l8o ON SOME FRAGMENTS OF ENGLISH EARTHENWARE. 



required for firing the ovens ; this alone accounts for so many 

 potters settling there for centuries. Several districts, to which 

 preference seems to have been given at first, lost, however, in the 

 course of time, the prominence they had quickly reached at the 

 start ; the exploring potter, bent on finding places the situation 

 of which would prove more favourable to the practice of his 

 trade, removed gradually a little farther on. Amongst the places 

 which were doomed to be abandoned, the most conspicuous was 

 the territory which lay in the neighbourhood of Derby, and which 

 was once a very important centre of manufacture. At Tickenhall 

 alone, the area occupied by pot-works is said to have been 

 immense ; if we can judge by the quantity of fragments scattered 

 all over the ground, it must have extended over two miles. 

 Philip Kinder, who visited it in 1650, reports that from there " pots 

 and panchions were carried all East England through." Farther 

 on, going towards the North, small tenements of potters were 

 still found, although at longer intervals, until at last, Lane End, 

 Hanley, and Burslem were reached. These latter were steadily 

 attracting the largest conglomeration of masters and operatives, 

 coming to settle there from all the other points. 



At first the work was not, however, conducted collectively, as 

 it was to be in the succeeding period; each man owned his 

 primitive kiln ; alone, or with the assistance of his wife and 

 children, he had to fill it with goods made with his own hands, 

 and then proceed to the firing. Improving the state of the craft 

 under such adverse circumstances, and in the wild and lonely 

 countries where it was carried on, was, we need not say, next to 

 impossible. We can picture to ourselves the miserable conditions 

 of the worker in clay. He must have been one of the lowest 

 labourers in the land. His daily toil was hard and thankless ; 

 the man had to dig deeply into the soil to extract the marl, 

 which was afterwards to be painfully marched with the feet ; the 

 coals required for the baking of the ware had to be fetched and 

 carried on his back to the mouth of the kiln ; then, the firing 

 once commenced, he had to attend to it night and day, up to the 

 moment when he could at last hastily snatch out his ware from 



