STAFFORDSHIRE POTTERY AND ITS HISTORY
STAFFORDSHIRE
POTTERY AND
ITS HISTORY
By
JOSIAH C. WEDGWOOD, M.P., C.C.
Hon. Sec. of the William Salt Archæological Society.
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO. LTD.
DEDICATED TO MY CONSTITUENTS, WHO DO THE WORK
CONTENTS
Chapter I. The Creation of the Potteries.
” II. A Peasant Industry.
” III. Elers and Art.
” IV. The Salt Glaze Potters.
” V. The Beginning of the Factory.
” VI. Wedgwood and Cream Colour.
” VII. The End of the Eighteenth Century.
” VIII. Spode and Blue Printing.
” IX. Methodism and the Capitalists.
” X. Steam Power and Strikes.
” XI. Minton Tiles and China.
” XII. Modern Men and Methods.
PREFACE
This account of the potting industry in North Staffordshire will be of
interest chiefly to the people of North Staffordshire. They and their
fathers before them have grown up with, lived with, made and developed
the English pottery trade. The pot-bank and the shard ruck are, to them,
as familiar, and as full of old associations, as the cowshed to the
countryman or the nets along the links to the fishing population. To them
any history of the development of their industry will be welcome.
But potting is such a specialized industry, so confined to and associated
with North Staffordshire, that it is possible to study very clearly in
the case of this industry the cause of its localization, and its gradual
change from a home to a factory business. The rise of capitalism, the
attempts at revolt on the part of the workers, the increase of machinery
and steam power, all these can be studied very closely in the potting
industry, just because the history of the district is the history of
potting and of the inhabitants’ whole lives. So that I venture to hope
that many students of history and of sociology will find such a trade
history as this of some value in their researches.
The collector, too, may I hope find his special studies assisted by the
identification and linking together of the relationships of the old
master-potters, of their inventions, and factory sites and dates.
A hundred years ago Simeon Shaw wrote a book of this nature. It had its
merits, but since then research among ancient documents, systematic
collection and excavation, the publications of the William Salt
Archæological Society, and, above all, the modern work of such men as
William Burton and Professor Church, have made it possible to restate far
more exactly what happened, and when, to potting in North Staffordshire.
Mr Burton’s “History and Description of English Earthenware” and his
various works on porcelain have been drawn upon very largely in the
following pages.
Both to him and to Professor Church, M. Solon and to many others,
who have given me so much personal assistance in this work, I desire
to express my gratitude. I can only regret that my own contribution
to original research on the subject has been confined to the Tunstall
Court Rolls, kindly lent me by Mr Sneyd, and to the MSS of my
great-great-grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, now in the museum of the
Wedgwood firm at Etruria. Lastly I would express my indebtedness to my
brother Frank Wedgwood, who has read through the proofs and made many
corrections, such as would occur to one whose whole life has been devoted
to the practice of the art of potting.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Slip decorated Staffordshire ware. c. 1660 _Page_ 14
Earliest known piece of Staffordshire salt glaze ware, 1701 32
Red china teapot, probably by Elers. c. 1760 36
Sample of later date, with moulded spout 36
Samples of solid agate ware, made by Wedgwood or Weildon. c. 1760 36
Salt glaze teapot, drab body, supposed to be by Thomas Wedgwood,
died 1737 54
Burslem in 1750 (map) 60
Scratched blue salt glaze cup, dated 1750 68
Enamelled salt glaze jug, probably by Baddeley of Shelton, dated
1760 70
Staffordshire figures decorated with Weildon glaze, probably by
Wedgwood, c. 1760 79
Etruria Works 83
J. Wedgwood 87
William Turner, Master Potter 100
Hackwood, the Modeller 103
Hanley in 1800 (map) 107
Vase by John Turner of Lane End, died 1786 109
Thomas Minton 111
William Adams 122
John Wood, of Brownhills 125
Burslem in 1800 (map) 131
Josiah Spode 134
Herbert Minton 137
Job Ridgway 141
Josiah Wedgwood II 149
William Adams 162
Ald. W. T. Copeland, M.P. 178
CHAPTER I.
THE CREATION OF THE POTTERIES.
In no country is there a district so utterly associated with one trade as
is the North Staffordshire Potteries. One even speaks of the Potteries
in the singular as of a pure place-name. If you spoke in Timbuctoo or
California of the Potteries, none could doubt that you were thinking of
North Staffordshire.
The reason is not that the district is or ever was given over entirely
to pot-banks. Potting was incidental, a pastime in the middle of
agriculture; as potting grew, so coal and iron mining grew too. The
district is less confined to potting than Walsall to saddlery or
Sheffield to knives. Even a thirteenth century reference to Walsall will
expose harness; it is difficult to trace pots in the Potteries before
1650; you find only bloom-smithies and sea-coal mines. Potting is neither
so ancient here, nor so exclusive as to have made the name. The real
reason of the place-name, the Potteries, is that no man who valued time
could say Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke and Longton, whenever he
wanted to refer to one place—the place where men made pots—and few people
outside the five towns ever wanted to speak of them separately, or could
even distinguish one from others.
The first reference to “the Potteries” will be found in the latter half
of the eighteenth century; before that time it was hardly necessary to
refer to them at all.
The area where pots were made in North Staffordshire has always been
peculiarly local and circumscribed. It extends, and extended, in a line
from Golden Hill to Meir Lane End. Occasionally, at times, we hear of
Pot-works at Red—or Ridge—Street, at Bagnal or at Bucknall, outside this
narrow area. They only receded finally from Chesterton during the last
century. But, generally speaking, Staffordshire potters have persisted
always in making pots just where their fathers made them before, in the
hilly land between the Foulhay Brook and the sources of the Trent.
There was no need in old times for the people who made pots to
specialize in one district. The art of potting is as old and as
universal as the art of cooking. In old times it was as simple. Like
most modern trades it was practised at first, and anywhere, as a
branch of housekeeping. Every family made what pots they required for
their kitchen, and one can see such rude earthenware utensils among
the miscellanea of any excavation. And like most modern trades the
development from the housekeeping to the manufacturing stage meant
specialization in particular districts.
But why should potting have settled in the Potteries?
So long as all that was wanted was clay and firewood, almost any place
would do. In England, it was about the year 1600 that the time arrived
when brushwood became rare and costly; clay and coal were then found
to be the necessaries of a “potteries.” North Staffordshire had both.
Burslem, and it is Burslem alone which one need consider in this problem
of the first cause, had something more than clay and coal. The land was
split up into a great number of small copyhold owners, and immediately
after 1600 the copyholds were enfranchised. There were no demesne
lands. The people were independent, both of big farmers and of great
landlords. There was security of tenure, and every opportunity for
initiative—initiative which could not then take the shape of intensive
cultivation.
So we find in Burslem and Tunstall at the beginning of the seventeenth
century clay, coal and the opportunity. By the end of that century
the next requisite was to hand—skilled workmen. By the end of the
next century the last requisite of trade was in place—the cheap water
transport of the Trent and Mersey Canal.
It is well known that the safest way to test the presence in early
days of particular trades or forms of employment is to study any local
lists of the surnames of common people of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. We find our first such list for the Manor of Tunstall (which
included Burslem) in 1299.[1] Not a single name that one can associate
with potting is to be found. A similar list for Audley of the same date
shows a Robert le Pottere, Thomas Potinger and Richard le Throware.
Probably most similar lists for that date would provide some such
solitary reference to so common a trade, and I do not jump from this to
the conclusion that Audley was the real mother of the Potteries. There
are Subsidy Rolls giving Tunstall taxpayers in 1327 and 1333; still no
_Potter_ is to be found. We have also now available a varied selection of
the Tunstall Court Rolls. The earliest, 1326, has nothing that one can
twist into a reference to potting; but then we can collect in subsequent
years the following:—
1348. William the Pottere gives 6_d._ for licence to make
earthern pots (_facere ollas terreas_).
1353. Thomas the Throgher is amerced for a default at
Chatterley.
1363. John Pottere is presented for an affray in Borewaslym
(Burslem).
1369. Robert le Potter gives 12_d._ for licence to get earth
for making pots until the following Michaelmas.
1372. Thomas le Thrower takes up land in Thursfield.
1405. Robert Potter is recently dead in Burslem.
1448. Richard Adams and William his brother are amerced for
digging clay (_argillium_) in the common road between Sneyd and
Burslem.
In several of the leases of land by copy of Court Roll of the fifteenth
and sixteenth century the right to dig marl or clay (_argillium_ or
_luteum_) is conceded, but I suspect it was usual even then to use such
marl as manure. The filling in of pits or lakes (_laca_) in the roads is
also a constant cause of trouble in these Rolls, but they may have been
due to honest wear and tear and not to the temptations of a cheap raw
material.
It should be mentioned however that we have hardly one quarter of these
early Tunstall Court Rolls, and must not assume that these few casual
notices of clay or pots is exhaustive. We now skip a century and pass to:—
1549. The jurors present Richard Denyell for that he dug mud
called clay (_fodit luteum vocatum cley_) in the King’s way at
Bronehillslane (Brownhills), and in Burselem.
1604. Penalty laid (i.e. _sub pœna_). It is ordained by the
jury that any person who digs “_argillum vocatum_ clay” in a
certain way called Wall Lane, which shall be prejudicial to
the passage by that way, or if he do not fill up the same well
and sufficiently, shall forfeit to the lord 6_s._ 8_d._
So far still no mention of potting. Various leisured people began now to
describe England, relating what they saw and heard. Many of them dealt
with Staffordshire, but they notice no special and curious feature about
the North Staffordshire moorlands. Leyland in 1537, Camden in 1586,
Erdeswick in 1590, say nothing of a “Potteries.” Speed’s list of the
Shire products in 1625 omits pottery.
It is just possible that some of the impetus for the local manufacture
may have come from the dissolution of the monasteries. There is reason
to believe, judging from the remains at the Cistercian Abbey of Hulton,
that the monks there made such encaustic tiles as are to this day called
Cistercian. Now Hulton Abbey and the Abbey’s grange of Rushton both lie
in Burslem parish. Some rudimentary practice in the art and mystery of
potting may well have come from the seven[2] scattering brethren of this
dissolved monastery, and may account in part for the development which
was to come.
For now we begin to find potters thick on the ground in Burslem.
In legal documents the practice grew of adding after any man’s name, his
trade; leases, depositions, wills, all show this. After 1600 one would
certainly expect to find some trade description, and at last, in 1616, we
find our first “potters.”
1616. Richard Middleton demises to Thomas Danyell of Burselem senior,
potter, a pasture called Brownehills and another pasture called The
Hill in Burslem containing 3 acres, with right to dig claye, “ffillinge
upe the pitts after him,” for 21 years at a rent of 4s. He demises also
to John Leigh 3 acres in Withiemore, with liberty to dig clay in the
Withiemore when need be. (_Tunstall Court Rolls._)
Next year, 1617, William Adams of Burslem describes himself in his Will
as “potter”; and among the depositions of witnesses in the Chancery suit
of “Mainwaring _v._ Shaw” of 1640, one of the witnesses, Ralph Simpson of
Burslem, aged 80, is described as “potter.” Thereafter every reference
to Burslem or Tunstall is replete with “potters” or “earth-potters,”
and men trained to the trade were acquiring the skill necessary for the
localization of the coming industry.
The men were ready. The clay and coal are found together cropping out
in the country of the Staffordshire Potteries. The clay, though not now
used for earthenware, is, and always has been, suitable for the saggars
in which the ware is packed while being fired, and for the fire-bricks
of the kiln in which the ware is baked. The coals were so cheap that,
in 1680, they cost apparently only 16d. a ton at the pit’s mouth, and
although such coal had to be carried usually on horseback, yet it never
had to be carried more than two miles to reach the pot ovens.
One other raw material was wanted—lead. It was the most expensive, almost
the only part of the master potter’s equipment that required capital.
The ore was got at Lawton Park, six miles to the north. The capital
stock-in-trade of the early potter is shown by the Will of John Colclough
_alias_ Rowley, of Burslem, who died in 1656, leaving “to Thomas
Wedgwood of the Churchyard of Burslem ... all my pottinge boards and all
other necessary implements and materialls belonginge to the trade of
pottinge (lead and lead orre onely excepted).” This same Thomas Wedgwood
was great-grandfather of Josiah Wedgwood, and he, as well as two of his
brothers, Aaron and Moses, also describe themselves in their Wills as
“Potters.”
Burslem was by 1670 full of potters; making no doubt butter-pots or
the commonest of ware.[3] A little further off, in the valley of
Tinkersclough, Thomas Toft was actually attempting decoration. The Toft
dishes are well known. They are signed with the name, Thomas Toft or
Ralph Toft, written in liquid slip clay upon the plate. They are made
of red, buff or yellow clay, and other coloured slip-clays are dribbled
over them through a quill, so as to make pictures of Charles II, or Queen
Anne, or a pelican picking its breast to feed its young. Then the whole
is dusted over with powdered lead ore, and fired till the lead fuses into
the plate and forms a rich yellowish glaze.
Some of these productions, of what has come to be called the Toft school,
are dated. There is a candlestick, very elaborate, dated 1649, and
claimed for Staffordshire. Shaw mentions two dishes marked, one “Thos.
Sans,” and the other “Thos. Toft,” each dated 1650.[4] M. Solon had seen
a slip dish, in a cottage in Hanley, bearing this inscription scratched
on its back, “Thomas Toft, Tinkers Clough, I made it 166-.”[5] A dish
with the picture of a soldier bearing a sword in each hand, and inscribed
in slip “Ralph Toft, 1677” is also mentioned by M. Solon.[6] Another,
marked Ralph Toft, and bearing the image of a very wasp-waisted lady is
in the Salford Museum, dated “1676.”[7]
Other makers of this school were Thomas and William Sans, Ralph Simson
and William Taylor. They made two-handled drinking mugs called “tygs”
with similar decoration; and small model cradles made in clay and
slip—presents for young married couples, according to their local custom.
Puzzle Jugs were another “freak” production, speaking the humour of the
time. The jug was so contrived with multiple spouts and hidden passages
as to spill however one tried to drink from it. A sample of these puzzle
jugs in stoneware bears the inscription “John Wedgwood 1691.”[8] This
man was the eldest son of the Thomas Wedgwood previously mentioned, and
did not pot himself. I think this jug was made for him by his nephew,
Richard Wedgwood, to whom he both leased the Overhouse Works and married
his daughter and heiress. Several pieces are marked with the name “Joseph
Glass,” who is known to have been a potter in Hanley in 1710-15.
All these early master potters were handy men of many trades. They
made their pots in sheds at the “backsides” of their dwelling houses,
alongside the cow-shed. They dug their own clay, often in front of their
own front doors. The Wedgwoods at least owned and dug their own coal,
wherewith to fire the oven. It was a peasant industry, carried on by the
family, among the pigs and fowls; and when they were not making show
pieces for presentation they made butter-pots, in which farmers might
market their butter at Uttoxeter—at least so says Dr Plot.