A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



transmit the hot air to the superimposed tiles 

 and earthenware. The hearths were charged 

 through arched openings at their ends with 

 charcoal fuel. The ware manufactured appears 

 from the fragments to have been simple types of 

 domestic vessels, unglazed or with a slight yellow 

 glaze, the only ornamentation as a rule being 

 nail marks on the handles. 



A considerable manufacture of earthenware 

 appears to have existed at Graffham in the 

 fourteenth century, as we are told in 1341 18 

 that the vicar has ' a composition (commoditatem) 

 from the men who made clay pots (alia lutea) 

 which is worth I2d.' Two potters occur in 

 the poll tax of 1380 at Lindfield, 19 and a 

 ' Pottereslane ' is mentioned in 1403 at Hart- 

 ing, 20 while about the same date Brede appears 

 to have been a centre of the industry, John 

 Harry, potter, being one of the leading in- 

 habitants and an owner of lands which he 

 granted in 1404 to John Clerk, potter. 21 



Another branch of the mediaeval potter's art 

 was the manufacture of tiles. It is generally 

 held that the decorative encaustic tiles used in 

 monastic houses were usually made in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood and often designed by 

 the monks themselves, and although Sussex 

 cannot boast of any tiles to rival those of 

 Chertsey Abbey in Surrey, some of the specimens 

 found in the county, and especially those from 

 the sites of Dureford Abbey and Lewes Priory, 

 show considerable artistic merit. A kiln at 

 Hastings was evidently used for the manufacture 

 of encaustic tiles during the thirteenth century, 22 

 but no other site of this branch of the industry 

 is known. Plain roofing tiles, however, were 

 made at Mayfield during the fifteenth century, 

 the earliest reference, apparently, being in 1456, 

 when there were 500 tiles left over from the 

 previous year, and another 11,000 were made, 

 of which 9,000 were used upon the estate for 

 repairs ; the expenses of making these tiles' 

 included 2s. 6d. for the cutting, preparation, and 

 carriage of underwood. 23 Two years later no 

 tiles were made, 24 and- in 1461 the kiln (thorale) 

 brought in no profits, as all the tiles made had 

 been used on the estate. 28 In 1465 as many as 

 17,000 tiles were made at a cost of 44*. 4^., 

 the charge for the actual making being at the 

 rate of 2s. the thousand, in addition to which 

 there were payments for fuel, for digging clay 

 and sand, and for filling the seven kilns (putei) ; 

 of these tiles 13,000 were sold for 52J. 26 The tiles 

 were apparently of two kinds, flat and ' concave,' 

 the latter being made in comparatively small 



18 Inf. Nonarum (Rec. Com.), 361. 



19 Lay Subs. J- 9 -. 



*> Ct. R. (P.R.O.), bdle. 126, No. 1870. 

 11 Ibid. bdle. 206, No. 59. 

 " Suss. Arch. Coll. xi, 230. 

 13 Lambeth Ct. R. 1302. 



"Ibid. 1305. 



84 Ibid. 1303. 

 26 Ibid. 1306. 



numbers, 16,500 of the flat tiles being used in 

 one instance against only 50 of the concave. 27 

 Another seat of the industry was at Battle, 

 where the abbot in 1521 granted John Trewe 

 a ten years' lease of a tile kiln, with licence to 

 dig clay and gravel. 28 This kiln was evidently 

 still working in 1535, as the Valor mentions 

 ' 265. 8d. for rent of a building in Batell called a 

 Tyle-house.' 29 The more recent history of tile 

 making in Sussex is so closely connected with 

 the brick industry that the two may best be 

 treated together. 



A remarkable instance of the use of terra-cotta 

 mouldings of great artistic merit at Laughton 

 Place in 1534' must not be left unnoticed, though 

 for some reason this admirable example was not 

 followed elsewhere in the county, and terra-cotta 

 did not become an article of industrial importance 

 until the nineteenth century. 



The history of the potter's art in this county 

 takes a fresh start in the eighteenth century with 

 the appearance of a definite type of Sussex ware. 

 This, which much resembles that made at 

 Wrotham in Kent, 



is of two main descriptions ; a dark rich brown coloured 

 pottery, mottled and streaked with a darker tint, called 

 ' tortoiseshell ' ware ; and a highly glazed rich burnt- 

 sienna coloured ware, with decorations in yellow clay 

 artistically impressed into the body in patterns of 

 great delicacy. 31 



The dark speckling of the first-mentioned kind is 

 due to the presence of iron-oxide, and is parti- 

 cularly characteristic of the pottery from the east 

 of the county at Iden and Rye. The white or 

 yellowish ornamentation was of soft pipe-clay, 

 which was at first applied with a quill, but in the 

 later and more finished examples the design was 

 stamped or incised upon the body of the ware 

 and the incisions filled with the pipe-clay. A 

 third method, employed as being more durable 

 and less liable to chip, was to use the pipe-clay in 

 a more liquid form, painting it on with a brush. 32 

 The earliest known example of this ware is said 

 to be a small two-handled mug from Wadhurst 

 with raised slip-decorations and the date 1721," 

 but no other dated piece is known earlier than 

 1774, to which year belongs an elaborately orna- 

 mented vase believed to have come from the 

 Dicker potteries. 84 The most important of the 

 Sussex potteries were those at Chailey. Here 

 was made a punch bowl by Robert Bustow in 

 1791, and it is probably to the same hand that 

 we owe the similar but finer example now in 



87 Ibid. 695. 



88 Thorpe, Cat. Battle Abbey Chart. 136. 



89 Valor Eccl. (Rec. Com.), iii, 346. 



30 Suss. Arch, vii, 69-72. 



31 Reliquary, Jan. 1903. 



, 3J Susi. Arch. Coll. xlvi, 28-9. M Ibid. 30. 



34 Ibid. 30, 59. A 'crock kiln ' and a brick kiln 

 at the Dicker, belonging to William Cuckney, were 

 sold in July, 1779 (Suss. Weekly Advertiser). 



