JOB RIDGWAY
1759-1813
Photo by H. J. Gover & Co., Hanley
Job Ridgway married the sister of Elijah Meyer, and made the fortune of his family. But his potting was not so interesting as his religious zeal, so typical of the sentiments of the Potteries at this time; and as the Methodist revival of the last quarter of the eighteenth century had a profound effect upon the habits of the pottery people, and permanently changed their affections from cock-fighting to psalm singing, it is worth while, even in a history of potting, to mention this side also of the work of Job Ridgway. He was “converted” while working at Leeds in 1781. When he came to his brother’s house in Hanley, there were only twenty-five Methodists in Hanley. He formed a congregation and opened their first chapel in 1784. No sooner was Methodism firmly established than he quarrelled with these confining bonds also, and, in 1797, he did more than any other layman to establish the Methodist New Connexion.[160] Bethesda Chapel was built in the following year, and by 1802 Burslem and Lane End also had chapels of this new itinerant society. By 1843 there were five chapels of this denomination in Hanley alone. If you worked for Job Ridgway, you had to attend his chapel also.
There are some names of manufacturers on the 1802 map of the Potteries which have not received so far, and yet deserve, special mention. The brothers John and George Rogers, for instance, built their factory at Dale Hall near Burslem about 1780. John Rogers built too, about 1800, the house called “Watlands” in Wolstanton, the home of many potters, and lived there till his death in 1816. His son Spencer Rogers succeeded to the firm, which continued to flourish for over half a century as “John Rogers and Sons.”[161] Mr Samuel Ford now owns these works.
Joseph Machin of Burslem was the progenitor of the Machins of the Hole House Works, afterwards, in 1843, “Machin and Potts” of the Waterloo Works. This firm were the first successful manufacturers of porcelain in Burslem and they invented too the present method of printing the transfer papers from revolving steel cylinders, thereby greatly accelerating the work of producing these transfers and printing the ware.
The Goodwins of Cobridge had no fewer than four factories in the neighbourhood as late as 1843;[162] and the firm of John Glass & Sons appears to have existed in Hanley ever since the beginning of the 18th century and the days of slip dishes and “tygs.” William Baddeley, with his works at Eastwood on the banks of the Cauldon canal, was chiefly noted for his large flint-grinding mills. Miles Mason, of Lane Delf, and his son Charles J. Mason had their factory where the Stoke and Hanley tram-lines now branch. In 1813 the elder Mason introduced the patent “ironstone” china, which became very popular and was the precursor of the “granite” trade of later days.[163] The senior partner in the firm of Bourne and Baker of Fenton made a fortune, built the church at Fenton, and bought the Hilderstone Hall estate, where his descendants now live.