facture"; and one in the collection of the late W. Edkins, "probably made in Wales or the west of England,” are all three unquestionable North Devon specimens. Of the eighteenth-century wares of similar nature that most nearly resemble the North Devon ware, Donyat (Ilminster) in Somerset and Pencoed in Wales are most like, but specimens are generally easily distinguishable. All other eighteenth-century wares of the class, that I have examined, differ considerably; and the examples this paper attempts to describe will, I think, show that the North Devon ware has considerable local character, and is not deficient in quaintness and sometimes beauty of shape, and, in well-fired examples, in the richness and depth of colour which makes the Toft ware of Staffordshire so attractive; indeed, there is so much similarity in the material and process of manufacture, that it would be strange if it were not similarly successful. This North Devon ware was made at a number of small pot-works in remote districts, producing the jugs, bakingdishes, flower-pots, ovens, butter-pots, etc., for the neighbourhood, or, as in the case of Fremington, exporting into Cornwall pilchard-pots, and into Cornwall and Wales ovens, etc., the decorated or ornamental pieces being merely occasional presentation pieces for neighbours, usually harvest pitchers, for use at harvest or sheep-shearing gatherings. These pieces, sometimes treasured for a time in farmsteads and cottages, and the tiles, to which I will refer presently, are the few remaining pieces of this, at its best, very perishable pottery. Every trace of a country pottery is lost in a very few years-not so strange if we remember how little is known of many important china-works of the eighteenth century in Staffordshire, Bristol, and Lowestoft. The products of the potteries at Barnstaple, Bideford, and Fremington, and perhaps those of other works that have left no trace behind, are, owing to the same materials and processes being used, often impossible to separate from each other; but around this small clay field there were different types in different places. Bideford was probably the source of most of the harvest pitchers, especially of those decorated with ships, as would be special to a seaport, but some were also made at Barnstaple and Fremington. Puzzle-jugs were made at Barnstaple. The North Walk Pottery turned out at an unknown distance of time beaker-shaped cups, one of which was found in the Taw, and many pieces on the site of the pottery, and in sherd-heaps on the banks of the Yeo opposite the pot-works. An important manufacture there was plates and dishes of various size and section, and generally decorated, sometimes elaborately, in sgraffito, i.e. mostly covered with white clay slip and with incised patterns; large quantities of fragments, both in the biscuit state and glazed, plain and slipped, were found in the refuse-heaps from the pottery, on the banks of the river, where the broken and imperfect pieces were thrown away. A few more fragments of similar dishes were found in the Rackfield close by, at a small depth below the surface of old pasture. Extensive as the demand for these dishes must have been, judging from the heap of fragments, not a single piece has to my knowledge been found above ground. Eight or ten years ago butter-steans at Crocker's, Bideford, were quite different in shape from the degenerate butter-pots of Fremington and Barnstaple. At East-the-Water Pottery money-boxes and pipkins, the latter different in type from those of Barnstaple and Bideford, were made within my recollection, as were also oven pitchers or potato-pots at Fremington, specially for the South Molton bakers; also from the same pottery came owl's heads, for whitepot, an oldfashioned dish, now still made, but not as cooking pots, but as art pottery. An old domestic implement was the earthen lamp, of two different types from Barnstaple and Fremington, said to have been still used at the latter place half a century ago. The great crock of 1724, for some home-brewed liquor, passed through the form of the degenerate pilchard-pot for the Cornish fishermen, and has now ceased to be made. Of posset-pots, one with a seventeenth-century date is in the possession of a Barnstaple potter. Porringers may still sometimes be seen in the markets, as paint-pots. Fremington clay was universally used for the body of the ware, never Bideford pipe-clay; pipe-clay very generally as a slip covering part, or the whole, of the surface, rarely in splashes, as in the pie-dishes or spirals poured on the revolving dish; it is strange this process should never have extended to other decoration in poured-on slip, as it did in the Midlands. For ovens, tiles, pipkins, etc., Bideford gravel was mixed with the clay, to harden the ware, always the galena native sulphide of lead for the glaze, no doubt originally dusted on to the ware, as with the older potters elsewhere. Decoration in sgraffito, i.e. scratched through the slip of pipe-clay to produce the pattern. In Fremington only, of the time of George Fishley, manganese-brown and the addition of modelled or cast ornament in pipe-clay or mixed red and white clay, giving this ingenious craftsman a scale of colour similar to Toft ware. The galena glaze, though decidedly objectionable from the sanitary point of view, is probably the secret of the exceedingly deep and rich colour on some of the old wares. The efforts of the modern potter to produce variety of colour and whiteness of body being hindered by the intensely yellow colour of the galena glaze, has led to the use of red lead and other glazes, and even leadless glaze, and the depth and rich quality of glaze of the old ware is lost to us for ever. The old churches of the neighbourhood still contain large numbers of embossed tiles, and no doubt a careful examination of those still in situ would afford information as to dates. Few fragments of them have been found underground on or near pottery sites, but a mould in wood for stamping them was found in the North Walk, a carved wood block, which is shown, together with tiles pressed in it, and made of Fremington clay and Bideford gravel, and glazed with galena, showing what these tiles were like when fresh from the potter's kiln; most of these tiles are much the worse for wear, but the admixture of gravel in the clay has given them considerable hardness compared with the unmixed clay, which bears out the character for softness given it by the Geological Museum. The ware generally was very badly fired, though hard-fired pieces are considerably the best. From the fragments it can be seen that the firing was most unequal, parts of the body being grey in colour instead of a rich red, as the well-fired portions are. I am told that the kilns originally were open at the top like limekilns and the contents roofed over with old crocks. A further evidence of the manufacture of these embossed tiles in Barnstaple is found in certain roughly shaped bats of clay (and gravel), with the pattern of such a mould partly impressed on the top, sides, and front; one of these bats of clay in the possession of Mr. Brannam was found in pulling down the North Walk Pottery, another with marks of subsequent use in the fire is from an old closed-up fireplace in an old house in the High Street, Barnstaple, and two in the North Devon Athenæum were excavated when the Long Bridge was altered: these are dated 1655, the earliest date I can produce. Still another of these clay fire-dogs is in the Free Library at Bideford, and is slipped with pipe-clay, glazed, and has a roughly modelled head applied on the front. Some of these tiles from Bristol Cathedral and Bitton Church, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, are labelled fourteenth century, and are apparently identical with tiles made in the North Walk Pottery in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The patterns are varied, most commonly a fleur-de-lis, but floral devices, Tudor roses, lions, swans, and human heads and figures occur-all of quite a medieval character. Of course these tiles may not all have been made in Barnstaple; some are dated 1708, and some, in the possession of Mr. Hamlyn Chichester, 1661. The names given to different sizes of pitchers are worth recording. Yellow drum pitchers with tops slipped in pipeclay and made for harvest use. Then beginning with the largest red pitchers, long toms, forty tales, gullymouths, pinchgutts, sixties, and penny jugs. The terms forty tales and sixties refer to the number in a dozen or tale, a unit that contained more of the smaller and less of the larger sizes, and was of uniform value; a similar way of counting formerly prevailed in the Staffordshire potteries. There were also land dozens of thirty-nine and sea dozens of sixty, and milk-pans are still sold eighteen to the dozen. The different sizes of pilchard-pots were known as great crocks, buzzards, and gallons. I do not know if the poetical inscriptions on the harvest jugs are any of them peculiar to North Devon; here are a few: The tulip and the butterfly Appears in gayer coats Than I at ome be drest Fine as those worms This small jug in friendship take When I was in my native place And digged was out of the earth And now your servant am become And carry ale I will. Drink to me with your heart Without spilling or you will. When this you see remember me Speak of me as you find. From rocks and sands and every ill May God protect the sailor still. |