These appear to be the only kilns which, perhaps from the unfitness of the clay, were worked in this part of the Forest, and were used only in manufacturing the most necessary utensils in daily life.
Of far greater extent are the works at Sloden, covering several acres. All that remains of these, too, are, I am sorry to say, mere fragments of a coarse black earthenware. And although I opened the ground at various points, I never could meet with anything perfect. Yet the spot is not without great interest. The character and nature of the south-western slope exactly coincide with Colt Hoare’s description of Knook Down and the Stockton Works.[251] Here are the same irregularities in the ground, the same black mould, the same coarse pottery, the same banks, and mounds, and entrenchments, all indicating the settlement of a Romano-British population. Half-way down the hill, not far from two large mounds marking the sites of kilns, stretch trenches and banks showing the spaces within which, perhaps, the potters’ huts stood, or where the cultivated fields lay, whilst at one place five banks meet in a point, and between two of them appear some slight traces of what may have been a road.[252]
At the bottom of the hill, but more to the south-westward, stands the Lower Hat, where the same coarse ware covers the earth, and where the presence of nettles and chickweed shows that the place has once been inhabited.
The Crockle and Island Thorn potteries lie about a mile to the north-east. At Crockle there were, before Mr. Bartlett opened them, three mounds, varying in circumference from one hundred and eighty to seventy yards, each, as I have ascertained, containing at least three or four, but probably more, kilns. As the lowest part of the smallest and easternmost mound had not been entirely explored, I determined to open this piece. Beginning at the extremity, we soon came upon a kiln, which, like the others discovered by Mr. Bartlett, only showed its presence by the crumbling red brick earth. An enormous old oak-stump had grown close beside it, and around the bole were heaped the drinking-vessels and oil-flasks, which its now rotten roots had once pierced.
Necks of Oil-Flasks.
Necks of Wine-Vessels and Oil-Flask.
Nothing could better show, as the excavation proceeded, the former state of the works. Here were imbedded in the stiff yellow putty-like clay, of which they were made, masses of earthenware, the charcoal, with which they were fired, still sticking to their sides—pieces of vitreous-looking slag, and a grey line of cinders mixed with the red brick earth of the kiln. The ware remained just as it was cast aside by the potter. You might tell by the bulging of the sides, and the bright metallic glaze of the vessels, how the workman had overheated the kiln;—see, too, by the crookedness of the lines, where his hand had missed its stroke. All was here. The potter’s finger-marks were still stamped upon the bricks. Here lay the brass coin which he had dropped, and the tool he had forgotten, and the plank upon which he had tempered the clay.[253]
The Island Thorn potteries had been so thoroughly opened by Mr. Bartlett, that I there made but little further explorations, and must refer my readers to his account,[254] only here adding that the ware scarcely differed, except in shape and patterns, from that at Crockle.