FERRYBRIDGE.
also impressed, and one variety of which mark is peculiar from having the letter D reversed thus—
FERRYBRIᗡGE
P
A shield, with the words—OPAQUE GRANITE CHINA in three lines, supported by a lion and unicorn, and surmounted by a crown. This mark is also impressed, and occurs on green-glazed ware, as does the one just spoken of.
The mark at the present time is that of the lion and unicorn with the shield and crown, and the words, “Ferrybridge and Australian Potteries,” sometimes impressed, and at others printed on the goods, with the names of the bodies, as “granite,” “stone china,” &c., added.
Swinton-Rockingham China.
When pot-making was first practised in Swinton and its district, it is, of course, impossible to say, but I believe that as early, at all events (if not at a much earlier period), as quite the beginning of last century, a hard brown ware, of much the same quality as that made at Nottingham and Chesterfield, was produced on Swinton Common, where clays useful for various purposes were abundantly found. In 1745, it appears that a Mr. Edward Butler, seeing the advantage offered by the locality through its clays, which consisted of a “common yellow clay used for the purposes of making bricks, tiles, and coarse earthenware; a finer white clay for making pottery of a better quality; an excellent clay for making fire-bricks; and also a white clay usually called pipeclay;” established a tile-yard and pot-works for common earthenware, on a part of the estate of Charles, Marquis of Rockingham, which lay closely contiguous to Swinton Common, where these clays existed. The memory of this old potter, the founder of the works which afterwards became so famous as the “Royal Rockingham China Works,” is, it is pleasant to record, at the present day preserved in the name of a field near the now ruined factory, called “Butler’s Park.” Butler at these works produced the ordinary classes of goods then in use, but principally the hard brown ware to which I have just alluded. An interesting example of this period was in the possession of the late Dr. Brameld, and is engraved on Fig. [866]. It is a “posset-pot” of the usual form of those which, at that period, were in such general use in Derbyshire and Yorkshire; it bears the date of 1759. This interesting example has a fragment of a label, written at “Swinton Pottery,” which authenticates it as having been made by, or for, John Brameld.
Figs. 866 and 867.
In 1765 the works were taken by William Malpass, who held another small pot-work at Kilnhurst, in the same neighbourhood, and he continued them for some years. With him were associated in partnership, I believe, John Brameld, and subsequently his son, William Brameld, of whom I shall have more to say presently. Mr. Malpass continued to manufacture the same varieties of ware as his predecessor, and held the works, or rather was a partner in them, at all events as late as 1786.