Gladstone is in Longton and is the only complete Victorian pottery site. It was one of the first factories to start the pottery industry that we know of today. It was opened in 1787 by the Shelley family, but their once successful business failed by 1789. It was brought by William Ward who split the factory into 2 smaller potbanks. In 1818 it was sold onto John Sheridan. He developed the factory dramatically, and one of his tenants Thomas Cooper who worked there made a thriving business, which employed many local people. Hobson and Co then took over the factory in 1876. It was at this time that it got the name Gladstone Works, after the politician W E Gladstone.

Proctor, Mayer and Wooley owned the factory between 1885 and 1892, and George Procter and Co between 1892 and 1939. From 1939 the factory was known as Gladstone China Ltd. During World War Two the factory temporary closed, then Thomas Poole (George Proctor was married to his daughter) was granted a licence by the government to continue to produce pottery there. In 1952 it was called Thomas Poole and Gladstone China when the two companies decided to merge together. They brought up more land around the factory which included The Vulcan Pub and the White House. In 1950 The Clean Air Act came into force which did not allow coal firing ovens to operate. The ovens last fired in March 1960, decoration and despatch continued till 1970, the factory then went up for sale.

In the 1960s a group was formed called The Trustees of the Cheddleton Flint Mill, who wanted to save part of a traditional landscape and Gladstone was chosen.

It was brought by Derek Johnson who saved it from partial demolition; he passed it onto The Staffordshire Pottery Industry Preservation Trust to open as a museum, it was officially opened in 1975 by The Duke of Gloucester. It was then passed onto Stoke on Trent Council in 1994.

It is still a museum, and has still got the bottle ovens and the original workshops. And there are regular demonstrations on how pottery was originally made.

Phenomena that as been reported at the museum are a ghost of man, loud footsteps have been heard, and objects have been known to move.