2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



It is not, however, until towards the close of the seventeenth century that 

 the manufacture of the finer kinds of earthenware appears to have been 

 carried on in Ireland. The various factories will be noted under the towns 

 in which they were situated. 



Belfast. 



The earliest mention at present known of a fine pottery manufactory in 

 Ireland refers to one established in Belfast towards the end of the seventeenth 

 century. It is alluded to by Dr. William Sacheverell in " A Voyage to 

 I-Coluinbkill in the year 1688," published in 1702. In this he states that 

 he left Liverpool on the 23rd of June, 1688, but, owing to a gale, the ship on 

 which he was a passenger had to put into Belfast Lough. While waiting 

 for the weather to moderate, he spent some days visiting the surrounding 

 country, including the town of Belfast. 



Speaking of the latter, he says : — " It is the second town in Ireland, well 

 built, full of people, and of great trade. The new pottery is a pretty curiosity 

 set up by Mr. Smith, the present sovereign and his predecessor, Captain 

 Leathes, a man of great ingenuity." 



Sacheverell here states that Mr. Smith was sovereign in 1688 ; but, 

 according to " The Town Book of Belfast," David Smith was sovereign from 

 Michaelmas, 1698, to Michaelmas, 1700, and died in 1705; while Captain 

 Eobert Leathes was sovereign from 1686 to 1690, and from 1696 to 1697, 

 and died about 1718, having been first mentioned as burgess in 1669. 



This pottery is also referred to by Dr. Thomas Molyneux in a manuscript 

 preserved in Trinity College, Dubliu, entitled " A Journey to the North in 

 August, 1708." Under the head of Belfast he says : — "Here we saw a very 

 good manufacture of earthenware, which comes nearest to Delft of any 

 made in Ireland, and really is not much short of it; it is very clean and 

 pretty, and universally used in the North, and, I think, not so much owing 

 to any peculiar happiness in the clay, but rather to the manner of beating 

 and mixing it up." 



This statement of Molyneux implies that there were other pottery 

 factories in Ireland at this period, but up to the present their localities have 

 not been ascertained. 



How long this Belfast pottery lasted, and exactly what kind of ware was 



made, are uncertain ; however, there was recently on loan in the National 



Museum, Dublin, a shoe of enamelled or tin-glazed earthenware, decorated in 



M 

 blue, and bearing on the sole, also in blue, the letters " H R " and " Belfast 



