The Clay Industries, Including the Fictile & Ceramic Arts on the Banks of the Severn / with notices of the early use of Shropshire clays, the history of pottery, porcelain, &c. in the district

by John Randall

Transcribed from the 1877 Salopian and West-Midland Office edition by David Price.

THE
CLAY INDUSTRIES
INCLUDING THE
FICTILE & CERAMIC ARTS
ON THE
BANKS OF THE SEVERN:

WITH NOTICES OF THE

Early Use of SHROPSHIRE CLAYS, the History of
POTTERY, PORCELAIN, &c., in the District.

BY

JOHN RANDALL, F.G.S.,

Author of

‘The Severn Valley,’ ‘Old Sports and Sportsmen,’ ‘Life
of Captain Webb,’ ‘John Wilkinson,’ &c.

MADELEY, SALOP:

Printed and Published at the Salopian and West-Midland
Office.

1877.

DEDICATION.

TO
Alexander H. Brown, Esq., M.P.

Sir,

The following treatise on the “Clay Industries” of the Borough you represent may scarcely appear at first sight of that importance to warrant the usual form of a dedication, and I confess I cannot but wish, for present purposes, that its merits were more commensurate with the object. As a large number of your constituents however are engaged in these various branches of trade—in one of which you too have more than a general interest, and as I have been at some trouble to collect facts bearing upon their general history, the work itself may not be without some value.

The motive which dictates the dedication will not, I think, be misconstrued, inasmuch as the prominent part I took more than nine years ago in introducing you to the constituency, as one likely to become a representative of the “Commercial Element” of the Borough, and the highly satisfactory way in which those predictions have been verified and fulfilled, as well as the very general regard and esteem all feel who have observed your public and private character, justify me in feeling a special pride in the result, and hereby making this public acknowledgement of services so faithfully and honourably rendered.

I have the honour to remain,

Dear Sir,

yours faithfully,

John Randall.

Madeley, Jan. 1st, 1877.

INTRODUCTION.

The Borough of Wenlock comprises places not only rich in historic interest but important also as centres of manufacturing industry; and none more so than those grouped within a mile or two of the Iron-bridge, itself a work of world-wide fame. “Broseley Pipes” and “Broseley Bricks,”—the latter including all similar productions emanating from Coalbrookdale, the Woodlands, Lady-Wood, Coleford, &c.—possess acknowledged merits which create for them a constant demand, whilst in higher branches of the art, where similar natural and other clays are used, Messrs. Maw, Craven, Dunnill, and Co., and Bathurst, find a still more extensive market for their goods.

From time immemorial the merits of these clays seem to have been known and recognised; if not from Early British, at any rate from the period when the armies of imperial Rome penetrated the Valley of the Severn, through intermediate ages, these beds of clay which give employment to thousands seem to have been used for some purpose or other, either for articles of ornament or of use. At Caersws, near Llandinam, on the left bank of the Severn, we have seen Roman bricks apparently with the initials of the workmen’s names upon them; whilst of pottery, cart loads have been found there and at Wroxeter, including a number of jars, bottles, urns, lamps, vases, &c., with hunting and other subjects. Some of the mortars, colanders, dishes, and similar kitchen utensils, are of coarse white clay, similar to that now used at Broseley. It is therefore evident from modern excavations that fifteen hundred years ago the value of these clays was known to the brick-makers and potters introduced by that enterprising people. Specimens of Norman and of later periods are rare, but certain evidences concur to make it clear that not only fifteen hundred years ago was the worth of these clays established, but that from that period to the present they have been used in one way or another.

The subject is therefore one of historical as well as of industrial interest, although those at present engaged in the various branches of manufacture may be too absorbed in turning the material to account to pause to note the stages the trades in which they are engaged have gone through.

It was the value of these clays which led to the establishment of works for the manufacture of porcelain at Caughley, Jackfield, Coalport, and Madeley, historical notices of which works will be found in the following pages, which are for the most part a reprint of articles that have appeared in the “Salopian and West-Midland Magazine.”

NATIVE CLAYS:
OR THOSE USED FOR
BRICKS & TILES, TESSELATED TILES,
POTTERY, &c.

Clay, as commonly understood, means earth of sufficient ductility to allow of its being kneaded by the hand into useful shapes or forms, and ranks as a raw material, or one not worked up or prepared for use. Some clays are soft, others are indurated, or hard and rocky: but all have, nevertheless, been in one sense prepared by poundings, washings, and mixings, carried on by Nature on a much larger scale than that on which they are now fitted for use. They differ in quality, in degree of firmness, and in colour, and show certain relationships by which it is clear that they are derived from sand, just as sand is derived from a hardy race of pebbles, which in turn bear a close relationship to rocks, from which undoubtedly they are also derived. Surface clays, used for making inferior bricks and tiles, whose earthy odour gives evidence of alumina, are often derived from red sandstone rocks, which have been ground down by machinery of waves or streams; whilst the deeper coal-measure clunches, used for firebricks and pottery, were originally the sediment thrown by rivers at their embouchures into inland lakes or seas. Common red clays, deriving their colour from iron, have many impurities, and contain a large percentage of alumina. Fire-clays are nearly free from iron, and contain a large amount of silica, whilst china-clay, or kaolin, contains felspar, sometimes with the impurities of soda and potash.

Let us first take brick and tile Clays. Of the three substances expressed by the three words of four letters—clay, coal, and gold, we question whether the first does not rank highest in importance. The latter may be the most coveted, but the former, we imagine, contributes most to the conveniences and comforts of mankind. It is in one form or another universally attainable. There is a great difference in its qualities; and when it is remembered that a porous brick made from bad clay will hold nearly a quart of water, the advantage of good clays producing good bricks which will protect health and property from the injurious effects of a fickle climate, becomes apparent. In addition to ordinary clays used for the manufacture of building materials, we have throughout the whole coalfields of Shropshire and Staffordshire superior fire-clays, which occur in a tough indurated state, and are known by the familiar name of clunches. They possess but a small portion of iron, which gives a red colour to ordinary clays, at the same time that they are distinguished by an almost entire absence of lime and alkalies; yet contain, on the other hand, that proportion of silica and alumina which although they cannot be melted by the strongest heat, form ingredients which during the process of burning combine to form an artificial stone capable of sustaining great heat. The following is an analysis of one of these fire-clays:—

Silica	61.91
Alumina	21.73
Protoxide of Iron	4.73
Lime	0.09
Magnesia	0.59
Potash	3.16
Soda	0.25
Chloride of sodium	0.08
Organic matter	0.70
Water	6.73
	99.97

These shales or clunches, now indurated, were originally the soft soils from which the roots of plants of the coal-measure period drew their nourishment; and they still retain the impression of such roots in great abundance, as any one may satisfy himself who takes a piece in his hand to examine it. The vegetable matter derived from roots, and from the plants themselves, give them a dark colour; but this burns away in the firing, and the bricks come out of the kiln nearly a pure white. It is almost invariably found that where the vegetation of a seam of coal grew on the spot, and was not transported, as was the case in some instances, that one of these underclays is to be found still retaining very beautiful casts of the roots of plants, and not unfrequently the seeds as well as the plants themselves that grew above them. As fire-clays, they are little if at all inferior to the famous Stourbridge clays, and they supply an invaluable material for crucibles, for bricks for the interior of our blast and puddling furnaces, for the kilns of our potteries, and for various other purposes where intense heat is required.

With regard to clays in general, and the art of working in them, it may be remarked that archæologists have told us little. They have divided the past history of the race into the stone, bronze, and iron periods, but have told us nothing of the age of clay, or of an art which we venture to say was one of the oldest invented by man. Clay and clay-workers are found everywhere; and the material is one of the most abundant provided by Nature. The first man would find it soft, yielding, and ready to his hands, with the impressions of birds and beasts, suggestive of the use to which it might be put, and the act of moulding it into form would be as natural as that of plucking fruit from a tree, or that of taking up a stone to strike a harder blow than the hand could give. Hardening it in the sun or baking it in a wood fire would be equally simple; whilst the act of fashioning a shapeless mass into an enduring form would yield so much pleasure that it would be repeated. That the art is pre-historic, and began before the race commenced a record of its doings, is evident from specimens which accompany the remains of men of whose tribe and nation we know nothing. Living beings stronger than man had been masters of the globe before he came, and ignobly perished, leaving but the impressions of their bones to tell of their existence; but man brought with him a new element by which to subjugate and subdue the materials he saw around him to his use, and left behind him more enduring monuments.

Other enduring materials pressed into the service of architects of ancient and modern times were once as incoherent a mass of atoms, and as unshapable as these clays, and were either earths, clays, or sands, which Nature by the processes of kneading, pressing, and baking, in her great laboratory, converted into stone. We find them to some extent ready shaped to hand in the quarry, and we cut them into cubes or blocks, and pile them up in buildings, according to the humour or taste of the time. Bricks are artificial stones, and in making them we follow the example Nature set us only that we cut the plastic material first of all to the size we desire it, then convert it into stone by heat; and this artificial stone, we venture to say, for durability and beauty, is equal even to Nature’s own production, and quite as suggestive to the mind. Nature’s finished material may be deemed more suitable for churches; but artificial stone, fashioned into shape by man, is quite as appropriate for a dwelling in which the highest social sanctities gather. Indeed the art of using artificial stone appears to have been roused from the torpor into which it had fallen since Roman and Flemish authorities set such good examples. People had been so long accustomed to see brickwork used only for inferior houses, and stone for buildings of greater pretensions that, till recently, English bricks have scarcely had justice done them.

The antiquity of brickmaking is so well-known that it is scarcely necessary to allude to it. It will suffice to remind the reader of the tower of Babel, built about 400 years after the period assigned to the flood. That bricks were made in Egypt at an early period of her history is well known; and that this same people had faith in their durability is clear from the fact that they impressed them with hieroglyphics, or historical records, transmitting to us the names of their kings. Mr. Smith of the British Museum, has brought home clay cylinders which the Assyrians used for writing upon. Again, the way in which Jewish writers speak of pots and potters, comparing humanity to lumps of clay fashioned into vessels of honour and dishonour, and the silly and wicked portion of humanity to potsherds, good for nothing but to be cast upon the highway, shows that they drew much of their philosophy from the art. With them, as with other nations of antiquity, the art of working in clay ranked high. Potters of the tribe of Judah “dwelt with the king.” And one very noticeable feature is the fact that the same simple means are still employed to effect the same object; for illustrations in the catacombs of Thebes show that forty centuries ago clay was kneaded with the feet, turned upon a wheel, and baked in a circular oven, as at present. The praise of those who out of rude clay fashioned things of use and beauty, and impressed upon plastic materials the living thoughts that stirred men’s minds was loudly sung, whilst the more successful cultivators of the art were honoured with medals and statues, and their names transmitted by poets and historians to posterity. The Greeks and Romans gave a dignity to the art by raising it to a level with that of sculpture. A Corinthian potter, Pliny tells us, was in his day regarded as the first who contrived making likenesses in clay by pressing the material up to the outlines his daughter had drawn of her lover’s shadow on the wall and placing it with other pottery to be hardened in the fire. Other authors ascribe to the art a higher antiquity and speak of it as the parent of sculpture. The estimation in which it was held is shown by the fact that exhibitions of the best works in clay were frequently held in Athens; and amongst the ruins of that city statues of clay have been found, some in groups, representing Grecian Mythology; and some of large size retaining portions of the paint with which they were coloured on the eyes and eyebrows. In the Townley Gallery of the British Museum, No. 38 is a statue of a Muse, three feet eleven inches high; and also a terra-cotta statue of a Muse resting her left arm upon a pile of writing tablets, which are placed upon a square column, but the head is gone. The former represents Orania, the latter Calliop, whose office it was to note down the worthy actions of the living, as it was that of Clio’s to celebrate those of departed heroes.

Celts, Etruscans, and Chinese made early and great advances in the art of using clay: the latter had even an imperial porcelain work at King-te-Ching, a hundred and eighty-four years Before Christ, and thirty years B.C. they introduced the same art into Japan.

With regard to bricks and tiles we know that among Roman and mediæval builders bricks made of clay were held in high estimation. The former enterprising people having penetrated into our valleys and excavated our hill sides in search of lead and iron were not likely to neglect the clays with which the ore for the latter was associated; and evidences of the extent to which they worked them on the banks of rivers, where such seams were exposed, particularly on the banks of those flowing through the great centres of their occupation, confirms this view. Their armies were accompanied by men learned in the art; and in the relics dug up at Malmesbury, Salisbury, Romsey, Malvern, and Uriconium, modern workers in clay may learn much of the early history of their craft. The still upstanding walls at Wroxeter, with string courses of tiles, and the numerous specimens of bricks, tesseræ, and pottery in different coloured clays, brought to light by excavations within its shadow, are interesting from the fact that some are supposed to have been manufactured from clays still in use in the neighbourhood.

At Caersws, a little village on the banks of the Severn, between Llandinam and Newtown, well made bricks, both of composite and simple clay, may be seen stamped with Roman letters, probably the initials of workmen’s names; and, as a test of the durability of both, it may be remarked that after having done duty in buildings in which the Roman masons placed them, they have been rebuilt by British workmen into the chimneys of the village. These, of course were burnt; but, favoured by the extreme dryness and heat of their own climate, the Romans, like the Egyptians, used clay mixed with chopped straw, to assist the tenacity of their bricks, which, without being at all artificially heated, have lasted thousands of years. The material of which Roman bricks in this country were formed was usually a strong clay, such as brickmakers call tile-clay; well tempered, well pressed, and well burnt, producing a heavy tough brick, indefinitely durable, and of a good deep-red colour.

Roofing tiles have been made in a similar way to bricks, one would imagine, looking at the specimens found at Wroxeter and other places from the time of Roman occupation down to the present. They are found in double layers, forming slightly projecting string-courses in the buildings, but larger and thicker than ours; some of those dug up at Wroxeter being 17 inches by 12, and 4 inches thick, whilst some are 21 inches square. One of these larger ones has the impression of the foot of an ox, evidently received whilst in the process of drying. Very many interesting specimens of bricks, tiles, and pottery are found here, and the art of working up the clays of the district has no doubt been practised from that time to the present.

Formerly clays were allowed to lie during the winter to weather as it is called; and a statute now obsolete required, under a penalty, that bricks should not be made unless the clay for making them had been turned over at intervals, three times at least before the 1st of March. But brickmakers now, not having patience to wait for the action of the weather, have invented machinery to do the work, and the clay is taken direct from the pit to be crushed by iron rollers, and conveyed by coarse canvas screens to the pug-mill. This is an upright cylinder, with a revolving vertical shaft, fitted up with horizontal knives following each other at an angle so as to cut, amalgamate, temper the material, and fit it for use. The process of forming the brick itself requires more tact than the reader would imagine, as the yielding clay has to be thrown into the mould so that every part shall be filled up with a body of equal consistency. To cause the clay to leave the mould, the latter is each time dipped into water, in which case the process is called slop-moulding, or is sprinkled over with sand or coke-dust; and when so made the brick is placed lengthways with others on smooth flats, half an inch or an inch apart and allowed to dry. The best kind of bricks are subjected to considerable pressure in the mould by means of a machine, and a hollow is left inside for the mortar, to enable them to fit close in the joint. Ornamental bricks of elaborate design for architectural purposes require more delicate manipulation, and the clays for these undergo more careful preparation. Machines also are used which take the clay from the crushing-rollers, temper and thoroughly amalgamate it, and convert it into the finished article.

The old methods of preparing clay for bricks and tiles, still practised by some firms, is probably the best where a good tough article is required: that is treading and hand-tempering by the workman, who kneads it with his naked feet, and “slaps” or “wedges” it by breaking off pieces and beating one against another. Machinery, however, is extensive used, and horizontal rollers are set so as to secure different degrees of fineness, in conduction with the pug-mill.

Lime is a great enemy to good bricks, as small portions escape both rollers and pug-mill, and being converted into quicklime by burning, it slacks and bursts bricks subject to rains and frosts. Compare the sound, and hard durable bricks made here with those made near London, into which Cockneys knock their nails without troubling themselves to look for a joint, and say whether, with less freights, they might not be made to supersede the rubbish passing under the name of London bricks, which are soft, damp, and perishable, and some of which, like others of inferior quality, will hold from a pint to a quart of water. Stone, as shewn by the new Houses of Parliament, will not withstand the action of the corroding acid to be found in a London atmosphere; but good hard Shropshire bricks will, and for public buildings, to say nothing of ordinary domestic structures, they are invaluable.

The Staffordshire blue bricks which of late years have come into such general use, particularly in buildings connected with railways, are made from a clay containing a large proportion of peroxide of iron, a clay which produces a red, a buff, or a blue brick according to the process of firing and the degree of heat it undergoes in the kiln; but it will in no case stand a terra-cotta heat, in consequence of the iron acting as a flux. But the great centres of the art of brick making are on the banks of the Severn. Clay and clay workers are to be found at Lilleshall, Lightmoor, Horsehay, and the Woodlands, where, as at Broseley, clays are found on the surface. Here, on the valley side the surface is honeycombed by burrowings after clay and coal. One of the most important beds of clay for making ordinary bricks and tiles is one 17 feet in thickness, worked in many places by shallow shafts, and levels driven into the hill sides, which when abandoned cause the surface to collapse, and the ground to crack, as if by an earthquake. A very pretty church, built a century since on the brow of the hill overlooking some of the brickfields, is now a complete wreck, in consequence of these burrowings after clay. The chancel is falling away from the body of the building, the walls are torn from the roof to the foundation, and the windows have fallen from their places, leaving the oak pews and handsome marble monuments a prey to the elements. Clays and coals are being pared away from around it as a mouse would pare a cheese. Of course the bishop cautions and threatens, but as long as his lordship declines to go into the mines these sappers and miners are safe; and to them must succumb not only the church, but the graveyard—

“Where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”

In conversation with the President of the Academy of Science at St. Petersburgh, who some years ago visited this district, and with other gentlemen distinguished in science and art, we have heard the highest admiration expressed of these clays of the Severn Valley. Indeed, the very handsome public structures—now that prejudice is giving way, and that improved and more artistic treatment of the material predominates—which we see in towns erected upon true architectural principles, and by professors of classical and constructive styles of decoration, are sufficient indications of the capability of the material in all its varieties for producing works of a very high order of merit, with a light and aerial effect not found in the old red brick, nor even in many of the stone erections, of former times.

Besides bricks and tiles, these clays have been turned to account from very early periods in other ways, as for pottery, for instance, of different kinds.

We have no reliable authority for fixing the date at which the art of potting was first practised in Shropshire, but it appears clear that the articles were of the simplest kind, being almost uniformly domestic: those in daily use, such as milk-pans, dishes, tea-pots, jugs, and mugs. The latter were substitutes for the drinking horns, which later improvements in the plastic and ceramic arts have driven out of use. We have an ancient specimen of one made at the Pitchyard, and a drawing of another made at Haybrook, well potted, and elegant in shape. The latter is the best manipulated, and probably it was from this circumstance that the latter work was called “The Mug-House.”

In evidence adduced sometime since in an Election Scrutiny at Bewdley, a public-house referred to was called the “Mughouse,” which house is situated on the Severn, at a point where the bargemen, who formerly drew the vessels up the river instead of horses, were in the habit of stopping to get mugs of ale. “Tots” were made out of the same kind of clay, but smaller, and were used when the men drank in company; hence a person who had drank too much was supposed to have been with a convivial party, and was said to have been “totty,” a word often found in old works. Tots had no handles, and some of the old drinking cups, more particularly those of glass of Anglo Saxon make, were rounded at the bottom that they should not stand upright, and that a man may empty them at a draught,—the custom continuing till later times gave rise to our modern name of tumbler. The small tots had no handles; the mug had a “stouk,” as it is called, consisting of a single piece of clay, flattened and bent over into a loop. The ware was similar to the famous “Rockingham ware” made on the estate of Earl Fitzwilliam, near Wentworth.

The discovery of a salt glaze took place in 1690, and the manufacture of that kind of ware must have commenced here soon after, as traces of works of the kind are abundant. This method consisted in throwing salt into the kiln when the ware had attained a great heat, holes being left in the clay boxes that contained it in order that the fumes may enter and vitrify the surface. Evidences of the manufacture of these old mugs and tots, together with milk-pans and washing-pans, having been made at an early period, are numerous; and the old seggars in which they were burnt often form walls of the oldest cottages in Benthall and Broseley Wood.

A considerable number of old jars, mugs, and other articles, have from time to time been found in places and under circumstances sufficient to indicate great antiquity; as in mounds overgrown with trees, and in old pits which for time immemorial have not been worked. One large earthen jar, with “George Weld,” in light clay, was found in an old drain at Willey, and is now in the possession of Lord Forester. Mr. John Thursfield, who lived at Benthall hall, was at one time proprietor of these works.

Three quarters of a century ago these works were carried on by Messrs. Bell & Lloyd; afterwards by Mr. John Lloyd, one of the best and most truly pious men we ever knew, who some time before his death transferred them to a nephew, Mr. E. Bathurst. His son succeeded him, and after a time sold them to the present proprietor, Mr. Allen, who to the ordinary red and yellow ware, which finds a ready sale in North and South Wales, has added articles of use and ornament in other ways, including forcing pots, garden vases, and various terra cotta articles.

Of the Pitchyard works we know little, only that they stood where the late Mr. E. Southorn carried on his Pipe Works, and where we remember them in ruins more than fifty years ago; but the numerous seggars, now found in cottage garden walls, shew that they must have been continued for some considerable time.

But, besides the manufacture of bricks, tiles, and pottery, these clays have been raised to a trade within the past few years in this district which is every day increasing, and which is capable of much further expansion: we refer now to the important department of encaustic or inlaid tiles and mosaics. The art of producing tiles of this description is only recently revived in this country, and is one which in point of antiquity is not to be compared with its sister branches. The first attempt, so far as we are aware, to revive the art in Shropshire, was at Jackfield; but the first designs were crude, quaint, and spiritless, and altogether wanting in those nicer distinctions and qualities which, not being perceived by the mind of the producer, could not be wrought by the hand. In this as in many other branches of fictile art insight into the principles as well as eyesight is required, and the mistake—as in many other instances—was committed of attempting something which, with the expenditure of thought and time, might catch the uneducated eye—the object being to produce quantity rather than quality. But the call made upon the art by the enlightened demands of the age soon gave a wonderful impetus to the improvement, and men of educated artistic taste—like the Mintons and the Maws—soon called to their aid the assistance of the greatest genius and the highest designing talent at command; at the same time that they directed their efforts to definite points in which utility might be made the instrument of beauty, and by which originality and intelligible design might be made to rise out of the most common-place wants. But although the modern manufacture of geometric and encaustic tiles is recent, it already far surpasses the ancients in variety and arrangement, in geometric patterns, and in beauty of design in encaustics as well as in mechanical finish; although it may be doubted whether the same breadth of general effect is studied as in many ancient examples. Mintons, of Stoke, Maw and Co., of Benthall, Hargraves and Craven, of Jackfield, and Mr. Bathurst, of Broseley, have each produced beautiful encaustic tiles for pavements—both for ecclesiastical and domestic use; and there is yet a large field for development of the use of similar tiles to colour and enrich the details of our street architecture, as well as in that of more elaborate and important structures.

The Coalbrookdale Co., have recently manufactured some admirable terra-cotta entablatures, with historical subjects for costly buildings in the metropolis. The erection of the Literary and Scientific Institution also, of different coloured clays shews their adaptation to works of great architectural beauty.