As there are fewer than 50 surviving bottle ovens in Stoke-on-Trent (and only a scattering elsewhere in the UK), the museum's kilns along with others in the Longton conservation area represent a significant proportion of the national stock of the structures.

In the 1850s Sheridan had rented out the site to Thomas Cooper who employed 41 adults and 26 children to produce china and parian figures.

[7] The factory opened as a museum in 1974, the buildings having been saved from demolition in 1970 when the pottery closed (some ten years after its bottle ovens were last fired).

The biscuit kiln was filled with clay sealed saggars of green (un-fired) flatwares (bedded in flint) by placers.

Fires were lit in the firemouths and baited every four hours, flames rose up inside the kilns, heat passed between the bungs of saggars.

They fired again in the bigger glost kilns- again they are placed in sealed saggars, items separated by kiln furniture such as stints, saddles and thimbles.

[10] When the kiln cooled the product was transported in basket and exported to different parts of the country and empire using the canal network and the ports on the River Mersey.

A tandem compound steam engine by Marshall & Sons, of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire is in place but it is turned by an electric motor.

Gladstone has seen its share of celebrity interest, from Tony Robinson filming for a BBC documentary 'The Worst Jobs in Britain' and from Alan Titchmarsh.

In 2021, it was used as a regular location for both Netflix TV Series The Irregulars based on the characters from the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes novels and The Colour Room about the local Pottery designer Clarice Cliff.

The museum holds annual events from Halloween ghosts walks and tours, to Christmas Carol Concerts and seasonal festivals.

"In the centre is a symbolic figure of Liberty seated on a dais, and holding in one hand the scales of justice and in the other a broken chain.

On the back of the vase in the centre is a figure of St. George, supported on one side by William Wallace and on the other by Brian Boru.