A HISTORY OF SURREY 



mostly found in provinces under English 

 domination, the art may not have been im- 

 pKjrted there from England.' 



It was the opinion also of Mr. Henry Shaw 

 that the Chertsey examples were of English 

 workmanship. These tiles range in date 

 probably from about the year 1250 to the 

 beginning of the fourteenth century. The 

 designs are of great variety, and in some cases 

 show considerable fertility of invention, and 

 in almost all, great artistic excellence. In 

 the most simple, the design of a floral or con- 

 ventional ornament is completed in each sepa- 

 rate tile. In the most elaborate, four or more 

 tiles had to be placed together diamond-wise 

 to perfect the arrangement. Sometimes 

 small tiles of different shapes and colours were 

 worked together in the manner of a mosaic 

 work. In the larger tiles the design was 

 effected by inlaying clay of a different colour 

 to the ground. Scenes in which one or more 

 figures appear are represented on many of the 

 tiles, and Mr. Mainwaring Shurlock in his 

 work on the subject believes with good reason 

 that the incidents of two at least of the me- 

 dieval romances, those of Tristram and Rich- 

 ard Coeur de Lion, are illustrated.^ 



So much has been written on the sub- 

 ject of the Chertsey tiles that we must con- 

 fine ourselves here to this brief general de- 

 scription of their nature borrowed from the 

 accounts of the various writers. Before 

 passing on to the more modern development 

 of the potter's art in the county, it may be 

 mentioned that the recent excavations at 

 Waverley Abbey have shown that encaustic 

 tiles were employed here also to decorate the 

 monastic buildings. These however differ 

 much from the Chertsey examples and are 

 inferior to them in artistic execution. 



Between the era of the monastic tile- 

 makers and the beginning of the Lambeth 

 delft potteries there is a wide gap in the his- 

 tory of the manufacture of Surrey earthen- 

 ware, which the few facts at present known 

 to us will not enable us to bridge in any 

 adequate manner. The pitcher now in the 

 British Museum found near Earlswood Com- 

 mon, Redhill, is probably the earliest piece 

 bearing any evidence of date that we possess 

 in England of our medieval pottery. The 

 figures on this pitcher are of applied clay and 

 represent a hunting scene, but are too roughly 

 modelled to enable us to fix the date with 

 any precision. They are likely however to 



'■ Solon in the Connoisseur, loc. cit. 



' Mainviraring Shurlock, M.R.C.S., Tiles from 

 CherUey Abbey (London, 1885) ; see also Sarr 

 Arch. Coll. vii. 288-94. 



282 



be not later than the end of the twelfth or 

 beginning or the thirteenth century. The 

 body is of coarse red clay and lead glaze of a 

 pale greenish-yellow tone. In technique this 

 pitcher is pronounced to be equal to any of 

 the productions of the thirteenth, fourteenth 

 or fifteenth centuries. But without any 

 evidence of the contemporary existence of a 

 pottery in this place we cannot claim from 

 the site of its discovery a Surrey origin for 

 this piece.' Fortunately we can have no such 

 doubt in the case of the fragments of medieval 

 pottery discovered in 1863 on Limpsfield 

 Common. Here not only these fragments 

 but the actual remains of a kiln were found. 

 The kiln is described as being of rough stones 

 laid without mortar and much like an oven 

 in shape. The opening was i foot in width 

 by 2 ft. 6 in. in height, the whole being 

 about 3 feet in diameter. The pottery dis- 

 covered was mostly of a grey and coarse 

 material varying apparently in degree of 

 quality and ornamentation in the three dif- 

 ferent heaps unearthed. The fragments 

 consisted principally of the handles and rims 

 of vessels of a very large size. The clay on 

 the common, although coarse and inferior, 

 may possibly have been used in this manu- 

 facture, but in all probability it was the 

 abundance of wood in the neighbourhood that 

 led to its selection as a site for pottery works. 

 There is also some small documentary evidence 

 of the existence of the Limpsfield potteries. 

 In an extent of the manor of Limpsfield 

 made for the abbot of Battle in 13 14, the 

 name of Geoffrey the potter appears as one 

 of the tenants. In a list the same year of the 

 nativi of Prinkham in Lingfield, which was 

 held of Limpsfield, there is a Roger the pot- 

 ter, and in 1423 a rental of Limpsfield men- 

 tions a cottage on Limpsfield chart called 

 ' Potters.' * 



Leland tells us that at Cuddington, where 

 Henry VIII. was then building Nonsuch 

 Palace, one Crompton of London had a close 

 in which was a vein of earth of which were 

 made moulds (i.e. crucibles) for goldsmiths 

 and casters of metal, and that a load of the 

 earth was sold for a crown or two crowns of 

 gold, ' the like not to be found in all Eng- 

 land.' ' This does not tell us that the cruci- 

 bles were actually made on the spot, but in 

 our own time, as we shall see later, the neigh- 

 bourhood has been the seat of several potteries. 

 Beyond this notice we know of nothing that 



3 R. L. Hobson in Arch. Joum. lix. 5. A 

 photograph of this vase is reproduced in Plate I, 

 ' Proc. Soc. Antiq. %tT. 2, iv. 358. 

 s Leland, I tin. vi. 65. 



