Figure 6. — Gravel-tempered oven of the 17th or 

 early i8th century, acquired in Bideford. {USNM 

 3945°5-) 



Figure 7. — Gravel-tempered oven from 17th-century 

 house on Bideford Quay. Borough of Bideford 

 Public Library and Museum. {Photo by A. C. 

 Littlejohm.) 



Not only was coastwise trade in earthenware main- 

 tained throughout the 18th century but it was con- 

 tinued, in fact, until the final decline of the potteries 

 at the turn of the present century. 



Although great antiquity attaches to the origins 

 of North Devon pottery manufacture — Barnstaple 

 has had its Crock Street for 450 years ^° — the principal 

 evidence of early manufacture falls into the second 

 half of the 1 7th century. We have seen that a grow- 

 ing America provided an increasing market for North 

 Devon's ceramic wares. In 1668 Crocker's pottery 

 was established at Bideford, and it is in the period 

 following that Bideford's importance as a pottery 

 center becomes noticeable. Crocker's was operated 

 until 1896, its dated 17th-century kilns then still 

 intact after producing wares that varied little during 

 all of the pottery's 228 years of existence.^' 



In Barnstaple the oldest pottery to survive until 

 modern times was situated in the North Walk. 

 When it was dismantled in 1900, sherds dating from 

 the second half of the 17th century were found in 

 the surroundings, as was a potter's guild sign, dated 



3" T. M. Hall, "On Barum Tobacco-Pipes and North Devon 

 Clays," Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association Jor the 

 Advancement of Science, Literature, and Art, Devon, 1 890, vol. 22, 

 pp. 317-323. 



" T. Charbonnier, "Notes on North Devon Pottery of the 

 Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Centuries," Report 

 and Transactions oj the Devonshire Association for the Advancement 0/ 

 Science, Literature, and Art, Devon, 1906, vol. 38, p. 255. 



1675, which now hangs in Brannam's pottery in 

 Litchdon Street, Barnstaple. A pair of fire dogs, dated 

 1655 and shaped by molds similar to one from the 

 North Walk site, was excavated near the North ^V'alk 

 pottery. 



Both Bideford and Barnstaple had numerous pot- 

 teries in addition to Crocker's and Brannam's. One, 

 in Potter's Lane in the East-the- Water section of Bide- 

 ford, was still making "coarse plain ware" in 1906;'- 

 its buildings were still standing in 1920. We have 

 already observed that the Litchdon Street works of 

 C. H. Brannam, Ltd., remains in operation in a 

 modern building on the site of its 17th-century fore- 

 runner. Outside the limits of the two large towns 

 there were "a number of small pot works in remote 

 districts," including the parish of Fremington, where 

 Fishley's pottery, established in the 18th century, 

 flourished until 1912.^^ Jewitt states that the remains 

 of five old potteries were foimd in the location of 

 Fishley's.'* 



The clay with which all the potters worked came 

 from three similar deep clay deposits in a valley run- 



P.\PER 13: NORTH DEVON POTTERY IN 1 7tH-CENTURV-.'\MERICA 



32 Ibid., p. 256. 



33 Bernard Rackham, Catalogue oJ the Glaisher Collection oj Pot- 

 tery and Porcelain in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1950, 

 ed. 2, vol. 1, pp. 10-11. 



3< Llewellyn Jewitt, The Ceramic Art oj Great Britain, London, 



1883, ed. 2, pp. 206-207. 



29 



