58 feet of living space and all the home comforts you could imagine. The Caldon Canal runs along the picturesque Churnet valley for a few miles after leaving Cheddleton - a liquid duet of canal and river, weaving along the valley bottom. This is a beautiful section of canal, where tall, shadowy trees are alive with bird song. Moorhens scooted across the bow as Grace's engine carried us along. We passed occasional sandstone homes at roughly walking pace, slowing to a crawl to squeeze through narrow bridges, past marks on the sides made by the taut ropes of the horse- drawn days.
     I negotiated locks with names like Planet, Engine and Oakmeadowford, then passed the feeder canal bringing water from Rudyard Reservoir where, apparently, Lockwood Kipling shared a memorable holiday with girl- friend Alice McDonald. When they married and had a son, they remembered Rudyard and gave him the same name.
     Mileposts counted down the distance left to travel and, with eight miles to go, I left open country behind. The scenery began to change, almost imperceptibly at first. Gradually, graffiti-scrawled bridges replaced pristine ones, half-derelict mills took over from green fields, and bottle-strewn banks emerged instead of bulrushes. I steered round a floating three-seater sofa, up a staircase lock, past a magnificent bronze statue of James Brindley and reached Etruria, deep in the heart of the Potteries.
     I bade a fond farewell to Grace, but - rather fancifully, perhaps - like to imagine that 'our' original pebble was made into a classy ceramic artefact that survives to 'grace' a mantleshelf somewhere today. Cheddleton Flint Mill, on theA520 between Leek and Stone, opens every afternoon except Fridays. Free admission but donations are requested to help preservation work. Visit
www.ex.ac.uk/
~akoutram/cheddleton-mill