Contents of the Crockle Potteries. 219 



where his hand had missed its stroke. All was here. The 

 potter's finger-marks were still stamped upon the bricks. Here 

 lay the brass coin which he had dropped, and the tool he had 

 forgotten, and the plank upon which he had tempered the clay.* 



* The most noticeable specimens which I discovered were a strainer or 

 colander, a funnel, some fragments of " mock Samian " ware ; part of a 

 lamp, with the holes to admit air, as also for suspension ; and some beads 

 of Kimmeridge clay, proving, by being found here, their Roman origin. 

 The iron tools of the workmen had been dropped into the furnace, and 

 were a good deal melted. The wood owed its preservation to the fer- 

 ruginous soil in which it was imbedded, and was in a semi-fossilized state. 

 Nothing less slight than a plank could have lasted so long. The finger- 

 marks and impress of the hand were very plain on one of the masses of 

 brick-earth. The coin, I am sorry to jsay, is too much worn to be recog- 

 nized. These, with the other vessels, paterce, urceoli, lagence, pocula, aceta- 

 bula, &c., I have placed in the British Museum, where is also Mr. Bartlett's 

 rich collection. The patterns, with the necks of ampulla: and gutti, as also 

 the specimens at pages 214, 225, will, I trust, give some general idea of the 

 beauty of the ware, and can be compared with those given by Mr. Akerman 

 in Archoeologia, vol. xxxv. p. 96, and by Mr. Franks in the Archaological 

 Journal, vol. x. p. 8. The commonest shape for a drinking- vessel is the 

 right-hand figure at page 225, known in the Forest, from the depressions 

 made by the workman's thumb, as a " thumb pot." Sometimes it is met 

 with considerably ornamented, and varies in height from three to ten inches. 

 The principal part of the pottery is slate-coloured and grey, and faint 

 yellow, but some of a fine red bronze and morone, caused by the over- 

 heating of the ovens. The patterns are thrown up by some white pigment, 

 though a great many are left untouched by anything but the workman's 

 tool. When chipped, the ware, by being so well burnt, is quite siliceous. 

 This manufactory, as its size would show, was not confined to merely sup- 

 plying the wants of the immediate neighbourhood, but probably, with others 

 at Alice Holt and elsewhere, furnished a great part of the South of England 

 with its earthenware, for fragments of the same make, shape, and texture, 

 have been found at Bittern (Clausentum), and Chichester, though doubtless 

 a similarity of workmanship prevailed amongst many of the potteries. The 

 so-called crockery of the southern part of the Forest is nothing else but 

 the plates of turtles imbedded in the Freshwater marls. 



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