Pottery tourist thought Stokies ‘wanted gravy with everything!’
North Staffordshire historian MERVYN EDWARDS examines the pottery industry in Fenton, including his time as a tour guide on the council’s China Bus service
CERAMIC history is never very far away in Fenton – and even when you’ve forgotten all about it, it often pops up to say hello. In December 2020, a car park off City Road attracted the attention of archaeologists who were permitted to carry out a dig prior to intended redevelopment.
They found the bases of three bottle ovens just below the surface as well as fragments of creamware and kiln furniture on a site operated in the 18th century by potter William Greatbatch.
Not all of the architectural finds were ancient, as a 20th century ginger beer bottle was discovered, in addition to a 1967 penny.
Phil Rowley, who is a long-serving volunteer at the Gladstone Pottery Museum, took photographs of the excavated site, and you can find some of these on the internet.
Greatbatch is only one of the many prominent potters we meet with if we study Fenton’s ceramic past – not least because of his business relationship with Stoke’s Prince of Potters, Josiah Wedgwood.
Others included Thomas
Whieldon, who was operating a modest pottery at Fenton Low by 1740 and who was, in the 1750s, senior partner in business to the precocious Josiah. Some of Whieldon’s pottery aped Chinese imports and it was claimed that its colour and style brought a welcome dash of humour to the kitchen tables of humble artisans.
Also notable were William
Bacchus, the Bournes and the Bakers and the Shelley Potteries.
Several more industrialists are recalled by Bill Morland, a former senior lecturer at North Staffordshire Polytechnic, involved in industrial archaeology.
In his often whimsical book
Portrait of the Potteries, published in 1978, he notes that the Foley Pottery in Fenton was built around 1790 for Samuel Spode, the second son of the great Josiah.
Samuel, comments Bill, was “the one who sent his men to gaol over a dinner-hour dispute, and who made a public spectacle of himself by dancing a jig on his workmen’s clothes.”
Fast-forward 50 years and we find that workmen were beginning to fight back against the asperity of employers.
Another leading Fenton pottery manufacturer, Charles James Mason, was accused by his workers of depreciating wages – and was said by some workmen to be one of the worst employers in the district. His house,
Heron Cottage, was targeted by the Chartist rioters in 1842.
There are known to have been four pottery factories recorded in Fenton in 1781. The 1912 trade directory for the Potteries lists several Fenton china manufacturers such as Brain E. and Company of King Street, Samuel Radford of High Street, and Wileman and Company of King Street.
This company, by the way, made a pretty little thing called the child’s alphabet plate, which had the 26 letters running around its inside edge and a dancing boy and girl depicted in the centre.
Early 20th century maps show various potbanks and their attendant bottle ovens hugging the main road as it passes through Fenton.
Some names – such as the Canning Pottery, which produced earthenware – are long-forgotten and send us rummaging for our history volumes.
Several local brickworks provided the materials with which to build the potbanks and their ovens, while the survival of China Street in Fenton says everything about the area’s industrial past.
Also to be found were stilt and spur works and tile factories. Fenton couldn’t hold a candle to Longton’s mighty status as a pottery town, but it quietly and determinedly carried on its business as Fenton always does.
My own links with the pottery industry in Fenton go back to 1991, when, as a registered tourist guide, I was invited to help conduct a survey on the council’s China Bus service, which took visitors to numerous tourism destinations in the city.
I was detailed to take my clipboard and survey sheets to Coalport in Fenton.
It was always the off the record information I received from tourists that interested me the most.
A Wirral-born lady visitor to Coalport’s factory shop remarked to me that Potteries people were polite and courteous but that, from what she had observed, Stokies wanted gravy with everything.
It was around this time that I visited the Heron Cross Pottery in Hines Street/chilton Street – a 19th century building that had a variegated history. You know the one – it’s the one that has the neck of a bottle oven emerging from the roof, almost in the manner of Mr Chad peering at us over a wall.
Over the years, it had been occupied by several manufacturers including Crown Staffordshire, which was absorbed by Royal Doulton.
After 1955, the building was permitted to fall into disrepair and a destructive fire in the 1970s did not augur well for the future of this rat and pigeon-infested building.
However, years later, the plan was hatched by the enterprising Colin Ridge to convert the building into a visitor centre and factory shop, with the remaining bottle oven housing a frit kiln. It took £180,000 to save the building, and grants were also secured.
A centrepiece was made of the restored bottle oven, which came to house the factory shop and its tableware, glassware and fancies.
Nearby, experienced craftsmen were on hand, displaying their skill in hand-painting plates, drawing and sculpting and engaging with the public.
The grade II listed building embraced the Frit Kiln Restaurant, which had its own proud fascia sign on the factory’s façade.
Fritting was a process for making glazes and was regarded as a major advance in the potting industry as it reduced the exposure of the dippers – those employees who worked with glazes – to lead poisoning.
The restaurant was accommodated on the second floor, which had previously been used for the hand-making of dinnerware. Needless to say, lobby and oatcakes were sold there.
Not that it was all plain sailing for
owner Mr Ridge. In 1993 he asked for more cash from the city council. By this time coach operators were beginning to snub the visitor attraction on account of poor access.
Mr Ridge told The Sentinel that it had taken 27 months to persuade the council to paint double yellow lines in the street, allowing coaches easier ingress. Road signs advertising the attraction were slow to materialise, he added.
With the attraction beginning to struggle in 1993, Colin had to temporarily shut up shop – but evidently decided to get his own back on the 60 councillors who had refused him financial support.
Each one was sent a speciallydesigned ceramic mug. It featured the city’s tourism logo – the tagline, “the city that fires the imagination” and a bottle oven – with one addition. Colin’s ceramic mug depicted a man relieving himself into the top of the bottle oven.
Reminders of Fenton’s industrial past are evidenced in the remaining bottle ovens in the town.
At the James Kent works in Fountain Street, there is a little cluster of three flint calcining kilns built around 1900 and last fired in 1988. They are known by local folk as Salt, Pepper and Vinegar. What, no gravy?