A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



that the Sunderland or Garrison Pottery was 

 founded by J. Phillips but Mr. Dixon, who as 

 a later partner in the firm had exceptional oppor- 

 tunities of knowing the truth, affirms that his 

 grandfather was the founder. Chaffers, whose 

 statements about Sunderland pottery are open 

 to question, makes confusion worse confounded 

 by writing of two potteries, one the Garrison 

 and the other the Sunderland, whereas the 

 Garrison was only the workmen's name for 

 the Sunderland pottery. 



In addition to these well-known potteries there 

 were a number of smaller firms, whose aggregate 

 output reached a considerable total. A pottery 

 was begun at Seaham by Captain Plowright in 

 1 836, but he worked it for only a few years; then 

 it was taken in hand by the workmen as a co- 

 operative enterprise, but quickly abandoned ; 

 again reopened by R. C. Wilson it was finally 

 closed in 1852. At one time it manufactured a 

 willow pattern in blue of exceptional excellence. 



Of all these numerous and flourishing potteries 

 two only remain : Ball Brothers, the Deptford 

 Pottery, founded in 1857, wmcn still manufac- 

 tures some brown ware, but is principally 

 employed as a factory, doing considerable trade 

 in German ware ; and Messrs. Snowdon & Co., 

 founded in 1 840 by Thomas Rickaby at Sheepfolds. 



It is possible that Francis Place, the celebrated 

 painter and potter, may have carried out some of 

 his pottery experiments at Dinsdale, a few miles 

 from Darlington. A few years ago some fur- 

 naces were discovered there ; they were of brick 



with iron gates, and were at first supposed 

 to be of Roman origin ; further investigation, 

 however, pointed to a much later date, late 

 seventeenth or early eighteenth century. As 

 Place lived at Dinsdale before he went to the 

 Manor House at York, where he had furnaces 

 built and pursued many interesting experiments 

 in the manufacture of pottery, the Dinsdale kilns 

 may have been used by him. 14 At one time a con- ', 

 siderable amount of pottery was manufactured at 

 Stockton-on-Tees ; Thomas Ainsworth had two 

 glost kilns and a bisque kiln ; he started in 1850 

 in partnership with his brother William; the firm 

 continued until 1901, the site being then bought 

 by Colonel Ropner for the enlargement of his 

 shipyards. William Smith had a pottery in the 

 same neighbourhood, but removed to Hartlepool 

 about 1896; he was unsuccessful and soon retired 

 from the business. But the better-known firm 

 of William Smith & Co., which started in 1826, 

 is on the Yorkshire side of the river, and still 

 continues. 



The Tyne or South Shields Pottery was estab- 

 lished in Waterloo Vale by Mr. Robertson in 

 1830. In 1841 the business was bought by 

 Mr. John Armstrong, who worked it success- 

 fully until 1871, when Isaac Fell and George 

 Young purchased it. They confined themselves 

 to manufacturing ordinary brown ware and 

 Sunderland ware ; if any Sunderland pottery was 

 manufactured it was small in quantity and fur- 

 nished no good specimens. The works were 

 closed in 1890. 



TEXTILE INDUSTRIES 



The textile industries belong entirely to the 

 south of the county, and date from the end of 

 the seventeenth century. Spinning and weaving 

 were carried on as a domestic industry from the 

 earliest times, but there is a complete absence of 

 reference to early textile industries in the county. 

 Darlington dyers are alluded to in Boldon Book, 

 and at the close of the thirteenth century 

 ' Madersgarthis,' the place where the dye was 

 grown, is mentioned as belonging to the Wai- 

 worth's. Dyeing would hardly be carried on to 

 any great extent unless cloth was manufactured 

 in the district, but all accounts of the trade seem 

 to have escaped record. Glovers figure frequently 

 in the history of Darlington, but they were 

 makers of leather not cloth gloves. In the city 

 of Durham the woollen industry was sufficiently 

 developed to admit of an influential gild 

 of weavers. Fuller 1 makes no allusion to 

 Durham in enumerating the centres of early 

 woollen industry. In 1647 and ^55 silk 

 weavers occur in the register of St. Cuth- 

 foert's at Darlington, but these are isolated 

 1 T. Fuller, Ch. Hist. (ed. 1665), iii, 112. 



examples, and left no mark on the industrial 

 history of the town. It is true that as early 

 as 1531 the flax cultivated to a considerable 

 extent in the neighbourhood of Houghton-le- 

 Spring was spun in the district, for a note is 

 added to the value of the tithes as given in the 

 parish books, ' We have a bundle of lyne or flax 

 mostly spun by the women, dame Hakford the 

 smith's wife of Newbotill and others.' 3 Gates- 

 head, too, had a reputation for its woollen and 

 linen goods, 3 but these are exceptions. 



The county of Durham is especially exempted 

 from the provisions of the Act of 1557-8, that 

 cloth-making should not be carried on outside 

 corporate towns or market towns where the 

 manufacture had been carried on for the last ten 

 years, 4 which seems to point to the fact that 

 the woollen industry was either non-existent or 



14 1 am indebted to Mr. J. P. Gibson of Hexham 

 for this interesting suggestion. 



* ' Rec. of Houghton-le-Spring,' by R. W. Ramsay 

 in Engl. Hist. Rev. Oct. 1905. 



3 ' Old Gateshead,' by J. Clephan, Arch. Ael viii, 

 228. '4 & 5 Phil, and Mary, cap. 5, sec. 22-6. 



