A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



Dr. Plot, writing in 1686, says : 'The greatest pottery they have in 

 this county is carried on at Burslem, . . . where for making their several 

 sorts of pots they have as many different sorts of clay, which they dig round 

 about the towne . . . the best being found nearest the coale.' 9S 



One of the chief articles made at Burslem was the long cylindrical 

 butter-pot, made of coarse material and unglazed, which one may regard as 

 the link between the industrial and the agricultural workers of Staffordshire, 

 and symbolical of the dependence of the one upon the other. 



Dr. Plot mentions this butter-pot incidentally in his description of the 

 dairy industry in the limestone district and on the banks of the Dove, 



from which limestone hills and rich pastures and meadow the great Dairies are main- 

 tained in this part of Staffordshire, that supply Uttoxeter Market with such vast quantities- 

 of good butter and cheese that the cheesemongers of London have thought it worth their 

 while to set up a Factorage here for these commodities. . . The butter they buy by the 

 Pot of a long and cylindrical form made at Burslem in this County of a certain size. 94 



The main feature of the industrial revolution in England at the end of 

 the eighteenth century was the widespread change from a system of domestic 

 industry to one in which large numbers of wage-earners worked in large 

 factories belonging to capitalist landowners, a change which brought with it 

 a vast increase in the population of this country and a redistribution of popu- 

 lation. It was made possible by the discovery and working of the great 

 coalfields of northern and midland England, accompanied by a succession of 

 important mechanical inventions, and completed by the application of steam 

 to machinery as a motive power, in place of water, which had been used in 

 the new factories that sprang up all over the country in the latter part of the 

 eighteenth century. In 1750 Staffordshire was still one of the thinly 

 populated counties, though since 1700 it had probably increased its population 

 by 30 per cent. 95 Toynbee estimated its population in 1750 as 140 to the 

 square mile compared with 862 in 1881. The inventions we are accustomed 

 to connect most nearly with the industrial revolution are those associated 

 with the textile industries ; these only indirectly affected Staffordshire by 

 increasing the demand for coal and also for machinery, both needed in 

 increasing quantities by the growth of the factory system made possible by 

 these inventions. There were new cotton factories started at the end of the 

 eighteenth century on the banks of the Dove and Trent, at Fazeley, Tarn- 

 worth, Rocester, Tutbury, and Burton. 96 But it was the inventions in con- 

 nexion with the mining and iron industries that made the industrial expansion 

 of Staffordshire possible at this date, and especially the introduction of the 

 new steam-engine of Watt and Boulton, first used at the engineering works- 

 at Soho, whence so much of the machinery of the factories was supplied. 

 For though the coal had always been there, in Staffordshire, the mines had 

 only been worked to a very slight extent ; hence neither the coal nor the iron 

 industry could make much progress. The new engine was used not only to 

 pump water out of the mines, but also to sink shafts to bring the coal up from 

 the pits. 



93 Rob. Plot, The Nat. Hist, of Staff. (1686), 122. 



94 Ibid. 108-9. An Act f '66 1 regulated the size of this butter-pot ; it was to hold 14 Ib. of butter 

 and to be made of material hard enough not to imbibe moisture ; it was, moreover, to be 14 Jin. high and. 

 6 A in. in diameter. 



B Toynbee, Indwtrlal Revolution, 34-5. * Pitt, Agrlc. Surf. (1796), 171. 



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