The History of the West Cumberland Potteries - Vol II

Florence Sibson
�30.00

Volume I of The History of West Cumberland Potteries was published in 1991 and showed the whereabouts of the potteries and the names of the families associated with them.
Since then, however, a great deal has been discovered, uncovered and recorded and the author felt it necessary to update Volume 1 and record all the exciting discoveries that have occurred since then.

Published by :	Cope Publishing
Published Date :	November 2008
Pages :	210
Format :	175mm x 245mm hardback
Illustrations :	Colour photographs
ISBN :	9780956098603

The History of the West Cumberland Potteries - Vol II

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Review

In 1697, Sir John Lowther was feeling buoyant about the prospects for his earthenware business in Whitehaven. He wrote to his steward, Willaim Gilpin, �I am pleased with the manufacture you have of earthenware � where ships are, the whole world is the market and things once begun cannot in that case be hindered from advancing.�
In 1698, knowing that Whitehaven clays were suitable for pottery and owning the rights to the coal in the area, Sir John invited a certain Aaron Wedgwood of Burslem in the Potteries to develop pottery manufacture in the area. Despite his name, he failed. None of the local men were skilled kiln-firers and Wedgwood went to join the potters in Dearham.
Business was thriving in Whitehaven. Tobacco houses had been built on Hodgson�s Croft. The clay was ideal for making pipes and men such as Thomas Birch, Abel Robinson and Jon Boulain, started making clay pipes for smoking tobacco. Shards of old pipes have been uncovered. They are clearly from West Cumbria as they carry the warning, �Don�t cadge�.
Business developed. Sir John�s optimism was, at least in part, justified. Within a hundred years sailing ships from Whitehaven were taking Cumberland pots across the seas to the American colonies and the Caribbean.
Florence Sibson�s compendious volume assembles a wealth of stray facts on Cumberland potteries. It is a gathering of shards of information from here, there and everywhere to give an impression of an industry that thrived throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Whitehaven, with its access to shipping, was the mainmanufacturing centre, but there were also potteries in Carlisle, at St Nicholas Fields, and at Clay Flatts in Workington, where Jonnie and Thomas Dunbar conducted their business. The pots they made were mostly moulded items embellished with images of foliage or of rabbits and mice and other such animals. Other potteries were at Clifton, Rebton Hall near Camerton, Harker Marsh, Dearham Mill, Fox House at Broughton Moor, Harrington and Maryport.
These potteries produced a wide variety of goods in addition to the cups and plates and pots and jugs you would expect. There were log-shaped hot water bottles, money boxes, tobacco jars, baby�s feeding bottles, plaques, garden furniture shaped like tree stumps, toothbrush holders, shaving bowls and curtain pulls. One shaving bowl carried the slogan �Free Trade in exchange for Corn�.
Slogans on pottery were common. Isaac Littledale, owner of the Lowca Chemical and Tar Works, who fought the Whitehaven constituency in 1832, produced a fine pearlware beaker carrying the words �Littledale and the Independence of Whitehaven�. However, he was unable to defeat the candidate who stood for the Lowther interest.
Pictures were very popular. One series, called �Our Early Days�, shows a little girl seated at a table reprimanding her dollies who sit placidly in front of her. She, we are told, is �Keeping School�. Other prints show the little girl feeding chickens and, with spectacles and a walking stick, pretending to be grandmother.
A lustre jug from Dearham, which was decorated around the top with delicate white and purple flowers, had a raised picture showing a helmeted policeman bravely arresting a thug brandishing a stick, as a terrified wife and child looked on.
A series of plates produced in Whitehaven was intended as a warning. The plates carried the title �The Bottle� and as you mopped up your gravy you gradually revealed a scene displaying the gradual dissolution of the dissolute. Otherwise known as �The Drunkard�s Doom�, the plates were engraved with pictures by George Cruikshank, who also illustrated many of the novels by Charles Dickens.
Mr and Mrs Coffee of Whitehaven owned a pottery marriage puzzle jug. Placed upright on the table it showed a middle aged, respectable couple facing each other and wearing the broadest of grins. Underneath is the legend �Before Marriage�. Empty out the jug�s contents and turn it upside down and the same couple are transformed into a pair of snarling antagonists.
�West Cumberland Potteries� is the result of a lifetime�s enthusiasm for local pottery. The illustrations and documentation will prove invaluable to the collector.

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