A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



driving out the felt appears to have soon passed, 

 and the industry got back to its old level. In 

 1875 the principal employer alone, Mr. William 

 Rought, found work for 200 hands, and this firm 

 is still in existence, having been established for 

 more than half a century. 1 The manufacture of 

 whiting has also been carried on at Brandon for 

 nearly a century, if not longer. 



In certain districts the soil of the county yields 

 a beautiful white clay from which bricks, tiles, 

 and ornaments are made in imitation of stone. 

 Woolpit brick began to be widely used in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, and a number of 

 halls, including those of Woolverstone, Redgrave, 

 and Great Finborough, are built of it. 2 Bricks 

 and tiles of the same kind have long been made at 

 Chilton, near Sudbury. 3 At Wattisfield, on the 

 road from Botesdale to Bury, there is a bed of 

 clay from which, in addition to bricks and tiles, 

 a brown earthenware much used by dairymen 

 and gardeners is manufactured. 4 Ordinary brick 

 is widely made throughout Suffolk. The history 

 of the Lowestoft china industry will be fully 

 dealt with later. Experts differ as to how far 

 the clay and sand of the district can have supplied 

 the factory with materials, but there seems no 

 doubt that the enterprise had its origin in the 

 discovery by a Gunton landowner of what he 

 took to be a bed of china clay on his estate.' 



The china industry at Lowestoft, as at so 

 many other places, was short-lived, but another 

 industry that has sprung more recently from the 

 soil has become independent of this material 

 connexion, and seems to have a prosperous future 

 before it. This is the manufacture of fertilizers, 

 which will be dealt with in a separate section. 

 The discovery by Professor Henslow in 1843 at 

 Felixstowe between the Pleiocene Beds, locally 

 known as Crag, and the London Clay, of large 

 deposits of phosphatic nodules, capable of con- 

 version into artificial manure of the highest value, 

 led to an extensive industrial exploitation of the 

 strata which lasted some thirty years. 6 The 

 Coprolite, as it was called, was chiefly obtained 

 along the coastline of Hollesley Bay, between 

 Bawdsey and Boyton, where veins and ridges of 

 it were found at various depths from 2 to 20 ft., 

 and as much as £20 worth was got out of a 

 cottager's garden. The unearthing, sorting, and 

 washing of these deposits found employment in 



1 Kelly, Direct. 1846, p. 1374 ; 1875, p. 742 ; and 

 1900, p. 61. 



' White, Direct. 1855, pp. 234, 500. 



3 Ibid. 757, and Kelly, Direct. 1901, p. 95. 



4 Ibid. 73;, and ibid. 351. 



5 See references under ' Lowestoft China.' 



6 See references under ' Fertilizers.' The local use 

 of ' crag ' applied directly as a manure had been com- 

 mon in the eighteenth century (Young, A Gen. Fieu; 

 193). A farmer named Edwards of Levington is said 

 to have discovered it in 171 8 (White, Direct. 1855, 

 p. 240 ; cf. R. E. Prothero, The Pioneers and Progress 

 cf English Farming, 43). 



the fifties and sixties for many hundreds of men, 

 women, and children. The London Clay of the 

 same district contains large numbers of rounded 

 masses of impure limestone called cement stones, 

 which are sometimes traversed by cracks which 

 have become filled with pure crystallized carbonite 

 of lime, and are then known as septaria. Along 

 the coast from Harwich to Orford Ness a great 

 number of boats used to be engaged in dredging 

 for these stones, which were used in the manu- 

 facture of Roman cement. The fishing hamlet 

 of Pinmill on the Orwell had, in 1855, about 

 fifty boats employed chiefly in this way, but the 

 industry appears to have died out. Goldstones 

 for making copperas were also found on this 

 coast. 7 



It was no doubt the existence of these deposits, 

 and the fact that they were utilized in early 

 times, that led the ubiquitous mining speculator 

 of the sixteenth century to imagine that he was 

 on the track of gold in this part of Suffolk. In 

 July, 1538, the king made a grant of ^20 to 

 Richard Candishe and other commissioners, who 

 were to have the oversight of the king's mines of 

 gold in Suffolk and to convey certain finers and 

 other artificers there for the trial of the ore. 

 Later on further grants were made for the purpose 

 of bringing up skilled miners from Cornwall. 

 The king's hopes of treasure seem soon to have 

 been disappointed. In September of the same 

 year we find the Cornishmen and others being 

 paid off and sent back. But a rumour had got 

 abroad, and the private prospector had already 

 commenced operations. At the end of September 

 a certain Thomas Toysen complained to Crom- 

 well of divers ill-doers who had digged for gold 

 and treasure in his lordship of Brightwell of 

 Suffolk, and promised that if he could have a 

 licence to search so as to be rid of the intruders, 

 he would hand over all the treasure he found to 

 the king. 8 The locality of the king's gold mine 

 is not stated. It may have been somewhere in 

 the same neighbourhood, but a tradition reported 

 by Reyce in 161 7 suggests another possibility. 

 After referring to the absence of mines in Suffolk, 

 he adds : 



Yet I have heard that in ancient time there was a 

 mine of gold ore about Banketon in Hartismere hun- 

 dred, but the experience of this dayfly] so much 

 contrarying the same made me to receive it but as 

 unprobable hearsay. 9 



Apart from influence on the political, social, 

 and commercial history of Suffolk, the sea has 

 always been one of the most considerable of the 

 county's industrial resources. In this respect 

 Suffolk now stands fourth among the counties of 

 England, and it is not impossible, in view of the 



; White, Direct. 1855, p. 260. 

 * L. and P. Hen. Fill, xiii (2), No. 1280, 

 fol. 28-30, 35, and App. No. 41. 

 8 Reyce, Breviary (ed. Hervey), 27. 



248 



