What ho, you wonderful folk, you. Well, you join me in full panic mode – I promised a December post (actually, pre-Christmas was the promise, but let’s overlook that), and here we are with mere hours of the month, and indeed year, left. Christmas was, as always, busy, especially having the new Job taking almost all of my time, and so I have been lacking in the blog – and pottery – department. And also… Hmmm? What’s that? What do you mean “we don’t care, just get on with it!“. Alright, hint taken… I do have a tendency to ramble on and, you know, procreating – if that’s the word I’m fumbling for – instead of actually doing the thing.
So then… pottery. Taken from my overflowing finds tray that needs to be sorted before Mrs CG sees it. Some choice pieces, perhaps? Okey-dokey!
First up, a simple tea cup fragment.
Very delicate Bone China, with walls less than 2mm thick (you can see light through it), and rim diameter of 9cm. Nothing fancy, and certainly not old (late Victorian), and not even particularly good quality – the transfer printing is a little ropey in places. The design is that of the Willow Pattern spurious legend, and you can just make out one half of one of the birds into which the lovers transformed in order to escape. At first I wasn’t sure why I had this in my finds tray, but then I remembered Master CG and I had found it together on Bank Lane in Tintwistle/Hadfield. It’s also a nice example of its kind.
Next we have this beautiful specimen. And yes, I realise that beauty is in the ‘E’ of the ‘B’, or something, and that equally yes, I am possibly certifiable.
Slightly larger and distinctly less delicate than the first example, we have a Pancheon rim. It’s a huge example – 50cm in diameter – and is chunky. Glazed on the interior, as is traditional, it has a red slipped exterior, and is really roughly finished, which I quite like – there’s a sense of practicality about it, a no-nonsense pot, if you will. There’s smoothing marks all over it, too, and great lumps of inclusions popping through the surface.
If you look at the fabric, you can see the characteristic marbling, with a buff coloured clay mixed with a reddish. It was found in the spoil from a hole dug in Whitfield Cross, and probably dates to the late 18th or very early 19th century, which would make sense as this was when the road was laid out and surfaced. I honestly love this.
You can see the glaze on the interior and red slip on the exterior, with wonderful wiping marks left by the potter, and the characteristic fabric type.
It’s from the ledge rim of a plate, probably something like the sherd on the left in the image:
It has the characteristic Staffordshire buff fabric, with the usual inclusions, making it very identifiable. The fact that is comes from the area of the Guide Stoop, on the post-medieval path there, is perfect in terms of dating. I like it when it comes together like that!
Finally, we have this lovely thing – a ceramic toy marble, and a large one, too – 2.5cm in diameter. I wonder, does this qualify as a ‘dobber’?
It’s not glazed, and is slightly off being perfectly spherical, but is quite beautiful, and marbles are always welcome finds. This, too, came from the area around the guide stoop – it really is the area that keeps on giving!
Right then, that’s your lot for this post. I have a double whammy of somewhat speculative Anglo-Saxon based posts that need finishing off, and a whole pile more pottery ready to go (look, don’t moan… all this pottery is good for the mind, body, and soul). I’ve also got a new Where/When to explore and publish, and there are more Wanders planned for the new year. So lots more in 2025, but for now, enjoy the last hours of 2024, and, glass of the stuff that cheers in hand, here’s a health to you and yours.
But do look after yourselves, and each other. Christmas can be a difficult time for some people, so it’s always good to keep an eye on those around you, even if you don’t know them. Until next time, as ever, I remain.
I know, I know! Another instalment of the seemingly never-ending Rough Guide… it really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it! I can see and hear the hubbub from here. The yelps of excitement, the whoops of joy, the screams of happiness… lots of these. And the exuberant dancing in the street. It even looks like people are running away from me… what fun! And oh look, that man over there has started drinking what looks like cheap vodka from a bottle, and is shaking his fist at me in a cheerful expression of his enthusiasm. Steady on, there’s a good chap…
So then, today’s offering is simply black pottery.
At most places you encounter pottery, you will find sherds with a black glaze on them. Of varying quality, and of various sizes and forms, there is always a background noise of them, as a wander through the archives of the site will show. It’s less common than the Blue and White stuff, but you will find it. Most often as a big sherd of a thick walled vessel – a chunky rim if you are lucky – but more often featureless body sherds that feel like they ought to be able to tell you something… but don’t. Mostly these are difficult to date; one black sherd looks very like another, and without having the whole vessel to look at, it can be futile to try – even I just mentally lump most of them together under the banner ‘Victorian’. And largely I’d be correct (as if you ever doubted me!). But… actually there are subtle differences that can give a little more information and provide a rough date.
The problem is that Black glazed pottery is just that. Pottery… with a glazed black surface. So you can see how assigning a date to it might be a tad difficult, and whilst there are some broad observations to be made, the finer points of interest are missed. It has taken me this long to fully wrap my head around it, and I think I have it straight, though even now it’s fuzzy in places. I don’t like ‘fuzzy’. I like things to be simple and logical and straightforward, with neat edges and exact dates. Today’s offering has none of that and is full of fuzzy, which frankly makes me feel a little uncomfortable (does anyone else feel that these little interludes are starting to sound like a therapy session? What do you mean “we know you’re a raving lunatic, get to the pottery”… honestly). No, they are a problem, and quite rightly most people shy away from them; I mean to say, these bally Herberts frighten me… I can only imagine what your normal non-sherd-nerd would make of them. No… by and large it’s safer to just leave them. Unless, of course, some lunatic tries to impose some form of order on it, and takes a trip to the dark side in order to investigate Black Glazed Pottery.
Well… cometh the hour, and cometh the lunatic.
The following is a rough outline of what, where, and when; it isn’t final, it can’t be applied as a law, and certainly not everywhere, and there are always exceptions, and always overlaps. Indeed, we can only speak here of a pottery making ‘tradition’ rather than clean-cut specific ware types, and people have been making pottery in a black-glazed tradition for over 500 years. But it will allow you to look at your black sherd and say “oooh, that’s probably a…”, which is sort of the point of this guide (no, Mr Shouty-Outy, despite what you think, the point of this site is not to attempt to be “the dullest thing on the internet“, thank you very much).
So, we start today somewhere in the 15th century, which is nice!
CISTERCIAN WARE DATE: 1475-1600-ish DESCRIPTION: Fine, hard-fired, purple or reddish purple fabric, with a very dark brown to black glazed surface interior and exterior. SHAPES: Mugs, Cups, Tygs, Small Jugs.
This is the first black glazed pottery type, and overtakes Tudor Green Ware as the pottery type found on early Post-Medieval sites up and down the country. It’s origins are unclear – as a tradition it is unlike anything that went before it, and was the technological and design cutting edge. It was originally thought of as being made in Cistercian monasteries in the north – hence the name – it is now known to have been made all over, most famously in Wrenthorpe (West Yorkshire) and Ticknall (Derbyshire).
Sherds of the whole…Image stolen from St Albans Museum (and a damn fine museum and website it is indeed)
Characterised by a very thick all over (interior and exterior) iron rich glaze which produces a very dark brown or black surface when fired.
The glaze is shiny, but has a dullness to it – also very characteristic – and is often fairly poor quality, with pitting and an orange-peel surface, and is often sloppily applied, leading to melted blobs on bases, etc. – it’s still very much in the medieval way of doing things.
The bubbled glaze, melted in the heat of the kiln. Also on the base, you can make out the circular marks made when the Tyg was removed from the still spinning wheel with string. The straight lines might have been where the potter was testing how moist the clay was before putting it in the kiln, and it is something I have seen on other vessels of this period.
Very rarely, there is a pale cream decoration applied in slip, often in blobs or rough images of unicorns or other designs.
The fabric is also very characteristic. Very hard fired (almost vitrified), it is a purple, greyish-purple, or reddish/brownish purple colour. Looking closely at it, you can see voids formed by gases during firing, and very infrequent quartzite ‘sandy’ bits.
You can also see the thick glaze in the section.
Shapes are mostly drinking vessels – mugs, cups, and tygs (multi handled cups) – with a sprinkling of small jugs and bowls; the emphasis, though, is very much on the stuff that cheers! Handles are often small and delicate, and normally flat.
Taken from Lloyd Laing’s useful book Pottery in Britain 4000BC to AD1900 – very good on early stuff, not great on Post-Medieval… which is why I started the Rough Guide.
I am lucky enough to own a copy of a Tyg by potter John Hudson, an amazing craftsman who used traditional techniques to faithfully recreate medieval and post-medieval vessels:
Lovely stuff – its 3 handles make it a joy to hold. I have, on occasion, carefully sipped a snifter from its curiously shaped body.
The making of this ware type – with this specific fabric type and in these shapes – seems to have died off by the late 1500’s, but the black-glazed tradition continues.
BLACKWARE (aka Midlands Black Ware, Black Glazed, Ticknall Ware, etc. ) DATE: 1550-ish-1800-ish DESCRIPTION: Black shiny glaze over a red or reddish brown fabric. SHAPES: Mugs, Jugs, Tygs, Bowls, Dishes.
This stuff continues the tradition of making pottery with a lustrous black glaze, but without the hard purple fabric. Instead, reddish, reddish-orange, or occasionally buff coloured fabrics are found, and overall it is fired to a lower temperature, making it less hard and more, well, coarseware-y. Often with a small number of quartzite – sandy – inclusions, but normally of a consistent colour throughout.
Fabrics! Multiple colours, and more inclusions than the Cistercian Ware.
The surface is normally much shinier than Cistercian Ware, but can also be found as a metallic looking surface, the result of adding lead in the form of Galena. Often there is an under-glaze slip that provides a red surface which, when covered in the glaze and fired, creates the black surface. This is particularly true in the case of the buff or whitish coloured fabrics such as that in the photo above.
With the light in the right place, you can really see the metallic sheen.
It has been suggested that this was a desired effect; in the poor candlelight of the 17th and 18th centuries it might look like it was made from more expensive pewter. This is a Skeuomorph, an object made from one type of material made to look like it is made from a different material; we’ve encountered it before in the Manganese Mottled Ware pottery. I’ve said it before, but don’t say we don’t learn you nuffink on this website!
Shapes include many of the same type you find with Cistercian Ware – mugs, tygs, jugs, etc. – although slightly more evolved – for example the mugs and tygs are noticeably taller. However, we now see larger bowls and jugs, too. Blackware becomes the utilitarian ware type, and thus it takes on many forms and uses.
To be honest, there is a deal of overlap between Cistercian Ware and Blackware, especially at the beginning, and it is not an exact science. Moreover, it is a good example of problems within post-medieval pottery studies: many different potters are making this stuff, in many different locations all over Britain – the black glaze was very popular, and so there was a ready market. But, 100’s of years later we have archaeologists digging this stuff up everywhere, and mudlarks/tiplarks/fieldlarks finding it all over. But there is no consensus as to what this stuff should be called! And why would there be? It is made everywhere, is found everywhere, and comes in so many different forms. In fact, I only call it Blackware because the last article I read called it that, and I like the name – it is helpfully vague in that it doesn’t rely on a geographical place (Ticknall Ware, for example), or a specific vessel shape (Pancheon Ware), to define it, but it is specific enough to describe what it is. See… fuzzy edges! I’m feeling very uncomfortable… I need a bracer!
The vast majority of the stuff you might find will be in the later part of the date bracket given above – late 17th/early 18th century. Indeed, by about 1720 the Blackware tradition starts to decline, although it probably continues until the end of the 18th century. Whiteware has become the pottery type – white is the new black, and all that – and we see that start of the quest for the perfect white surface that I have talked about before. To be fair, it was dying from the mid 1600’s onwards, with the introduction of the classic post-medieval pottery types – the Manganese Glazed and Slipwares.
Well, I say dying. Actually, and more specifically, the thin-walled vessel Blackware pottery tradition tails off, but it continues to be used on Pancheons.
PANCHEON WARE (Coarse Earthernwares) DATE: 1700 ish-1900 ish… emphasis on the ‘ish’! DESCRIPTION: Thick-walled (1-2cm), often reddish/orange coloured fabric, commonly with a black internal glaze, and with a chunky rim. SHAPES: Well, er… Pancheons, but also other large utilitarian vessels: large pots, colanders, chamber pots, etc.
A lovely word, for a great category of pottery – the mighty Pancheon – also described as mixing bowls, cream separators, or dairy bowls. Their purpose is multiple, as their name suggests, but it is their large size that is really impressive, as is the skill, detail, and indeed general lack of care with which they were made and decorated. Into this category we might also add large bowls, large dishes, chamber pots, and colanders. But the commonly encountered type, Pancheons, are generally steep sided open bowl shapes, with a height of up to 30cm, and a rim diameter of up to 60cm, or more. They are big pots, and consequently the sherds, are usually thick walled, ranging in width between 1 and 2cm, and are instantly recognisable.
A complete Pancheon – the word may have been a corruption of Puncheon, meaning a large container of liquid (and possibly the origin of the word punch, meaning a mixed drink).
Fabric is normally reddish or reddish brown.
Commonly, though, the fabric is poorly mixed with another cream or buff coloured clay, giving it a distinctly marbled effect.
Very clear marbling in this sherd.
Why this was done is unclear. If it was just a few examples of this happening, we might suggest that the potter was using up some spare clay he had lying around, but it is too commonly found. It can’t have been a decorative reason as no-one would see the fabric unless the pot was broken. I wonder if it was a practical concern, and that the buff clay had different thermal properties, perhaps allowing the vessel to shrink uniformly when drying or during firing? This might explain why it was poorly mixed into the fabric. But honestly… answers on a sherd to the usual address. My feeling, though I can’t be certain, is that this was more commonly found in earlier vessels, and that these mixed clays stopped being used in the 19th century.
Within the fabric are often found small inclusions – sometimes quartzite (sand), sometimes other small stones, and occasionally grog – crushed fragments of pottery. These too have the effect of improving shrinkage during, and strength after, firing.
Vessel rims are very distinctive – thick and chunky, and often square-ish in section, although other forms of rim – particularly those from shallow dishes – are flatter. Again I suspect, but can’t prove (yet) that these are early vessel types, and that by the 19th century the Pancheon takes on a single uniform shape which is made by potters all over the country.
Some Pancheons have handles, and often these are scooped lug type handles.
I love this – you can see thumb marks where it was pressed onto the body whilst wet. But also, you can see scuff marks above, where it was fixed properly and the potter accidentaly left an impression. Rough, and not over produced pottery like this, is so much more human.
Perhaps most distinctive is the black glazed surface. Because these vessels were normally only glazed on the interior, you will only find it on one side. As with the Blackware above, the dark colour was achieved by roughly painting a red slip on the interior and the rim, over which was applied a thick iron-rich glaze which, when fired, becomes the very dark brown or black we see. Sometimes this red slip was applied to the whole vessel, but even then any glaze or slip on the rim or exterior is the result of spillage.
Here you can clearly see the red slip over the orange fabric, and where the glaze has splashed has become black. Also, lovely lovely wiping marks, and is that a fingerprint? A person made those… 200 years ago! *shudder* This is why I do what I do!
That said, sometimes this spillage was a deliberate decorative feature, with the large exaggerated thick drips over the rim and down the outside giving it a certain devil-may-care look.
Lovely stuff!
This devil-may-care look also extends to the interior and exterior surface treatment of the vessels, where they also make use of ‘manufacturing’ marks as a form of decoration, thus you can see deep grooves and ridges on the interior and exterior where the clay has been pulled up on the wheel, and roughly made smoothing marks on the exterior.
Groovy! What? It made me smile…
Indeed, overall they seem to be very roughly made, with little attention to ‘perfection’ at a time when pottery was fast becoming quite literally an art form. I suspect that this is in part due to speed being the essence in making them, combined with the fact that they are entirely practical with very little attention paid to decoration. Even the fact that they are glazed on the interior only is suggestive of their practical nature – it’s quicker to glaze only one side, and it is cheaper, but it is also not necessary to glaze the exterior as only the interior needs to be waterproof. However, I also think there was a decorative element to the roughness – the exaggerated drips, the course smoothing, the noticeable finger and thumb marks in the wet clay and slip. I like this, it adds character and a human element.
Deliberate grooves on the interior and exterior of these vessels.
Now, whilst most sherds you will encounter are Black glazed, within the broad category of Pancheon Ware are sub-types, with different coloured exteriors – namely Brown, Yellow, and Pale Yellow/Cream.
A massive chunky rim sherd… from my back garden!
Actually, the colours depend on the amount of iron in the glaze and the colour of the surface underneath, but it is all the same process. It works like this: the more iron you add to a glaze, and the darker the surface under the glaze, the darker colour the pot will fire. And conversely, the less iron you add to the glaze, and the lighter the surface under the glaze, the lighter the finished pot will fire. So the Yellow glazed sherds often have a white slip and a glaze with little iron in it, and the Cream, too, but with a glaze that has even less iron added to it.
You can clearly make out the white under-glaze slip covering the naturally red clay where the glaze has peeled away. Ignore the writing, that’s a code I use in my reference collection (which is kept separate from the main ‘Pile o’ Pottery’) to tell me where it came from: BGW = Back Garden Wall. Here we can see where the glaze has run over the white slip and onto the red fabric, producing the brown stripe. Now imagine if the fabric was a darker red, or had a red slip… it would produce a black glazed surface.
Brown has a darker coloured red fabric or a red slip, and an iron rich glaze, but not as iron rich as the Black glazed surfaces.
The truly wonderful Bingham Heritage Trails Association, who have done an amazing amount of work on post-medieval pottery (a very much recommended website full of pottery), have given them different names, and put them in a tentative chronological order, depending on fabric types and surface colour. This might work, but I’m not 100% convinced, and I think the differences maybe have more to do with desired colour, geographical origin of the clay, and our old friend fashion, than the date it was made. Essentially, any colour/surface treatment could have been made at any stage between 1650 – 1900… ish. I am always happy to be wrong, though – its the story of the pottery that matters.
The fact that Pancheon fragments crop up everywhere is both testament to their popularity – at one stage everyone seems to have had one – but also their large size; there’s simply more of it, so when they break up, they produce many more sherds than, for example, a smaller plate would.
Overall, it seems that Pancheons – and indeed all of these large domestic vessels – stop being made, or at least stop being popular, at around 1900 (although I’m sure many would still be in use from then on). Why is unclear, but it may simply be that the large clunky vessels were impractical in most kitchens, particularly in the cramped interior of terraced houses in the cities, and so they fell out of favour.
Our final black glazed pottery type is…
JACKFIELD WARE (aka Shining Black) DATE: 1750 – 1820-ish DESCRIPTION: Very shiny black surface on a red earthernware fabric. Often has handpainted white decoration. SHAPES: Very tea/coffee focused, so teapots, coffee pots, sugar bowl, cups, jugs, mugs, creamers, etc.
Not common at all (I only have one sherd!), Jackfield Ware is a refined earthernware that was popular for a short period in the late 18th century, and was focused on the consumption of tea and coffee, incredibly fashionable at that point in time. It reproduced all the essential elements of the black glazed tradition, but did so to an almost perfect finish. It is named after Jackfield in Shropshire, where it is known to be made, but the majority seems to have been made in Staffordshire. I have to say, this stuff is almost impossible to identify as a single sherd – it looks very like all the others, perhaps just a bit finer. If it wasn’t for the painted decoration on this example, I wouldn’t know I had any at all!
Fabric is red or a reddish brown, hard fired, with almost no inclusions – it is refined, and dense, and the vessels are thin walled.
The surface treatment is a uniform black glazed interior and exterior, with the glaze being particularly shiny – almost metallic – probably due to a high lead content. Honestly, you can see your reflection in this stuff. There is often sprigged decoration (a separately moulded clay three dimensional design stuck on the outside – often, in this case, floral designs – flowers, grapes, etc.), but commonly there are hand painted designs. These images were painted after the vessel was fired – over-glaze decoration – as contemporary under-glaze paint wouldn’t survive the firing process. As a consequence they often rubbed off, and exist as ghost-like images, especially in the kind of sherds that we find.
A flower design – I really like this. You can also see how it would wear away easily.
In terms of manufacturing, you can see the grooves where the potter pulled the clay up, but only on the interior wall where it wouldn’t be seen – this is fine pottery after all – whilst the exterior is super smooth, and is usually turned on a lathe to produce a perfect finish.
Shapes, as I say, are dominated by tea and coffee consumption, so commonly there are teapots, coffee pots, and cups.
The cups are more like those we would recognise today in that they have only one handle, rather than the multiple handles of the tyg – a design development. This is the start of modern pottery… raise a toast with your next cup of tea!
And to end with, a broad description of Midlands Purple Ware, a slightly coarser version of the fabric that Cistercian Ware is made from.
MIDLANDS PURPLE WARE DATE: 1400-1700 ish DESCRIPTION: Hard fired coarsish pottery, purple-brown/grey in colour. Coarse surface, normally slipped with wiping marks. Occasional internal dark glaze. SHAPES: Large open vessels, bowls, urns with spigot hole, salt pans, butter pots, rarer in small vessels, cups, mugs, etc.
Not commonly encountered to be fair (I only have a single, if large, sherd), but it is occasionally found in small quantities on early sites, and is part of a story. Midlands Purple straddles the period between the medieval and periods wonderfully, and takes elements of both.
My only sherd of Midland Purple Ware. Mind you, it’s a biggun!
Made in the same potteries and kilns as Cistercian Ware, and indeed the larger Midland Purple vessels were sometimes used as Saggars (a protective ‘box’ within a kiln) for the smaller and more delicate Cistercian Ware vessels. Thus we can be sure that the two ware types were contemporary, and Cistercian Ware seems to share the fabric type – that is, both ware types are made using the same clay, and fired at the same temperature, to produce a very similar type of fabric.
Purple, reddish purple, or greyish purple in colour, the fabric is hard fired, almost vitrified, with numerous voids, and has numerous quartzite inclusions, often with a black and white “salt and pepper” like colouring.
The surface is purplish, greyish purple or a browny purple, and is usually slipped, or simply smoothed, and smoothing marks are normally visible. The inclusions also poke though this slip, giving the surface a coarse feel. Rarely it is glazed on the interior, and these are normally found on butter pots, used to export butter into the big cities, notably London. A common shape is that of a jar with a reinforced bung hole just above the base, and these are often associated with domestic beer making, with the holes taking a spigot. Shapes include jars, butter pots, storage jars, jugs, pipkins, bowls, mugs… in fact a huge range of vessels, but the large jars and butter pots are the most common.
Midland Purple Ware shapes.
Traditionally, MPW is though of as dying out by the late 17th century, when it’s role as the hard-wearing utilitarian pottery type was probably overtaken by the aesthetically more pleasing Brown Stonewares.
So there we have it, Part 10. I’m pretty sure people who have spent long years studying one type of black glaze from a single pottery workshop are currently forming angry mobs, complete with lit torches and pitchforks, to seek me out, but I hope it helps.
The bad (good?) news is there’s only two more parts to the Rough Guide… Finewares and “Things That Might Be Pottery… But Aren’t”. The good (bad?) news is that I’m going to try and edit this guide into a Where/When Special booklet or zine, so that you can take it with you when you go Wandering. I know, I know… you can’t wait.
More very soon, as I have some big announcements! *Cough Wanders-a-plenty *Cough… and more.
Until then, please look after yourselves, and each other – just a quick check in with the neighbours, or even the person serving you in the shop, can make all the difference.
What ho, you wonderful – and slightly odd – folk who are reading this. You are here either because you have an interest in Glossop/Pottery/Old Things/The Ramblings of a Sherd-Nerd… or you’re lost. Either way, you might need some help. And either way, pour yourself a glass of the stuff that cheers, sit back and relax.
So then, we have a mixed bag today – some updates and some new stuff, and first up we have placenames.
WHITFIELD: THE PLACENAME
I originally published this post listing all the places in the Glossop area with their first appearance. Whitfield first appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 under the name Witfelt, which is normally understood to mean “White Field”, meaning an open (figuratively ‘white’) land or field, presumably to differentiate it from the surrounding moorland. However, I recently read an interesting article in Nomina: the journal of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland… as one does. The article is titled “Onomastic Uses of the Term “White“” by Carole Hough (read it here). Briefly, it suggests that amongst all the other possible meanings for the word ‘hwit‘ (White), one that is often overlooked is that relating to dairy foods and milk – literally ‘White Meat‘ – for which there is a lot of evidence, particularly when used in conjunction with a farm or land place name element. If we consider this in relation to Whitfield, we might understand it as the field where diary produce is made, and hence the Cheese Town of the title. We can’t say for certain, but it’s certainly a possibility that should be considered, for as we know cheesemaking was taking place here in the 18th century and earlier… so why not? Whitfield, land of cheese! Marvellous!
MASONS MARKS ON LONGDENDALE TRAIL
Back when I was a younger man (April 24th 2018, according to my records… 6 1/2 years ago!) I published an article on Mason’s Marks and Apotropaia on the stone infrastructure on the Longdendale Trail (read it here). Master CG was only just 2 years old then… and a lot can change in 6 1/2 years! Having recently got into riding his bike (!), off we went to the Longdendale Trail, giving me the opportunity to look for more marks… and Lo!
Here are the marks so far identified, to add to the corpus of mason’s marks along the line. The first are from Platt Street, the road bridge at the very start of the Longdendale Trail (What3Words is fortified.bracing.wage).
Photographed from my notebook… I just realised I should have rubbed out the pencil!
The second lot are from under a bridge that carries an apparently unnamed road leading from Padfield Main Road to Valehouse Farm (What3Words is leader.operated.courts).
V8 is also shown in the Platt Street marks. Some of these show up at other places along the line. Ooooh, I can’t wait to collate and analyse… I’m such a geek!
As you can see, some of these marks show up elsewhere on the track, suggesting that the same workers were shaping stone all the way from Broadbottom to Woodhead, which makes sense. Truly though, I need to survey the line properly, collecting the forms and locations, etc. I know I’ve said it before, but I honestly think a wonderful project could be made from these marks; recording and comparing them all along the line, researching who they might belong to, raising the profile of the men who physically built the line (not just those who financed it), as well as approaching it from an arts perspective. There’s lots to pick away at here, in fact… if anyone fancies joining me (or indeed, if anyone fancies funding/sponsoring me).
MYSTERY STONES ON THE GLOSSOP – MANCHESTER LINE
Talking of stones, a few years ago I published an article that looked at some odd stones I had noticed during the commute between Glossop and Manchester. Please read the article for more in-depth information, but essentially, 2 pairs of stones and a single example, all exactly the same shape and design, and all with the same single letter designs – ‘I’ and ‘G’. One pair on the platform at Guide Bridge station, and the single example just beyond the station, against a wall, and both of which I had photographs. And another pair just before one pulls into Hattersley station (coming from Glossop, on the right), which was in a ‘blink and you miss it’ position, and consequently of which I had no photograph.
The pair at Guide BridgeThe single post (possibly originally one of a pair) a little further on from Guide Bridge
And there the matter lay until the other day! Heading into Manchester, I noticed we seemed to be slowing down earlier than usual on the approach to Hattersley station, and having my phone in my hand, I tried to get a shot of the stones… and succeeded. Well, sort of… in a cruel twist of fate, young Master CG decided it would be an ‘hilarious’ jape to put sellotape over the cameral lens, and as a consequence the photograph looks like it was taken using a potato. Still, the jokes on him… I subsequently enrolled him in a special after-school long-distance running and extreme maths challenge club. That’ll teach him to mess with old TCG! Anyway, here’s the photograph:
Apologies for the poor quality, but the general area can be discerned.The ‘G’ and ‘I’ can just be made out through the sellotape haze. I will keep trying to get a decent photograph.
So now we have photographic evidence of all of these mystery stones, which is great… but we still don’t know what they are! So, please, if anyone can suggest a meaning or purpose behind these “monogrammed mushrooms” as I have named them (patent pending), then in the name of great Jove, please let me know.
OOOOH… FLINT!
More stone… this a little older, though. Over the course of a number of years, I have picked up a few odds and ends of prehistoric flint from the Glossop area. The hills all around are full of these tiny fragments of a distant past – largely Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age, roughly 8000 – 4000 BC), with some that might be Bronze Age (roughly 2500 – 750 BC). But these three examples I have found much closer to Glossop itself, and always quite by accident. It is worth remembering that Glossop, the Peak District, and indeed most of the North West is not a flint area, and any flint found hereabouts has arrived either by glacial action, or it has been brought here by a human; so any flint you see pick it up! Honestly, flint and chert (a local, poorer quality, flint-like quartz) are both very distinctive against the local gritstone, and once you get your eye in, they stand out from some distance. I’m not a stone man, and whilst I can usually recognise flint that has been shaped deliberately, the finer points of dating I leave to people who know what they’re talking about. Here are the bits I have found:
This first came from a path just below Shire Hill, so might be Bronze Age.
Lovely stuff – a blade made from a chip of flint. You can see the ‘bulb of percussion’ – the bulbous bit at the top – where the blow was struck to break this chip off. When hit, flint acts as though it was liquid, and you can see the ‘waves’ made by the strike. You can also see the nibbling at the edges that suggest this blade was ‘retouched’, or sharpened after being used. Flint is very sharp (I have literal scars to prove it), but it is a fragile edge that needs work to maintain it. The back side of the above flint piece – you can see where other pieces have been struck from this one, each creating a scar as the force travels along the core. It’s a fascinating subject flint knapping, and one that is not easily put into words… it has to be seen, and especially felt.
The next flake came from where the allotments are now at Dinting, sitting on a mole hill. A chip off the old nodule! It’s been worked, but I’m not sure it was ever a tool. Again, a crappy photo of a lovely flint tool. This time, a fragment of a thumbnail scraper – also here. Honestly, flint is better touched and seen in person, that’s why we archaeological types use drawing to illustrate flint… a photograph does not show what we want to see.
Whilst we know people were here in prehistory, its always nice to see the things they used in their everyday lives. I actually need to report these to the Find Liaison Officer (FLO) as this is prehistoric, and any information from this period, no matter how small, can potentially change our whole understanding of the history of the area. The FLO is the person to report anything interesting and potentially important you find (feel free to tell me as well, but honestly they are more important) – very helpful and genuinely the font of much knowledge.
POTTERY: SOME BITS AND PIECES
Never missing an opportunity to spread a little ceramic-based joy, I present to you a small selection of recently found pottery. Following my own newly introduced rules, I am only taking sherds that interest me, or which are good examples of the ware type. This means that there is more left for you wonderful folk to find, and more space in chez CG… much to the relief of Mrs CG.
First up, two very similar sherds.
Left has heavily crazed glaze, and I suspect it was burnt at some stage… that’s not normal ‘wear and tear’, even after being in the ground for 200 years or so.
Left is from High Lea Park in New Mills, and is the base to a mug or tankard some 8cm in diameter. The right was found on the track below Lean Town, and is the same in shape and dimension, although this is from the body somewhere, not the base. I got very excited both times I found these – they look like Scratch Blue stoneware, which would be very exciting. Alas, on closer inspection it’s clearly earthernware, and thus less exciting. Having said that, they are both from Industrial Slipware vessels, and both early 19th century in date – which is a bit rarer than the usual Late Victorian – and come from something like this:
Stolen, as always, without shame, from this website. Honestly, it’s a fascinating website filled with all sorts of historical pottery information from a collector’s perspective. I genuinely enjoy this site… which might be warning to some of you!
Sometimes, coming back from school with Master CG, we like to shake up what is in essence a somewhat linear journey from A to B by taking different routes; exploring, Wandering, and just seeing what we encounter along the way; blackberries, elastic bands, the occasional copper nail, a penny, holes in the ground to peer into, and if we are lucky a skip. There’s always something in either of those two latter.
Plain, but is still quite cool. I know, I know… but I can’t resist!
This was from a skip on Hadfield Place. Always, and I mean ALWAYS, look in a skip that has soil piled in it: Glossop’s history almost guarantees that there will be at least some Victorian sherds in that soil. Here we have a rim sherd from a late Victorian/early 20th century marmalade pot – something like this:
Stolen from this website… and you can buy it for £55.
The groove running around the pot, just below the rim, is to enable a piece of string to be tied around to keep the cloth lid in place… very characteristic.
Skips and holes… always have a look in both. This next sherd was from a utilities pipe trench on St Mary’s Road:
Lovely stuff. I think this might be fairly early
A lovely sherd of Industrial Slipware, again, this time of a Banded or Annular Ware type. It looks very modern as it is still made, particularly as Cornishware, but it is genuinely early to mid-Victorian in date, and probably from a large bowl or jug. Looking and feeling it again again, I think jug.
This last sherd is another Industrial Slipware – a tiny fragment of Variegated Ware, this one being in the ‘earthworm’ design:
Truly awful photograph. I know a bad workman blames his whassnames, but my new phone has no macro setting, so my up close photos are not great.
Probably from a jug or bowl, similar to the one in the above article, and dates to about 1800-1820. Interestingly, this one was found in a quarry that was used during the construction of Bottoms Reservoir, and was later used as a tip. Bottoms Reservoir was opened in 1877, and thus the tip can only have been used from, say, 1880 onwards, and actually, judging from what is found there, I think perhaps from 1900 onwards. This means that this sherd – and the pot it came from – was as much as 100 years old when it was broken and thrown away. This makes sense – I still have my great grandmother’s 1920’s salt-glazed stoneware pie dish (I use it to make a really nice tomato and white bean bake with a feta topping, if anyone fancies…) – and is a cautionary tale about using pottery to precisely date certain contexts. People in the past also had heirlooms, and all objects have a biography.
AND FINALLY… WHERE/WHEN 3
Well, Where/When no.3 is now on sale… and selling well. You good folk seem to like a walk, some history, and a pint… who knew? Well, I think we all did to be honest. You can get it in Dark Peak Books (93 High Street West in Glossop), or via the Cabinet of Curiosities shop (here). Or you could track me down and snag a copy.
For those of you who are unaware, Where/When is a quarterly journal of Archaeological Wanderings. Essentially, a walk in the Glossop area, with yours truly chiming in about the archaeology and history of where you are wandering; think a pinch of pottery, a hint of psychogeography, some groovy photographs, a dash of discovery, a toe stub of psychedelia, and a splash of the usual Glossop Curiosities shenanigans. No.3 Takes us on a walk from The Beehive in Whitfield to The Bulls Head in Old Glossop via medieval trackways, a Saxon stone cross, 18th century buildings, and a 10,000 year old glacial erratic boulder. Marvellous stuff!
A sneak preview of Where/When 4 – The Melandra Meander.
And Where/When No. 4 is in preparation; titled “The Melandra Meander“, it will detail a circular walk from Melandra Roman Fort to Mottram Church on the hill above – via Hague and medieval trackways – and then back again, and is full to the brim with the kinds of historical and archaeological goodies that you have come to expect. It’ll be in stores in December, just in time for Christmas.
I have a whole pile of ideas for Where/When, and the Cabinet of Curiosities in general… all kinds of stuff: t-shirts, anyone? Art prints? The Rough Guide to Pottery in booklet form? And in particular I’d like to start a series of monthly guided Wanders – where you and me can Wander together. Let me know what you think about this. Or indeed anything about the website, or what I have written. It’s nice to know I’m not just shouting into the void!
Right then, apologies for the late post of this article, and for generally being behind in most things – there’s often a lot less of old TCG to go around than I believe, so I end up dropping some of the things I’m juggling. More soon, I promise.
Until then, though, please do look after yourselves and each other, and remember – a person might look ok on the outside, but can be struggling inside. We all matter.
Right… got to be quick! So much to do, so little time. Never mind the formalities… we’ll take them as read.
Family C-G went for a stroll the other day, around Shire Hill and Shelf Brook there. This gave me the opportunity for a little poke about… and O! What things I found!
I was poking about on the track that runs from the top of Shire Hill to the footbridge – here:
It’s an old track, coming from Pyegrove with its datestones of 1747 (although first recorded in 1631) where the track splits; left to (Old) Glossop, right – ours – up Shire Hill and down, linking it with Shepley Street/Doctor’s Gate. Interestingly, although it now curves to the right at the bottom by the brook, it’s obvious it originally went straight ahead and over the brook via a ford. The field on the left there preserves the original line of the track.
I know I bang on about these tracks a lot, but they really were the arteries of life in the medieval and post-medieval period, in fact right up until the late 1700’s and early 1800’s when our present road system was planned and laid out. These have a more organic feel about them; they grew out of necessity – rather than as drawn on a map and blasted into the landscape – and as a consequence they are often more direct, but also strangely quirky. And as everyone who moved through the landscape would have used these tracks, they can often be good places to poke around, to see what we can find. And lo! Here’s what I found.
Firstly, a selection of clay pipe stems:
Nothing too interesting here, to be honest. All have fairly narrow bores, and are thus probably all Victorian, and no maker’s marks. I have said before that these are essentially the Victorian equivalent of a cigarette butt – smoked a few times, then thrown away. Or perhaps dropped – the pipes are fragile, so they wouldn’t survive a fall. Always fun to find, though.
Next up fragments of what I think in the same pot.
Despite all being different thicknesses, they all seem to be from the same large stoneware open bowl or something, in what looks like a Bristol Glaze. The different thickness can be explained by where the sherd came from on the pot; vessel walls tend to get thicker as they move towards the base, and thinner the higher up they are towards the rim.
Next up, some more stoneware:
The sherd on the left is the top to a ‘blob top’ stoneware ginger beer bottle, something like this one:
Stolen, as always, without shame, this time from ebay. Buy the bottle here for $44 Australian Dollars.
At the right, there are a series of sherds from the same flat bottomed jug or jar or similar in a brown salt-glazed stoneware, possibly a late example of Nottinghamshire Stoneware, but difficult to tell.
The larger sherd in the middle is the shoulder of a bottle, perhaps similar to the ‘blob top’. On the inside, though, you can see the wiping marks created when the bottle was made by hand.
This is the human connection to the mass production of the Victorian period, the marks made by a person going about their working day.
Next up, we bounce into the 17th and early 18th century.
On the left, an open vessel in Slip Trailed Ware – probably a large, thin-walled bowl of some sort. On the right, is a Manganese Glazed cup or small bowl, with a carination in the body. ‘Carination’ is one of those terms archaeologists use that literally no one else uses, but it simply means a kink in the shape of the vessel that creates an angle, often at the shoulder. Both of these types are fully discussed in this article here.
Next, we have a large sherd of Manganese Glazed pottery, almost certainly from the lowest part of a large open bowl.
Again from the 17th/early 18th century, it is rather wonderful. Glazed on the interior only, the exterior is slipped:
You can see the red slip on the surface of the swirled cream/pink fabric – very typical of the period. You can also make out the wiping marks made during manufacture. This was a large bowl, and unusual.
Next up, we have this little lot, again of 17th or early 18th century date:
Left is another sherd of Manganese Glazed Ware. Centre is a sherd of Staffordshire Slipware, also covered in the above article. You can clearly make out the white under-glaze slip that gives it its characteristic yellow colour. At the right, however, is a sherd of Midlands Purple Ware… something that we’ve not encountered before. I have a ‘Rough Guide to Pottery’ post about this stuff almost written, so I’m not going to dwell on it here, but in short it is very hard pottery (fired at a high temperature) and slipped in a purple or reddish colour, and the surface/fabric has black and white – salt ‘n’ pepper – inclusions. It’s very distinctive… once you see/feel it, you’ll never forget it. It is an interesting type of pottery – it starts in the 15th century and continues until the early 18th century, and is associated with beer making, as well as butter and cream transportation.
Rather unusually, I also found this – a .303 rifle bullet, and probably fired from a Lee Enfield rifle.
I’m not sure how it ended up there – it’s a military round, but they were used on the rifle range just up the way ( I blogged about that here) – so perhaps it was an overshoot… worrying, given that it was on the path!
And finally, whilst Master CG was snorkelling in the brook (I wish I was kidding), I went poking about looking for glacial erratics, and found this little beauty of non-local geology.
I think its gneiss, an igneous stone, but I am an archaeologist, not a geologist (or indeed an architect. Nor a palaeontologist, so no, I don’t know anything about fossils, dinosaurs. Or ancient aliens. It’s amazing what people think you are when you say you are an archaeologist). Here is a handy little guide to the rocks of Britain produced by the Natural History Museum. Whatever it is, it isn’t the Millstone Grit and local Rough Rock that makes up the geology of the area, so it’s a visitor, and probably one that hitch-hiked in a glacier from the north, as we discussed here.
Right, that’s all for now. Apologies for the lateness of this post, I have been super busy – with many talks and walks, and many more in the pipeline. I’ll advertise some here, so that I can bore as many of you as possible! I have also just sent off Where/When 3 to the printers, so by the time you read this it should be available to buy from usual sources. More about that in a few days, but for now, look after yourselves and each other, and I remain.
A quick one now, just to spread some news. A bigger article is in the offing, honest.
So, the big news is that the second edition of the archaeological Wandering zine Where/When is now at the printers, and promises to be with us sometime next week. Fingers crossed.
As you can see, it’s blue. Not that that makes much of difference to anything, as it’s chock full of the usual noodlings and doodlings, history and archaeology colliding with my, er… ‘unique voice’, as it has been described – in a psychedelic swirl of colour and trackways.
This one describes the route between The Bull’s Head in Old Glossop and The Beehive in Whitfield, using – where possible – the medieval and post-medieval trackways, often preserved in surprising ways. Along the way we encounter all manner of archaeology and history, a ghost, a hall, two 1960’s housing estates, a team of oxen, a well, and a Roman road.
It’ll be available to buy from Dark Peak Books and George Street Books for the very reasonable price of £5. Or you can track me down and buy one. It will also be available to download as a PDF from the Where/When page at the top of the site (for the price of a glass of the stuff that cheers, via my Ko-Fi page (and do feel free to buy me a glass anytime!).
This second volume is actually the first of a two-parter, the next volume being the return journey from The Beehive to The Bulls Head, using entirely different tracks, and exploring entirely different archaeology. This is titled, naturally, ‘Of Hives and Heads‘, and will be available very soon – watch this space.
The other big news is I’m doing a talk for the George Street Community Bookshop – one of their Curiosity Club events. It on Thursday 25th April at 7pm at Bradbury Community House, on Market Street in Glossop. The subject is the vague sounding ‘Archaeological Wanderings‘, which is just how I like it – expect old stuff; medieval trackways, Wanders, flint, idle talk of wondrous things, pottery, Romans, and possibly some Anglo Saxon crosses thrown in. A psychedelically-tinged swirl to the thrum of history, if you will. Or if you prefer (and why wouldn’t you), I’ll be talking about the history of the Glossop area to a group of people who may or may not be interested.
But do come along, it’ll be a blast, and you’ll get the opportunity to ask me all sorts of awkward questions. No, not you, Mr Shouty Outy… you are barred. You can book a place here, on eventbrite – tickets are priced as you wish, and it’ll be good to see any of the seven of you who read the site (sorry Juan, unless you can fly out from Caracas on Tuesday, you’ll miss it. Lo siento amigo, ¿la próxima vez quizás?).
Right. I have a proper article almost written – obviously pottery related – that I need to finish, so forgive me for rushing off… I’ll be back soon, I promise.
Until then, take care of yourselves, and each other, and I remain.
Well, I have an interesting offering for you this time, and one that doesn’t involve pottery, sadly. I know, I know! I can hear your yells of pain and misery from here… and my how they sound like whoops of joy and celebration. Joy and pain are two sides of the same coin I suppose – the Yin to the whatsit, and all that. Although, I have to say the chap who appears to be doing a buck and wing clog dance whilst singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again‘ does seem to be hiding his sadness a little too well… Hmmmm.
Anyway, I digress…
So, I have a friend who bakes cakes, she’s something of a connoisseur as it happens, and people are always giving her cakes as presents. Practically throwing them at her. I have another friend who takes his music very seriously, and people are always giving him records and cds with the words “I thought you might like this“. I have yet another friend who likes his beer, and scarcely a week goes by without someone bunging cans and bottles his way, saying things like “I was in Harvey Leonards the other day and I saw this and thought of you” – almost drenched in the stuff he is… and permanently inebriated.
So, I like old things… and especially pottery.
Now, I was once at a dinner party, glass of the old stuff that cheers in hand, swaying slightly, and conversing with a chum, when another chum bounded over and said “What ho, TCG! Oooooh, I say old bean, I have a gift for you” and off he scurried. He returned moments later clutching a plastic bag which he handed over to me. What could it be? It was like Christmas! Excitedly, I opened the bag…
What it was was a half a muddy brick. A perfectly normal 19th century house brick, broken in half, and still damp. They thought it might be old and presumed I’d want it.
Well, I mean to say, of course one doesn’t look a gift thing in the old whatsit, but… well… You know. And this sort of thing happens surprisingly – worryingly – often. So you can appreciate then why the words “I’ve got something for you” can sometimes sound a note of concern.
Don’t get me wrong, I very much appreciate the thought, it’s kind and most welcome. Honestly, little packages clinking with pottery fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling, and truthfully I’m never happier than when I’m rifling through shopping bags of finds, furtively handed to me in the park, looking shiftily around, like some sort of Soviet-era spy game. Indeed, being able to answer people’s questions of ‘what is it?‘, ‘how old is it?’, and the often asked ‘what’s wrong with you?‘ is the reason I write this website… and why all seven of you read it.
But for the record I also like beer and music. And money… a shiny shilling or two wouldn’t go amiss, either. And did I mention the stuff that cheers? I like that a lot!
Other times, however, gifts clasped tightly in hands can be amazing. I have had some genuinely wonderful, alarmingly, breathtakingly beautiful, and truly interesting things given to me to look at: pottery, bricks, flint… spoons!
And so it was the other day that I was skilfully tracked down by the always wonderful S.T. who thrust at me a cardboard box, tattered at the edges, and yet so full of promise (the box that is, not S.T… good old S.T. looked radiant as ever).
What wonders lie within?
And that is the start of this episode. The objects contained within – on loan in a distinctly non-permanent way – were all found in the fill of an old mill pond, the exact whereabout of which are shrouded in mystery (but which I’ll happily disclose for the price of a glass of something nice… I never said I had scruples, nor that I wasn’t cheaply bought).
So come, let’s explore the box together.
Honestly, who can’t be excited by this.
The box itself is interesting – an armorial device with the initials DSC and a motif of crossed razors… a quick Google search tells me the Dollar Shave Club. Now, given that I have water from the holy well at Walsingham Priory safely contained in a medical urine sample pot, it’s not my place to pass comment. The box is, however, different from their normal home, which is apparently an old clock. Mind you, this is the same S.T. who uses an egg as a scale in her photographs… so nothing should surprise us.
So what was in the box o’ bits? First up, a clay pipe stem.
Interesting stuff, and a good example.
Plain apart from the words “UNION” and “PIPE” stamped on the sides. I browsed my sources for information about this, but came up with nothing, alas. It is probably an example of a political pipe, that is those that carried slogans and allusions to important political ideas and events of the day. No doubt this one was connected with the idea the Northern Irish union with the United Kingdom. The Unionists demanded to remain part of the UK in the face of an increasingly independent Republic of Ireland, which itself was demanding that Ulster be a part of it. It’s an interesting history, and one that obviously resonates still to this day. Given that a lot of clay pipes were aimed at a target market of Irish immigrant workers in Britain, it’s unsurprising that many of them contained words and phrases that reflected politics back home. Indeed, such was the market that many clay pipe manufacturers even gave their address as Dublin on the pipe bowl, despite being made in Birmingham or similar. It also plays on the belief held at the time that somehow Irish clay pipes were superior in quality.
The mouth piece is interesting, and shows the manufacturing process clearly. Formed in a two-part mould, the pipe often has mould lines along it length that can be quite thick and sharp, especially if the mould is old and worn and doesn’t close properly. The answer is to pare away the flashing with a knife, which you can see happened here.
I think I can make out some tooth marks on the mouth piece. The dark staining is the result of it lying next to something metal and rusty.
Date wise, the shape (straight, and quite chunky) would put it sometime in the early 20th century – let’s say 1910? It looks similar to the shape of the McLardy pipe here, and it would also fit with the political message.
Next up… a boot!
A tiny boot!Yep… it’s a boot.
The detail of this thing is amazing; it’s old – probably Victorian in style – and one of those boots with an elasticated side (I actually have a pair, and very dapper I look in them too). It’s made from pewter or similar – lead-based, certainly. I have no idea what it actually is, but it’s possibly some sort of charm – if you look closely at the front you can see the remains of a small ring which would have been used to hang it from something… a pocket watch perhaps. Or, it might have been a pin cushion, with a material filling the hollow allowing pins to be pushed in.
However, whilst looking closely at it, I noticed something.
These photographs are shocking, even by my standards. I have a new phone with a camera that is truly disappointing – it doesn’t even have a macro setting. I’m not necessarily blaming the phone – my photos have always been bad – it’s just that it doesn’t help.
You can just make out a pair of tiny mice, one on each side, crawling up the boot.
The Mouse in detail – you can make out the tail and back leg. Also, you can the attention to detail in the boot – the heel is worn.
A mouse in a boot or shoe was a common theme in the Victorian period apparently, and the Northampton Museums website seems to provide an answer why:
“Shoes can be thrown at weddings to wish the couple a good, long and useful life. The shoe was also a sign of fertility and many years ago a boot was often buried in the home of the newly wed couple. Inside the boot was placed a grain of corn, which it hoped would attract mice to nest and breed. From this came the idea that the wife would bear lots of children, who would look after her and her husband. Many Victorian miniature shoes show a mouse playing in the shoe.“
So there we go – vermin in your footwear can lead to many children. Who knew?
Next we have some toys, and to start with, a wonderful hollow cast tin soldier.
The large bearskin hat suggests he is a guardsman of the Grenadier or Coldstream Guards of the British Army.
Remarkably, he still has his head, which is normally missing from found soldiers. The paint is in good condition, to0 – blue trousers and a red tunic. To make these Victorian to early 20th century figures, a mould is made into which a molten tin alloy is poured. This cools immediately on contact with the exterior, and which allows the still molten interior to be poured out, thus saving on tin. They were hand painted, probably using some very nasty heavy metal based paint – so don’t chew any you happen to find.
Really good condition.
When new, he would have originally looked something like this:
Modern versions, stolen from here
This example is certainly better than the one I found… very jealous!
Next up we have… well, let’s not beat around the bush. We have nightmare fuel. The kind of thing that haunts my dreams.
I mean… honestly!
I’m not fond of dolls, they honestly give me the creeps. But I think it is quite common for humans to be unnerved by things that look quite like us, but which aren’t us; the ‘Uncanny Valley‘ is the term for such feelings. It’s not an outright phobia, more a dislike or a sense of unease. Although I have to say, I do like the expression it has – a sort of open-mouthed surprised look… not unlike my own expression when I unwrapped this wonderful, if creepy, item. So then, here we have an remarkably complete Victorian bisque – or unglazed porcelain – doll. It’s tiny, and only the body remains – the arms and legs would have been a material, or perhaps porcelain with a single rivet joining them so that they were movable. The whole would have been clothed, or wrapped in a blanket, but this has long since rotted. The incredible detail in the colouring of the eyes, hair, and face would indicate that it was a relatively expensive one, and it would have looked something like this when ‘alive’.
Stolen, with my usual lack of shame, from this website.
On the back is impressed the word ‘Germany’, which is where the doll was made, Germany being world renowned as the centre of doll manufacturing. There is also the number ’61’ just visible on the left shoulder, which is presumably the mould number.
A ‘raking light’ shows the impressed maker’s mark.
Sadly I can’t find any more information about this doll in particular, but at one point this was a prized toy belonging to a little girl, and at some stage the doll was lost or thrown away. A melancholy thought.
Next up is… yep, more nightmares made solid! Thanks for this, ST.
Less or more creepy?
Another bisque doll, and whilst it is complete, it’s just the head and shoulders, which would have been sown into a cloth body. It would have been sold very cheaply as there is no painted features, but would nonetheless have been a much loved toy. You can see how it was made – cast in a mould, and hollow:
You can see the marks of the liquid porcelain as it was poured into the mould.
Creepy, but a wonderful
Whenever I find toys or marbles, I always feel slightly sad that they were lost or discarded. I don’t like the idea that somehow the things that matter to us as children shouldn’t matter to us as adults, and that there should be a clear and clean break with our childhood. Luckily though, I’m the adult now, and I get to decide what being ‘an adult‘ means… hence I have display cabinets filled with Star Wars and Action Force toys – and Airfix toy soldiers – from the 1980’s in our spare room. My childish things are very much still with me… but I digress. Again
After those last two I need a snifter of something that cheers.
Well, we started with a pipe, so let’s end with a pipe. Truly, I would love to smoke one. There is something wonderful about a pipe, something calming; the chap who takes charge in a crisis smokes a pipe. As does the dashing hero, or the bookish academic, or the romantic lead. Sadly, it’s that damned cancer that puts me off (that, and Mrs CG threatening divorce).
So here we have here a fairly standard, but always welcome, Late Victorian clay pipe.
In very good condition, and missing only the mouthpiece.
I actually have a whole article on clay pipes almost written, so I won’t go into too much detail here, but it’s the shape and size that tells us the date (briefly, if it has a bulbous bowl and slanted rim, it’s Georgian or earlier. But if it has an upright bowl and horizontal rim, then it’s Victorian. Also, a smaller bowl is earlier, whilst a larger bowl indicates it is later.
There is some lovely, if very common decoration on this pipe:
I love this.
The rouletting around the rim is very typical of the type, as is the stitching on the front and back, which hides the flashing caused by the joining of the two sides of the mould. There is no maker’s mark, not even a ‘Made in Dublin’, or similar Irish theme, alas. And as I say, certainly not uncommon, but always great to find one in good condition.
And with that final pipe extinguished, the journey is over: the ‘box o’ bits’ has been explored, and we may all go back to whatever it was we were doing before I interrupted. My sincere thanks to ST for allowing me to share this with all seven of you, and for following and supporting me for so long here at the Cabinet of Curiosities.
In other news, I’m currently putting together the next edition of Where/When – this one covers a walk from the Bull’s Head in Old Glossop to The Beehive in Whitfield along ancient trackways, and taking in some interesting archaeology. As usual, you will be able to buy a physical copy, as well as download a digital version. I’m also going to do it as a guided walk, so you’ll get a chance to Wander the route with me – which may or may not be a bonus, depending on how much you like pottery! Watch this space.
Talking of which, more pottery next time. But until then, look after yourselves and each other.
What ho! Come in, come in. May I take your coat? Perhaps a glass of the stuff that cheers? Red? White? There is some fizz open, too. Now take a seat for Part 9 of the Rough Guide to Pottery. I know, I know, I can feel your excitement from this side of the screen.
So what, then, is today’s offering? Well, quite frankly… Stoneware.
This is a bit of an odd entry, to be honest, and truthfully this is a sort of catch-all grouping, rather than a coherent ware type as is the case with other entries in the series; essentially, it covers all stoneware vessels regardless of glaze type or decoration. We’ve covered stonewares before (Brown Stoneware and white stoneware and associated types), but this one looks at everything else (look, it’s no use screaming “for the love of Zeus, spare us” no one is asking you to read the site, you know).
So then what do we mean. Stoneware is regular earthernware that is fired to a higher temperature (roughly 1200-1250 degrees, as opposed to 600-1000 degrees with regular pottery). This means it vitrifies – or melts – and produces a very hard wearing and watertight pottery which is perfectly suited for all manner of uses, from cooking and storage, to serving and drinking.
Stoneware has a characteristic pale grey/creamy coloured fabric, which is extremely hard and often with tiny visible voids in it, produced by gases during the firing process.
Mmmmm… a crunchy sandwich. The fabric is broadly similar in colour and makeup.
It also produces a sort of metallic ‘tink’ when tapped with another sherd, as opposed to the duller ‘thunk’ of regular pottery (but the ‘tink’ is not as high as that made by porcelain… don’t look at me like that, I know what I mean).
Now, although technically it doesn’t need a glaze, one is usually applied for decorative purposes, and to provide a smooth surface. However, most glazes wouldn’t survive the heat needed to produce stoneware, so early Stonewares used a salt based glaze. In this method salt is added to the kiln, which vaporises into the atmosphere inside coating the vessel. The sodium oxide in the salt reacts with the silica in the clay producing the characteristic ‘orange peel’ surface which is particularly associated with early forms of salt glaze pottery.
Beautiful. The ‘orange peel’ surface is very clear here. This is honestly one of my favourite sherds of all time. Confession time, I found it in New Mills, not Glossop… but close enough.
The salt glaze is naturally a creamy light brown colour – honey and mustard are words often used – although when other chemicals are added, this can change (the iron rich salt-glaze in the Nottingham/Derbyshire stonewares, to name an example we have seen before). Vessel forms associated with the earlier salt-glazed stonewares are bottles – some of which could be quite large – mugs, and jugs. Perhaps the most famous type is the Bartmann, or Bellarmine, jug:
A pair of Bartmann jugs – I love these guys. From Wikipedia article – photo by Hadley Paul Garland
the Bartmann (German ‘Bearded Man’) was produced in the Colgne area of what is now Germany in the 16th – 18th centuries, and were exported all over Europe, containing wine and other liquids. They were imported into Britain in huge quantities, and are relatively common in the London/south area, but much rarer up north. Their characteristic bearded face give them a sort of human-like appearance – a man with a large belly – hence their other name of Bellarmine Jars, after the portly Cardinal Bellarmine. I am almost certain that my favourite sherd above comes from a Bartmann… or is that wishful thinking?
It is this human-like appearance that may account for their popularity as ‘witch bottles’ as a form of sympathetic counter-magical protection very popular in the 17th century (although examples exist of ‘witch bottles being made in the early 20th century). If you suspected that you were being cursed by a witch, you took one of these bottles – symbolically representing the witch, and in particular their bladder – and fill it with urine, nails, metal pieces, broken glass, hair, and other assorted unpleasant objects; stopper it, and then gently heat it in front of a fire. The idea being that this would cause the witch intense pain in the bladder, causing them stop cursing you. Depending on the need, the bottle could also be buried, particularly beneath the hearth, so that the pain continues. Unpleasantly, there is at least one instance on record of a death caused by the bottle exploding – a sort of stoneware hand grenade. As an aside, Magical household protection and counter magic in the Glossop area really needs its own article, as I have a whole pile of evidence for such practices. Hmmm… let me see what I can do.
By mid to late 18th century, and probably connected with the increased use of coal-fired kilns, the surface of salt-glazed stonewares begins to smooth out – a useful rough dating tool for sherds – the rougher the orange-peel, the earlier the bottle… or something like that.
Around 1835 a new, no salt-based glaze was developed – the Bristol Glaze. My notes inform me that this is technically a “feldspathic glaze slip using zinc oxide“, and I for one am not going to argue with that. This produced a much smoother and more consistent surface, and was widely adopted. This is most characteristically found in a two-tone version, with the upper part of a bottle being a mustard colour, with the lower a pale grey or cream.
I found this bottle in four pieces and managed to glue it back together again.
There is something aesthetically pleasing about these bottles, and they have a sort of gentle nostalgic feel about them, which is odd because they stopped being manufactured at the turn of the 20th century when glass bottles became the norm. Again, a useful dating method – not a hard rule, more of a gentle indication.
The Victorian period saw a huge explosion in the production of stoneware, and in particular bottles which were, remarkably, all hand made on a wheel. If you find a broken bottle, look carefully at the interior; you can normally find pulling marks, where the potter has formed it using their hands, and the base frequently has circular marks from when the finished bottle was cut from the wheel using a string whilst it was still turning.
This is a really nice example of the manufacturing process from a bottle interior.
This photo of the bottle interior really illustrates how the bottle was made. Not only can you see the large horizontal ribs made by the potter’s fingers as he draws up the clay to form the shape, but you can see wiping marks running diagonally, formed as the potter used a cloth to smooth the interior. Once the bottle is finished, it was cut from the wheel using a string or wire, which usually leaves characteristic marks:
The marks made by a wire as bottle is separated from potters wheel.
The wire is drawn toward the potter who would have been sat to the upper right in this photo – the ‘U’ shaped marks pointing toward them. But note also the slight wobble in the ‘U’ shape, produced because the wheel was still moving slightly; speed is of the essence here, as the potters would have been paid for the number of bottles made.
I love this, not only does it provide us a view of how the bottle was made, but it really gives a connection to a long dead human, a real person amidst the industrialised chaos. I read somewhere of celebratory bottles marking the occasion of a potter’s millionth bottle being made, which gives you an indication of the scale of the bottle making industry.
On bottles, the name of the bottle manufacturer is often found impressed into the clay, usually near the base.
Price of Bristol in this instance, which has a fascinating history in itself – this website tells all, but it also gives a real insight into stoneware manufacturing in the Victorian period – it is well worth a read.
The name and logo of the company, as well as the contents, are much larger, and were originally impressed into the body.
Andrew & Atkinson of Hyde – a well known maker of ginger beer, etc. I posted about them before, here, including a vulcanite bottle top of theirs.
After about 1880 (ish), the development of high temperature resistant transfer printing meant that information and designs could be clearly printed on the side.
The classic Stranraer cream pot
Common are ginger beer bottles (though truthfully, they contained all manner of drinks), blacking bottles, containing blacking for ovens, and which are, oddly enough, normally white in colour. Also cream pots, milk bottles, and large flagons of cider or chemicals.
Cider flagon made by Bourne Denby – for sale here (not me, by the way!).
Ink bottles, too, and in particular the ‘penny ink’ bottles are common. Also known as pork pie inks, as they are the same shape and size of said savoury delicacy, and cost how much… that’s right, a penny.
The ‘penny ink’ pot.
Always check the exterior of any sherds you find, as often they have finger marks on the exterior, from where the wet glazed and pre-fired pot was put on a rack to dry. Often, soberingly, the finger marks are very small, an illustration of the child labour that underpinned the industrial boom of the Victorian period.
The human touch. This one is quite deep, and actually marked the clay. Normally, they are just about visible in the wet and sticky surface of the glaze.
Right then, I think that’s all I have for Victorian Stonewares, and honestly that is about all we need – it’s very recognisable, but it’s good to have a little context. I know I’ve said it before, but I’d really like to try my hand at potting, perhaps reviving some of the older 17th and early 18th century shapes of cups, mugs, plates; I’ll add that to the list of retirement plans!
So then, other news.
I’m planning a new Wander, this one involving lots of medieval bits and pieces, and a merry jaunt from Whitfield to Old Glossop, and back. It will form the basis of two future issues of Where/When… when I get round to writing them up. But before that can happen, it needs a test-drive, so to speak. Keep an eye open here, on twitter, or simply “what ho!” me in the street. I’ll put it on Eventbrite, too, so I can keep an eye on the numbers. I’m excited about this one, so watch this space, and let me know if you fancy it.
The first issue of the Where/When ‘zine is still available, only £5 and available at Dark Peak Books, or seek me out. A free PDF is available, too – click on the tab at the top of the site.
I’ve got a lot of big ideas and collaborations that might come to fruition. Might. But again, watch this space. And do stay in touch… It’s nice to know that all 6 of you are ok! Expect another post soon, too… I’m aiming for two in February. Aiming…
So then, until next time, look after yourselves and each other, and I remain.
I trust you are all recovering from reading the mighty publishing phenomena that is Where/When Issue 1? Move aside JK Rowling… Harry Potter was good, but was it ‘Pottery’ enough? See what I did there? Pottery… Potter…
What? What do you mean “don’t give up the day job”? This is my day job! And you, sir, are frankly uncouth! Honestly, what do you mean there are “funnier types of fungal infection”?
If you haven’t bought a copy yet, go and grab one from Dark Peak Books, or from me, if you can track me down. Or even download a free copy (link above). A perfect stocking filler, even if I do say so myself. Oh, and plans for a second and third edition continue to form… watch this space. Or Twitter. Or Instagram. Or just get in contact!
Anyway, shameless self-promotion over with let’s get on with the show, so to speak.
So, I recently became aware of a group of wonderful people – The Friends of Whitfield Rec and Green Spaces (their Facebook page is here). They are a group of Whitfield residents who are helping with the day-to-day upkeep and improvement of Whitfield Recreation Ground and other green spaces (for example planters, and other bits of land that might otherwise be neglected). A wonderful idea; we who use it, help keep it usable rather than rely just on the council who, with the best will in the world, don’t always the time and resources, or the local connection, to do this. I’m a big and passionate believer in the phrase “be the change you want to see in the world” (a saying usually attributed to Ghandi), and this group is a great example of this in action.
This summer they planted a pile of… er… plants in the grass around Whitfield Wells, improving the look of the area and adding a little wildness – an excellent example of what they do. And a few weeks ago they organised and installed some good looking new benches at the Rec. giving me somewhere new to sit and ponder the world… and my own navel whilst Master C-G and assorted other Herberts run riot.
The eventual idea is to landscape mounds and hedges around them, creating a wonderful usable social space. But back to the present, and the realisation that one cannot make benches without breaking soil – or something – and my spidey-sense began to tingle… do I smell pottery?
I did indeed.
A pile of pottery.
Most of the stuff I found was typical late Victorian and early 20th century tablewares. Not unexpected, and it is largely domestic rubbish, on wasteground, dating from a time when there was no rubbish disposal. Some of the more interesting bits in the above photo, then. Top row, second from right is a shallow bowl or plate with a rim diameter of c.18cm with a hand-painted red band running on the interior – a common motif in early 20th century pottery. Next to that is a fragment of a large rounded jar with a decorated out-turned rim (I should probably start explaining what I mean by all these terms… possibly). And next, a rolled rim from a brown stoneware cooking pot. Bottom row, second from left is a sherd of open pattern spongeware. Fourth from left is a sherd that has decoration hand-painted on the top of the glaze, and the two sherds on the far left are porcelain. As I say, fairly mundane.
However, some pieces were a bit more interesting.
First up, we have a fragment of a Pond’s Cream (or similar skin care product) jar.
Difficult to see in a photo.
It is made from milk glass – an opaque type of coloured glass – and is roughly square shape in plan, with rounded edges and large vertical grooves; it would have looked lovely when whole. It also has a screw top, which generally means it is early 20th century in date.
These three are quite nice, too.
Lovely stuff. And an ok photograph! I had so much trouble taking these – it was so dark even during the day that the pottery was showing out of focus.
Top left, a small plate of Shell Edged Ware, which my own guide suggests is mid Victorian. Bottom left is a hand painted tea cup of c.10cm diameter; it would have been quite lovely. Right is a sherd of Banded or Annular Industrial Slipware, with a rim diameter of c.10cm, and probably from a Late Victorian tankard (they are common in this design), and perhaps, we might speculate, from The Roebuck pub on Whitfield Cross.
These are very nice.
Left is a lovely sherd of Spongeware – a flower from a much larger design. Right is the neck from a Brown Stoneware bottle or jar of some sort. The incised decoration on this sherd is very sharp, indicating that it came from something potentially very fine. Both Early Victorian at a guess, so perhaps heirlooms when they were thrown away, or indicating that there is earlier material in the ground below the Rec. – which would be unsurprising.
I love this next sherd – a ring foot from a larger open bowl or serving platter.
Unassuming, and a little boring at first glance
It looks boring, but is almost certainly early Victorian, and has seen some heavy use, perhaps indicating it too was an heirloom when it was broken and disposed of.
Very diagnostic – wear and glaze.
The wear on the ring foot is clearly visible – it has been moved about a lot – in and out of cast-iron ovens in particular – scraping off the glaze and wearing out the ceramic underneath. Also, note the blue tint to the pooled glaze, indicative of a Pearl Ware, and which was largely unused after about 1850. Knowing this sort of thing is the reason I’m a hit at so many parties… such is the burden of the sherd nerd!
Extreme close up!
Looking at the interior surface you can see many scratches – cut marks made by a knife, probably cutting up meat in the process of serving food. This vessel had seen lots of use before being tossed into what would become the Rec. I love it – the human touch.
Finally, there was this:
No, honest, it’s not just a stone!
It may not look impressive… and to be fair it isn’t. It’s a piece of spent coal – or cinder – and it’s what is left over when you have burnt coal. But it is a hugely significant in that every house would have produced lots of this material, and it should really be seen as a marker of domestic life in the late 19th and early 20th century. I love it for that… not enough to keep it mind, but it is a lovely, if very common, little piece of social history that I wanted to share with you.
So my sincere thanks then to the Friends of Whitfield Rec and Green Spaces for inadvertently sponsoring this month’s post!
Whitfield Recreational Ground has an interesting history – I’m not going to go into it too much as I’m not sure I could do it justice in this article, although it does need doing. Briefly though, Robert Hamnett (the historian) notes that Wood Street – and presumably the whole area – used to be an open field. He states:
“When I first remembered it there was a disused brick yard in the centre, with numerous depressions, which after heavy rain became dangerous to children playing there; in fact there have been cases of children drowning there”.
The whole area was improved and landscaped by George Ollerenshaw in the late 19th and early 20th century. He built the houses on Wood Street, and donated the library building that once stood at the southern end of the park (now the toddler park). His monogrammed initials and date of 1902 are on the Wood Street entrance to the park.
The ‘G’ and ‘O’ monogram of George Ollerenshaw. 1902 – the year the park was opened. I love these, and this entrance – a real faded glory.
Obviously, over the years I have picked up a few bits and pieces from the Rec:
A selection of fairly mundane and entirely expected Victorian pottery.
On the left is a sherd of nice and finely incised Brown Stoneware, probably from a bottle, and possibly early Victorian, as later types are less precise and do away with the incised bits. The middle sherds – one on top of another – are bog-standard Blue and White transfer Printed Ware. The two bits on the right are Salt-Glazed Stoneware, and probably from a ginger beer bottle. Lovely stuff this (and the subject of a future Rough Guide). I also think I can just about make out a smudged fingerprint on the exterior from where the pot was moved whilst the glaze was still wet. Possibly.
Excitingly, we have this:
A close up… perhaps too close?
A clay pipe bowl fragment, with rather lovely fluted decoration – flat panel of gadrooning (don’t say we don’t learn you nuffink on this website… and yes, I didn’t know either, I only learned it accidentally by researching this pipe!). However, nice though it looks, it is roughly made; the seam, where both parts of the mould come together, is coarse and untrimmed, and the clay has been poorly formed in mould. This is mass production in the Victorian period.
And finally, just like the cinder piece above, we have a very mundane but quite important object… a piece of roof slate.
I mean to say… it’s not much to look at.
It really is mundane, but is quite informative. Slate is not local: Wales is it’s origin, and until the railways enabled the movement of relatively heavy fragile material like this, that’s where it would have stayed. Once the railways were established (c.1840’s onwards), it quickly became the roof material of choice – just as strong as local stone, but 20 times the weight. indeed, you can usually date the houses of Glossop to roughly pre- and post-1850 by the roof material: stone vs slate. This slate has a flat smooth edge (at the top in the photo) where it has been shaped, but other than that, it is utterly unremarkable, and it simply exists as a remnant of the 1000’s of houses that once stood very close by but which were pulled down during the rebuild of this area during the 1960’s. Indeed, the roof of the public library that stood here was also slate, so it might be part of that as I found it not 10 feet from where it once stood (underneath the toddler play area).
None of these finds have a context – they are all simply rubbish dumped here mostly when it was an open field and before it was transformed into a park. It’s interesting to ponder that for a moment. The Victorians were awful when it came to litter; everywhere they went they left a trail of pottery, glass, metal, and bone – rubbish all over. Now arguably, these are organic, and are not largely made from toxic oil-based plastics as much of our litter is, so not as ‘bad’. Nonetheless, it is safe to say the Victorians were absolute scumbags, and although some of it will have been picked up, there is still lots to be found. If groups like the Friends of Whitfield Rec and Green Spaces have their way and remove all the litter from these places – and I hope that they/we/you achieve this – then are they doing a future me out of a blog post or two? There may be no rubbish to mudlark/fieldlark and blog about! Unfortunately, the massive amount of plastic rubbish that seems to crop up everywhere you look would indicate that this is not the case, and in 200 years no doubt some sad geeky bloke will be publishing a monthly article on a website, and enthusiastically waxing lyrical about this piece of rubbish or that bit of bottle. Imagine…
Get in contact with the Friends via their Facebook page; help them out, give them ideas, give them time, resources… even a cheer. They really do deserve it for everything they are doing, and attempting to do (read a bit more about them and what they do here). Also, do something simple: pick up a piece of rubbish from the street and put it in the bin – every bit we do, helps the bigger picture. And the future me won’t hold it against you, honestly.
That’s all for now, and it only remains for me to wish you a very merry Christmas whatever you end up doing. Personally, I shall be basking in the glow of a fire with family, some cheese and a large glass of the stuff that cheers. So here’s a health to you all, and I hope you enjoy my favourite ‘modern’ Christmas song.
And/or my favourite more traditional song:
I’ll be back in the new year, but until then, and especially at this time of year, please look after yourselves and each other, but until then, merry Christmas (and a merry solstice).
*well, one, actually… but it is rather an interesting one. And also, my apologies to The Beatles.
What ho! good folk of the blog reading sort, what ho!
Now, as you probably know (for the Bard says it so) some are born with pottery, some achieve pottery, and others have pottery thrust upon them… or something. I think I fall squarely into the latter camp, if by thrust you mean stumble across it, even if one isn’t looking for it.
And so it was the other day. I had dropped off young Master CG at a friend’s birthday party, and had taken the opportunity to saunter into town to pick up a few things (certainly nothing pottery related: lego, wine, and masking tape, I think it was… which gives yet another somewhat intimate peek into my life). I wandered down High Street, and wondered if it was too early for a glass of something cold and refreshing. Crossing the end of Market Street I looked left and idly noted that the road was closed… and then I noticed the ground had been dug up, with a good sized pile of spoil indicating that there was a hole.
Now, as an absolute rule, if an archaeologist sees a hole in the ground, they will peer into it. It’s so natural, so predictable, that it has become a sort of archaeological equivalent to the Masonic Handshake, and using it you can spot us a mile away. “I say! What’s that chap over there doing – peering into a hole?” they say. And comes the response “Oh that’s just old TCG, doing a spot of ‘hole peering’… he’s one of those archaeological types, don’t you know – curious fellows“. This is also why you never see large groups of archaeologists walking together; if they accidentally stumbled across some roadworks they could be there for hours, peering. From the outside it would look like a mass escape from some sort of specialised care home, the inmates muttering and stroking their beards, pointing at things that might, or might not, be there. And peering. People would get frightened, angry mobs would form, torches would be lit and pitchforks procured, the police would get involved… No, it’s safer we travel in ones and twos.
But I digress from the story.
“Hmmm“, I muttered, and my thought process went something like this:
“Oooh, a hole… I must have a peer.”
Looking down Market Street toward Philip Howard Road. The darker soil is the material dug out of the trench, the orangey stuff is to be put in the trench.
Are those setts? Nice!
Setts: shaped stones set into the ground to provide a hard wearing surface of the Victorian Market Street, but later overlain by tarmac.
Wait, look in the soil… is there any pottery?
Lurking here and there… flashes of white and other colours. Tantalising, exciting, wonderful!Sometimes disguised, sometimes in plain sight. If you see one, you can guarantee more are lurking, hidden, waiting.
And so I did the only sane and rational thing I could do… I wandered over and did a spot of peering! And my word, what wonders were therein contained… chock full of goodies, it was. And yes, I realise that ‘goodies’ as used here is an entirely subjective word!
Let’s start with the Brown Salt-Glazed Stonewares:
A nice selection.
At the top left, we have a bowl or cooking pot with a rolled rim and a pot belly with a rim diameter of c.14cm; if it wasn’t Stoneware, I’d be thinking that it was Roman! Next to that part of the base to a large cooking pot; you can see the wear on the base where it was put in and out of an oven many times over the years. Bottom left is a thin walled open vessel, and with a diameter of 10cm is probably a mug with a horizontal linear banded decoration. The shiny lead-based glaze is particularly noticeable here, as is the orange peel effect on the exterior, characteristic of a salt glaze. This is also clearly visible in this sherd (it took me a while to get the light right on this shot, so you’d better appreciate it!).
Lovely! The speckled salt glaze is very visible.A brace of Brown Stonewares Sherds
The sherd on the right is probably from a jar or similar cylindrical shape. That on the left is the base of a cooking pot of some form. The foot is 8cm in diameter, but it is pot-bellied, so is actually quite large. It’s also quite coarsely made, being thrown quickly on the wheel, and looking at the base you can see detritus from previously made vessels, and which have been fired onto this pot. You can also see the wear on the edges of the base where it was pushed in and out of a metal oven. Interestingly, you can also just about make out the circular marks made by the wire cutting the wet clay bowl from the potter’s wheel – a snapshot of the manufacturing process.
Close-up of the left-hand pot.
Then we have some Industrial Slipwares:
Lovely Stuff
A selection of open vessels. Rims from two lovely bowls, both of 16cm in diameter, and probably from food bowl – soup or stew, perhaps. The one on the left has a striking spotted design, and on the right, a variegated type with a joggled earthworm decoration (see the Rough Guide to Pottery Part 3 for more on this). To the right we see some more sherds, these are probably from tankards (for example, the one top right with the dark brown band has a diameter of c.12cm, which is about right).
Blue and White Transfer Printed:
Ubiquitous is the word – the classic.
Surprisingly, there wasn’t much Blue and White Transfer Printed material here, but I only collected from the surface, with no digging (which makes me wonder what I missed… eek!). What there is is fairly standard, a few bits of Willow Pattern, including a small plate or saucer of c.16cm diameter, and other assorted bits. There is also a moulded rim from a Shell Edged plate or shallow bowl.
Some hand-painted Victorian sherds:
Surprisingly colourful, and quite garish.
Hand-painted pottery was quite popular, and can be quite attractive in an abstract way – the painting being done very quickly produces some wonderful designs. I have a feeling both of these come from larger jugs, or possibly vases, although the one on the right reminds me of some of the hand-painted designs you get on Spongeware vessels (see here). This stuff is the subject of a future Rough Guide, although there really isn’t much more to say than colourful designs on a refined white clay and glazed.
Here we have some Black Glazed sherds.
Big and clunky, I love this stuff.
This stuff is interesting, and is going to get its own entry in the Rough Guide, too – perhaps next time (can anyone else hear screaming?) – so I’m not going to go into too much detail here. However, I will say these sherds come mainly from large thick-walled vessels, and specifically pancheons – huge deep bowls traditionally used for separating cream or proving bread. They are very coarsely slipped and glazed usually on the inside only, and typically have grooves on the interior, made by fingers during the shaping process. As I was peering I pulled out a sherd which has since proved to be my favourite ever example of this type – look at this beauty!
Massively chunky rim sherd from a large pancheon.
A rim sherd of a large pancheon measuring roughly 56cm in diameter – a monster! It has a lovely black glazed interior, with great drips running where it was splashed and placed upside down to empty and dry before firing. The exterior is something to behold, too:
Unusual decoration.
Wonderful grooves running horizontally around the body, made with a comb of some sort and which left some of the flashing. And look at that handle! For some reason it rare to find handles (there’s usually two of them), but this one is perfect – you can even see the potter’s thumb mark where he has pressed it onto the body of the vessel.
The human touch – it’s easy to forget sometimes that every one of these vessels was made by a person.
And look at the profile, held up at the correct angle to allow us to see how steep the vessel would have been, and showing the thick heavy rim.
I love how monstrous this thing is… it’s truly fantastic! I’ll be waxing lyrical about this pot some more when we get to the Rough Guide.
And finally, this last one is a mystery sherd, by which I mean I don’t know what it is, exactly.
Tiny fragment of…
It’s shaped in a way that suggests it was a statuette, rather than a cup or bowl, and if I was a betting man (which I’m not), I’d say it was one of those pottery dogs the Victorians loved so much. Or did they? And here I’m going to share with you a passage from one of my all-time favourite books – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome:
“That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to the verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her.
But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was.”
I suspect that this is a fragment of that tail!
Finally, we have a fragment of a clay pipe bowl and a piece of stem.
Neither is particularly interesting as such, and I sometimes refer to clay pipes as the cigarette butt of the Victorian period – they were mass produced, smoked and thrown away – but they are always a joy to find. The slightly tatty looking organic object on the left of the photo is the remains of an oyster shell. These are quite a common find from the Victorian period, though perhaps less common away from the coast for obvious reasons. In fact, oysters were an important food source for many, sold pickled in vinegar and spices, or made into pie, and certainly by the time of the railways, they could be moved around the country in huge quantities to feed the hungry lower classes cheaply.
In terms of dating, the construction of the market hall and grounds, and subsequently Market Street, provides us with a lovely and quite solid Terminus Ante Quem – the latest point at which an event could have happened. Put simply, the pottery came from soil underneath the road surface of setts laid down when the road was put in – 1844 or thereabouts. It couldn’t have been deposited any later than that (the road surface prevents it) therefore all the pottery must date to 1844 or earlier. And from a sherd nerd’s perspective, I would agree with the archaeological method; there is nothing here that needs to be later that 1840. You can see the original sett covered road surface in this photo, with a few setts still in-situ. You can also make out the buried surface and the natural soil underneath.
There is a rough stratigraphy visible here…
To make it a bit clearer, let’s look at it side on – in section.
I mean… it’s not perfect, but it get’s the job done. Hope you can understand it.
If you look at the photo above, you can make out the tarmac layer on top of the stone setts left in-situ – this was what you drove on the last time you drove down Market Street, laid down probably in the 1960’s, and many times since. The stone setts are the original Victorian road surface. Below these, in a reddish brown in the diagram above, is the disturbed original ground surface, and it is from this that the pottery was taken. Below that (only not as clear cut and obvious in the photo) is the original undisturbed natural clayey soil laid down during the last ice age or so.
The origin of this material, and why it ended up there, cannot be proven, but we might hazard a guess. From 1838 onwards, the town hall was constructed, designed from the outset to incorporate shops and businesses into the complex. One of these was a pub – The Market Vaults – that stood on the corner of (what was to become) Market Street and High Street West (it later became The Newmarket, and is currently Boots Opticians).
The Market Vaults as it once was, and possibly the source of our pottery.
Well, technically, this front part was a grocery store, it was the back, facing into the market place that was the pub. And it was right next to this building that our hole was dug. It’s not in the realms of fantasy that broken pottery and rubbish would be thrown out of the back door of the pub onto the muddy wasteland – the area would have been a building site between roughly 1838 and 1844.
The original back door of the pub is flush with the larger pub building, hidden behind the later building work. Interestingly, I can see at least 4 phases of building at the rear of the pub – the large extension is not original, and belongs to the last building phase, also seemingly Victorian.
There are three things that reinforce this theory. Firstly, the pottery contains a large proportion of Industrial Slipware, a ware type particularly associated with pubs. Secondly, the oyster shell is a classic bar snack of the Victorian and earlier periods, cheap and cheerful (then, at least – now they are, well, bloody expensive and, quite frankly, inedible). Lastly, the condition of the pottery; it all has sharp edges and clean breaks, which tells me that it has not spent any time kicking around the soil, being trodden on, or moved around at all: it was simply dumped and never touched again until being paved over. And although in ‘History in a Pint Pot‘ (the history of Glossop’s pubs), David Field notes that the first mention of a pub here is in a newspaper of 1865, I think it highly likely that the grocery was open all year, and that the enterprising owner – Mr Edward Sykes – would sell beer round the back on market days.
Fast forward 180 years, and some dashing heroic archaeological type wanders over to a hole, has a peer and, well, here we all are. And here, we must turn once again to Three Men in a Boat. Later in the same page as above, J notes:
“The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups.“
If only he knew! And if only I could find one complete enough from which to drink claret!
So remember, always have a look into a hole… you honestly never know what you might find. But be quick and be bold, as before you know it all is returned to normal and the opportunity to explore a little of the past is gone…
Almost as if it never happened. One wonders what lies beneath our feet as we walk or drive here.
EDIT
I have just come across this rather wonderful article, written by the truly amazing Graham Hadfield, about the history of Market Street. The whole of Graham’s website – GJH.me.uk – is an absolute mine of Glossop history, and he really puts in the effort to investigate the history of the place. I don’t bang on enough about the other people who are unravelling the history of here, as I’m not the only one, but let me recommend this site.
Incidentally, as I was peering I heard shouting behind me, and bounding into view came my lovely neighbours (hello H & S!). Apparently, their conversation prior to this had gone along the lines of “look at that weirdo poking around that hole, what’s he doing? Oh, hang on… that’s TCG!”. It’s nice to be known… I think.
Righty-ho, I think that’s the lot for today. I’ve got places to go and things to do (mainly housework, to be honest, but there you go, such is the life of the dashing explorer). In all the recent rain, it is well worth keeping an eye on the ground to see what the pottery fairy has sprinkled about – let me know if it is anything good. Also, big news is coming… I think, but until then, look after yourselves and each other. And I remain.
What Ho! What Ho! And if I may be so bold… What Ho!
How are we all? Bearing up under the circumstances? Summer, such as it was, has gone, and Autumn is upon us. A time of harvesting, of blackberrying, of apples… and pottery, obviously. And just like that, without further ado (and ignoring the groaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth), we tiptoe into Part 8 of the fabled (and seemingly never-ending) Rough Guide to Pottery; let’s have a look at some rather splendid sherds.
So then, today we are looking at some rarer types of pottery – well, perhaps not rare as such, just not as commonly encountered as some of the other stuff I’ve previously talked about.
TIN-GLAZED EARTHENWARE (aka Delft) DATE: 1650-1770 DESCRIPTION: Hand painted glazed blued decoration on a whitish/blueish background SHAPES: Cups, saucers, bowls, plates, small jugs, tankards, chargers with prominent ring foot. fine and delicate, with thin walls. Decorative tiles were also common in wealthy houses.
Originally tin-glazed pottery was imported from Italy, Spain and the Low Countries, but UK production began in Norwich in late 16th Century. Its heyday was roughly 1700 to say 1800… roughly. It remained popular until it was gradually replaced by White Salt-Glazed Stoneware by the mid 18th Century, which was more robust and much lighter, and cheaper to make. Tin-glazed pottery was another attempt at reproducing porcelain type pottery, and part of the quest to find a pure white background that seems to have dominated pottery making in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The process of manufacture was as follows. The vessel was turned by hand and using a former, and then biscuit fired (that is, it was fired undecorated and without a glaze). The pot is then dipped in the glaze and allowed to air dry. Once dry, the pot is then decorated by hand – quickly as the glaze is very absorbent. It is then once again fired, which fuses the glaze and fixes the decoration.
In terms of fabric, it’s an earthenware, a pale colour – white-ish or cream colour, with later examples being almost pure white. It has occasional tiny pink, reddish or darker inclusions, and is a soft to medium hardness.
Fabric. It is stained slightly to a creamy colour, but you can see the paler white where there is a new break. You can also make out some reddish inclusions in the fresh break… if you squint hard enough.
It uses a lead oxide glaze mixed with tin, which gives it a blueish white or pale cream colour, but is more blue where it pools – in particular around the ring base, where the pot was dried upside down.
The pooled glaze is very blue here. There is also a maker’s mark on the bottom – alas, that’s all I have of this pot, otherewise we might have been able to identify the potter.
The glaze has an almost luminescent quality and has a consistent smooth, dense feel to it – the product of the lead – but can occasionally have tiny imperfections or dimples in it. The glaze can also be thickish in places, but it is fragile and can flake off in patches, exposing the fabric below – most obviously at the edges of sherds. The surface occasionally shows the marks of the trivets that separated the vessels in the kiln.
Flaky! This was what was in my bag after I emptied it… bits. You can also clearly see the glaze has crazed and flaked off in patches.
It’s the decoration that really makes this stuff special, though. It’s all hand-painted, and because the dried but unfired glaze is super absorbent, it has to be done with speed: the brush strokes are wide or thin, and it’s done in a fluid and moving motion, quick and rough, impressionistic, and almost living, and certainly not fixed like transfer-printed wares.
There’s no mistaking this is hand drawn – each line is human made. A beautiful if naive image of a house, surrounded by trees that seem to have been made with sponges.Simple but wonderfully effective decoration – a single line hand drawn around the vessel – probably a tea bowl or similar shape. You can also see the flaked glaze surface.
Delicate handle for a jug or similar.
There is no way to erase the decoration once applied, which accounts for occasional errors, and which I think only adds to the attraction. The colour is almost universally a wonderful cobalt blue, but occasionally purple or orange is found. The subjects are largely naturalistic – foliage in particular – but there are also scenes with animals, people, and buildings. As well as actual pots, tin-glazed pottery was very much favoured for tiles among the wealthy, and some stunning examples exist.
Stunning dragonfly tile dating to 1670ish – from this website, and only £216!Tile fragment found by me – the colour on this tile are simply stunning. Showing a stylised flower (thanks Julian)… I wish I could find the rest of it.
I honestly love this stuff, there is something wonderful about it – the colours in particular – and although I don’t have a lot of it, it’s always a joy to find.
The next lot of pottery type occupies a similar space in time – broadly the 18th century – and indeed, overtook Tin-Glazed pottery in terms of popularity…
WHITE SALT-GLAZED STONEWARE (aka Fine White Stoneware) DATE: c.1720-1770 DESCRIPTION: Thin walled, white glazed, impressed decoration, hard stoneware. SHAPES: All sorts of tablewares (i.e. not cooking or storage), common are cups and bowls, but plates, platters, jugs, salt shakers, sugar bowls, etc.
A selection of sherds, all mid 1700’s in date.
A later development than Tin-Glazed, it was first made in the later 17th century, but only began to be produced commercially from the 1720’s onwards.
The fabric is a typical stoneware, in this instance with added calcined (burnt) flint to produce a pale cream, almost white colour. It is then fired at a very high temperature and salt glazed, to produce a fine, strong, pottery that I find really quite beautiful.
Close up of the fabric. Very pale grey-ish to white, with visible voids created by gases formed by the high temperature it is fired at. There are also occasional brown and dark grey inclusions visible both in the break and the surface.
Vessels are formed one of two ways: either by being turned on a lathe when leather dry but before firing, which produces very sharp edges and fine horizontal banding; or by pressing thin sheets of clay into a mould, which allows the fine relief decoration to be made.
In this latter case, often the inside of the clay is wiped with a cloth to ensure the clay presses into every corner of the mould, which leaves very clear wiping marks, especially on closed vessels (jugs, for example) where the inside wouldn’t be seen.
Wiping marks on the interior of a jug. The black writing is an excavation code – BGW (upside down in this photo) – which stands for Back Garden Wall… I found these sherds underneath my garden wall!
External decoration, beginning c.1730, includes basket work patterns, leaves and other foliate designs, although simple incised horizontal lines are commonly encountered on earlier pieces.
Close up of that beautiful foliate decoration – the result of being formed in a mould.
Occasionally, the walls are pierced, though this seems largely confined to high-end expensive dinner services.
Alas, not found beneath my garden wall! Lovely plate with pierced decoration and impressed motifs. Image is stolen without shame from this website here. A snip at £450! Do check out the website, though, as there are more examples of White Stoneware.
There are also rare examples of transfer-printing on stoneware:
A truly terrible photograph, but you get the idea! This is dated from the period where potters are experimenting with transfer-printing – later 1700’s.
The exterior is salt-glazed, meaning that at a point during the firing process salt is added to the kiln, which vaporises and coats the vessels in a clear glaze. Although solid and even, it often leaves an orange-peel, slightly melted roughened type effect on the surface, as it does on the Brown Salt-Glazed Stonewares discussed here.
The ‘orange peel’ salt-glaze is very obvious on this sherd. The horizontal band is very neat and tight, carved using a tool on a lathe. You can also see some sort of damage underneath the glaze (above the chip).Wonderful coffee pot of c.1760-ish, and a snip at £1250! It is lovely, though. Same website.
White Stoneware gradually overtook Tin-Glazed pottery in popularity, and began to dominate the fineware market from the 1740’s onwards – it is a lot lighter than the earthenware, and crucially it is much more hardwearing, with the surface unlikely to flake off or crack. It also appealed to the middle classes; its fine white background mimicking the desirable but very expensive imported Chinese porcelain, a crucial part of the tea and coffee drinking craze that had gripped Britain at this point. It remained popular until eventually overtaken by the development of Creamware and other earthenware types in the late 18th century.
SCRATCH BLUE DATE: c.1740-1780 DESCRIPTION: Pale stoneware, incised decoration highlighted in messy cobalt blue SHAPES: Mugs, Tankards, Jugs, Chamber Pots.
Broadly speaking, Scratch Blue is decorated Pale/Grey/White Salt-Glazed Stoneware – it has the same fabric and glaze. Essentially, this was a UK answer to the lovely looking Westerwald stoneware pottery being made in Germany (see below) and imported in large quantities – the English potters wanted a piece of the action, and produced a cut price version. It reproduces the essentials of Westerwald – incised decoration and stunning cobalt blue highlights on a pale stoneware (white-ish or pale creamy grey) background, but overall it tends to be more sloppy. The incised decoration is less careful, often looking as though it was done quickly, and the cobalt slip often overruns and splashes.
Wonderful chamber pot, with a King George medallion (probably George II)
Actually, I think this ‘messiness’ was deliberate, a way of ‘jazzing up’ the decoration, and it’s certainly effective. That’s not to say that there aren’t some very careful and precise examples, though, and in fact American archaeology seems to divide Scratch Blue into two types – Scratch Blue, which is very finely decorated, and ‘Debased’ Scratch Blue, which is the messier variety. I’m not sure that the distinction is particularly useful, or indeed ‘real’ as such, but there you go – my twopenn’orth.
A jug.
In terms of decoration, there are incised flowers and leaves and multiple horizontal turned bands at the top and bottom, all highlighted in cobalt blue and occasionally manganese brown. Also, there are applied medallions, sometimes containing the royal arms and cipher of King George II/III.
A tea bowl with a lovely flower incised on it. All these images are stolen from the hugely invaluable Colonial Ceramics website of Maryland – well worth checking out their huge database of pottery.
I have a single, very small, sherd of Scratch Blue pottery, and this stuff is by no means common, especially up North.
That’s it, a single 2cm sherd of Scratch Blue is all I have. There must be more out there…
It seems to be from the base or top of a tankard, something like this:
Possibly something like this, from roughly 1780. From Colonial Williamsburg’s website.
This seems appropriate as it was found on the footpath outside an 18th century one-time pub, the Seven Stars off Hague Street, Whitfield.
WESTERWALD (aka Rhenish Ware) DATE: c.1650-1780 DESCRIPTION: Pale or grey Stoneware, incised decoration highlighted in cobalt blue SHAPES: Mugs, Tankards, Jugs.
Unusually, I don’t actually have a sherd of this to show you! It wasn’t particularly common up in the North – London being the big importer and consumer of this ware type. As I said above, Scratch Blue is the indigenous British potter’s response to this German imported pottery, and as you can see it is very similar:
Lovely jug of Westerwald from this website – it sold at auction for a surprisingly cheap £150
Incised decoration, cobalt blue highlights, applied medallions and other decoration, it is often difficult to tell apart. However, Westerwald seems to be bigger somehow, less delicate… and at the risk of offending our German cousins, more Teutonic. There also seems to be a greater use of cobalt decoration, and the background stoneware is darker in many circumstances.
And there the matter shall have to rest until I can find some Westerwald sherds to discuss at greater length (I might have to get a mudlarks license and head down to London and poke about on the Thames foreshore).
Right, I think that’s enough pottery for now – next time we’ll look at some fine earthernwares… you lucky folk.
Now, someone recently asked me if I could put links to all the previous Pottery Guides at the bottom of the post, so they can use it quickly to find out what they have… well here you are:
Part 1 – Marmalade Jars and Brown Stoneware (Nottingham and Derbyshire)
Part 7 – 17th Century Slipwares, Manganese Glazed, and Yellow Ware
Enjoy, or not, as you wish.
Right, that’s all for now.
In other news, the Glossop Big Dig results are forthcoming… slowly. If any of you have any bags that need handing in, please do so, and I’ll get the results up asap.
Other other news is the ‘zine – Where/When – The Journal of Archaeological Wanderings – which is just about ready to go off to the printers. You will soon be able to buy a physical copy of a guided walk I did a while back, filled with historical musings and observations (and a sprinkling of pottery, obviously). It’s an experiment of sorts – we’ll see how it sells and whether I can make my costs back, but I’ve got about 6 more walks ready to go, and I’d like each one to be in the ‘zine. It will be full colour, 40 pages, fully illustrated, and should be retailing for £6, but watch this space.
The front cover of the first edition – hopefully ready within a week or two, and available to order via the Where / When button at the top.
If any of you out there have either suggestions for walks, or would like to publish one yourself, do get in contact. More news on this soon.
Until then, look after yourselves and each other, and I remain.
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 
