WILLIAM ADAMS
1777-1805
This William Adams of Greengates (1745-1805)[129] achieved a great reputation for his Jasper and Black Basalt ware. He was a cadet of the Adams family, a family which is almost as much identified with the potting industry as is the family of Wedgwood. Four generations had potted at Burslem “Brickhouse” in succession to Thomas Adams who died a “potter” in 1629, and at the end of the eighteenth century the representative of this branch of the family, another William Adams, was a master-potter at Cobridge, and could lay some claim to the introduction of under-glaze blue printing into Staffordshire. The life of Adams of Greengates is given in “William Adams—an old English Potter,” Ed. by Wm. Turner, F.S.S. Born in 1745, he was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood, and became his most adept pupil. He commenced manufacturing on his own account at Greengates about 1787, and the jasper he turned out is difficult to distinguish from that of Wedgwood. No doubt he had full particulars of body and firing, but other potters had that information and yet failed to produce the same class of ware.[130] This William Adams died in 1805, and his son wasted his property and sold the Greengates works about 1820 to John Meir.[131] Of recent years, however, the Greengates works have been repurchased by the senior branch of the Adams family, and it is now managed in conjunction with their old Greenfield works adjoining.
For the first time in 1787 the mail coaches to London began to run daily. The best days of coach travel were yet to come, but even these early coaches kept up a steady seven miles an hour. Their time table is given as follows: London (“Swan with Two Necks”) 9 p.m., St Albans 11 p.m., Coventry 9 a.m., Lichfield 1 p.m., Stone 5 p.m., Newcastle (149 miles) 7 p.m., Warrington 2 a.m., Carlisle 2 p.m.[132]
JOHN WOOD OF BROWNHILLS
1746-1797
Three other potters on the 1787 list deserve special mention: John, Ralph and Enoch Wood. They all came of one still celebrated potting family. Ralph Wood, miller, of Burslem, was their common ancestor. His eldest son, Ralph, was a modeller of distinction, and about 1754 started a works at Burslem, where he, and his son Ralph after him, made those quaint Staffordshire figures now in such demand. They are usually decorated with coloured tortoiseshell glaze, applied with a brush, and have a singularly decorative effect. Ralph Wood, the first figure maker of the name, married the sister of that Aaron Wedgwood who had once made china at Longton Hall. He died in 1772, and was succeeded in his work by his sons John and Ralph.[133] John Wood soon left his brother, and began, in 1782,[134] to pot at Brownhills. Ralph kept to figures, and adopted the enamel process of decoration for some of his busts and figures. Other makers who were prolific in this style of figure decoration were John Walton of Burslem (1800-40), Robert Garner of Lane End, c. 1786, son of that Robert Garner of the Foley Works who married Margaret Astbury, Ralph Salt of Hanley (1812-46), Lakin and Poole of Hanley (1770-94).[135]
Meanwhile the eldest son, John Wood, was making ordinary earthenware at Brownhills. This John Wood was murdered in 1797 by Dr Oliver of Burslem, a rejected suitor of his daughter.[136] His son married the heiress of John Wedgwood of Bignal End, with whom he acquired a large fortune.[137] He removed the factory from Brownhills to Tunstall, where he erected the Woodlands Works in 1831-5.[138] A third John Wedg Wood of Brownhills carried on these pot works in Tunstall in partnership with Mr Edward Challenor. He died in 1857, and was succeeded at the Woodlands Works by his brother Edmund Thomas Wedg Wood. This factory was in 1887 sold to Mr W. H. Grindley.[139]