A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



success of the Staffordshire Potteries. Later 

 on we find the Lowestoft firm kept vessels con- 

 stantly running to the Isle of Wight for a 

 peculiar sand which formed one of the ingre- 

 dients of their ware, and to Newcastle for coal. 

 The china was also sent by sea to London and 

 the Continent. The remaining member of the 

 firm, Mr. Robert Browne, was a chemist, and 

 it was upon his experiments that the industry 

 was based. He had the management of the 

 works, superintending the mixing of the clays 

 and colours, and when he died in 1771 his son 

 Mr. Robert Browne, junior, succeeded to his 

 position. 1 



The London manufacturers naturally regarded 

 the new enterprise no less unfavourably than its 

 predecessor. The Lowestoft firm was obliged 

 to draw its workmen from London, and these 

 had been so far influenced in the interests of 

 their former employers that the undertaking was 

 on the point of failure before the plot was dis- 

 covered. There is a story told of Mr. Browne's 

 method of retaliation on the London makers, 

 which though it bears a strong resemblance to 

 many other stories of the discovery of industrial 

 secrets, need not on that account be regarded as 

 a mere tradition. Mr. Browne is said to have 

 gained admittance in the disguise of a workman 

 to one of the factories in Chelsea or Bow, and to 

 have bribed the warehouseman to lock him up 

 secretly in that part of the factory where the 

 principal was in the habit of mixing the ingre- 

 dients after the workmen had left. Browne was 

 placed under an empty hogshead, through a hole 

 in which he could see all that was going on. 2 

 Such incidents have really happened often enough 

 (however much they have been afterwards em- 

 bellished by the imagination) in the history of 

 industry. Whatever substratum of truth under- 

 lies the story in this case it proves that the 

 founders of the enterprise regarded themselves 

 as to a large extent imitators of the London 

 makers of china. 3 



The factory in which the firm commenced 

 operations was formed by the conversion of a 

 number of houses on the south side of Bell Lane 

 and by the erection of a suitable kiln. Later on, as 

 the demand for the ware increased, several other 

 adjoining houses were bought and the works 

 were enlarged and adapted more completely to 

 the various processes of the manufacture. The 

 industry is said to have reached its greatest 

 prosperity between 1770 and I78o. 4 Towards 

 the end of this time there were sixty to seventy 

 persons employed on the works, in addition to 

 which a number of women were engaged in 

 painting the commoner blue and white china 

 in their homes. The firm kept two travellers on 



1 Chaffers, op. cit. 8 1 7-8. 

 * Gillingwater, Hist, of Lowestoft. 

 ' Art Journ. July, 1863. 

 * Gillingwater, op. cit. 



the road in East Anglia, and most of the china 

 produced was no doubt sold there, but it had 

 also an agency in London. An advertisement 

 in a London newspaper in 1770 states that 



Clark Durnford, Lowestoft China Warehouse, No. 4, 

 Great St. Thomas the Apostle, Queen Street, Cheap- 

 side, London, is prepared to supply Merchants and 

 Shopkeepers with any quantity of the said ware at the 

 usual prices. 



N.B. Allowance of Twenty per cent, for ready 

 money. 5 



It is not improbable, moreover, that an export 

 trade was done with or through Holland. 



The firm was still flourishing in 1790, when 

 the History of Lowestoft was published. A 

 description of the works as they existed about 

 that time was derived some seventy years later 

 from the memory of a Mr. Abel Ely, whose 

 father and uncles had been employed there, and 

 who went there daily himself as a boy. Subse- 

 quent discoveries tend to confirm the accuracy 

 of his account, which is as follows : 



The factory was situate in Crown Street, where the 

 brew-house and malting premises of Messrs. Morse 

 and Woods now [1865] stand, the rear fronting what 

 is now called Factory Lane. Where Messrs. Morse's 

 counting-house stands was the packing-room ; the 

 counting-house of the factory being to the east of the 

 packing-room. At the rear of the packing-room and 

 counting-room were two turning-rooms, and farther 

 to the rear adjoining Factory Lane on the ground 

 floor was also the drying-room. The painters worked 

 in a chamber approached by a staircase to the 

 eastward of the counting-room. Over the east 

 turning-room was a chamber for finishing the turners' 

 work. There was a chamber approached from the 

 east kiln in which the ware was tested as to its shape. 

 Over this was an attic in which women were em- 

 ployed painting the blue and white ware. The clay 

 was made in the factory premises now known as 

 Mr. W. T. Ball's Auction Mart, from whence it was 

 taken to Gunton Ravine (where there is to this day a 

 constant flow of the purest water, discharging many 

 gallons per minute) and there ground by a large mill.* 



During the latter years of the firm's existence 

 its affairs do not appear to have been so pros- 

 perous nor the quality of its production so good 

 as in the earlier period, and as the new century 

 opened several causes combined to bring its 

 operations to a close. Most of the partners 

 were getting old and had no longer the energy 

 to undertake a competitive struggle with other 

 makers of china. The natural advantages 

 possessed by the Staffordshire potters, the near- 

 ness of coal and of other materials, and the 

 cheapness of transport to the large centres of 

 consumption, enabled them to undersell the 

 Lowestoft makers. About this time, moreover,, 

 the failure of their London agents involved the 

 firm in serious loss, whilst a quantity of china to 

 the value of several thousand pounds is stated to- 





6 Chaffers, op. cit. 804-7. 

 6 Ibid. 810. 



2 7 8 



