DONOVAN
DUBLIN.
Dublin.
Fig. 722.
A mark on Delft ware which has come under my notice is a crowned harp with the word Dublin. It is quite uncertain to whose make this is to be ascribed.
Two or three brownware manufactories also existed during last century at Dublin, and produced all the usual commoner kinds of coarse domestic vessels.
Belfast.
Leathes and Smith.—A pottery was established here in the middle of the seventeenth century by Captain Leathes and Mr. Smith. It is thus alluded to by William Sacheverell, some time Governor of the Isle of Man (a descendant of the Sacheverells of Morley, in Derbyshire), who in 1688 made a voyage to I-Columb-Kill, which he printed in his “Survey of the Isle of Man.” He left Liverpool on the 23rd of June, 1688, on his way to I-Columb-Kill, and as “it blew very hard for a whole week” he “took the opportunity of visiting Carrick Fergus and Bellfast,” and stayed in the latter two nights, being thither invited by “the Earl of Dunagall, whither he was going with the Earl of Orrery and the Lord Dungannon.” “Bellfast,” he says, “is the second town in Ireland, well built, full of people, and of great trade. The quantities of butter and of beef which it sends into foreign parts are almost incredible; I have seen the barrels piled up in the very streets. The new pottery is a pretty curiosity, set up by Mr. Smith, the present sovereign, and his predecessor, Captain Leathes, a man of great ingenuity;” and, again, “Captain Leathes, who was chief magistrate of Belfast, and reputed a man of great integrity.” The pottery is also spoken of at a later date, 1708, by Dr. Molyneux, in his MS. tour to the Giant’s Causeway. “Here,” at Belfast, he says, “we saw a very good manufacture of earthenware, which comes nearest to delft of any made in Ireland, and really is not much short of it. It is very clear and pretty, and universally used in the north; and, I think, not so much owing to any peculiar happiness in the clay, but rather to the manner of beating and mixing it up.” The works were continued for very many years, and produced much useful ware of good quality.
M
H * R
1724