To the Shropshire potteries—those of the clays of the Severn Valley, probably at Brosely,—a vast number of varieties of vessels are to be traced; and it is, as I shall show in a later chapter, interesting to know that the same bed of clay which at the present day produces articles of daily use, produced fifteen hundred years ago the vessels for the table, &c., of the inhabitants of the then great neighbouring city of Uriconium. In the excavations which have been undertaken on the site of this ruined city immense quantities of fragments of pottery have been found, and, with the exception of the Samian ware and the Durobrivian ware, it is not too much, perhaps, to say that the whole, or nearly so, has been made in the Severn Valley. Of these wares, two sorts especially are found in considerable abundance; the one white, the other of a rather light red colour. The white, which is made of what is commonly called Brosely clay, and is rather coarse in texture, consists chiefly of rather handsomely shaped jugs or bellarmine-shaped vessels, of different sizes, the general shape of which somewhat resembles Fig. [96]; of Mortaria; and of bowls of different shapes and sizes, which are often painted with stripes of red and yellow. The other variety, the red Romano-Salopian ware, is also made from one of the clays of the Severn Valley, but is of finer texture, and consists principally of jugs not dissimilar to those in the white ware, except in a very different form of mouth; and of bowl-shaped colanders.[16]
Two examples of Romano-Salopian ware—the first of the white, and the second of the red variety—are given on Fig. [139], and on Fig. [140] is represented a group of vessels of this make, from the cemetery at Uriconium.
Fig. 158.—Derby Museum.
Fig. 159.—Jermyn Street Museum.
Fig. 160.—York Museum.
Fig. 161.