NOTES ON NORTH DEVON POTTERY OF THE

SEVENTEENTH, EIGHTEENTH, AND
NINETEENTH CENTURIES.

BY T. CHARBONNIER.

(Read at Lynton, July, 1906 )

AMONG the specimens of clay in the Museum of Practical Geology, was one labelled, "Potter's clay, Post Tertiary, Fremington, near Barnstaple." And the catalogue added: "Extensively used in North Devon for the manufacture of common pottery fired at a low heat: at a high temperature the ware becomes vesicular, and expands to such an extent that bricks made of it when overfired will float in water."

Around this bed of clay, which lies between Barnstaple and Bideford, numerous potteries have risen, flourished, and mostly disappeared-the earliest dating back to an unknown distance in the seventeenth century. Two of these old potworks the North Walk Pottery at Barnstaple and Crocker's old pottery at Bideford-have vanished during the last few years. The kilns of the latter bear, or lately bore, a seventeenth-century date.

Tradition only remains of pot-works at Fremington and Instow. The pot-works established at Muddlebridge by George Fishley at the end of the eighteenth century have been moved to Combrew, where a pottery already existed, and no traces of the works at Muddlebridge remain. George Fishley was succeeded by his son Edmond, and Mr. E. B. Fishley, the present proprietor, is the third generation of a family of potters. Robert Fishley worked at the pottery in 1836, and resided in a cottage at the works. John Pidler was wheelman there a century ago, and "John Pidler his hand" is inscribed on a jug. George Fishley was the first Fremington potter to use coal in firing his ware.

At Crocker's old pottery, Bideford, established 1668, two jugs in the collection were made by George Dennis, who worked for Crocker. Dennis's daughter married Mr. Milton,

who succeeded to the works, and finally closed them in 1896. I repeatedly visited the works during his management and found some quaint shapes, now extinct, but Milton was not a successful potter and only made the commonest wares. The potter's signature, "John Hoyle, 1860," is on a harvest pitcher probably made at these works; "John Phillip Hoyle, 1852," on another, and "John Hoyle" on a money

box.

There is an old pottery at East-the-Water, Bideford, which produces only coarse plain ware, but a dozen years ago produced some decorated ware. Henry Phillips, who died in 1894, was partner with the present Mr. Radcliffe, the potter still at work at East-the-Water, where only the commonest ware is now produced; some quaint old shapes are still sometimes made, but in the sixties and eighties H. Phillips made handsome jugs and dishes decorated in sgraffito.

Barnstaple had pot-works in Litchdon Street worked by Lovering about the end of the eighteenth century, afterwards by a potter named Rendle, and later by Mr. Brannam, father of the present proprietor, who still carries on the works as an extensive and successful manufactory of Royal Barum Ware. The North Walk Pottery, now pulled down, was formerly owned by Rendle & Son, later by Mr. Brannam; and evidence obtained, on or near the site, is conclusive that here was one of the oldest pot-works at the beginning of the eighteenth century and probably far back into the seventeenth century.

I have never heard of any Roman or early British pottery being found in North Devon.1 Two or three pieces of late medieval ware have come from the River Taw, but there is nothing to show that they are of local manufacture.

Burton, the British Museum Catalogue, and other authorities scarcely refer to North Devon, and only incidentally as a locality, among others, where coarse peasant pottery was made, but probably not before the eighteenth century.

Wrotham, Staffordshire, the Metropolis, Derbyshire, and other localities are well represented by their pottery in museums and other collections, but examples of North Devon ware are very few. A fine harvest jug in the British Museum, dated 1708; another in Hodgkin's book on "Early English Pottery" (No. 210), "said to be of Devonshire manu

1 This paper being concerned with pottery of the seventeenth and subsequent centuries, my notes are confined to the neighbourhood of the Fremington clay beds.