A HISTORY OF SURREY 



seem to have been started at Lambeth. Some 

 of the chief facts that are known of the 

 history of these are given below, where the 

 more important factories are separately treated. 

 About 1 8 10 there were four stoneware 

 potteries in the parish belonging to Messrs. 

 A. Jones, Moss, Waters and Green, and a 

 pottery of red ware belonging to Mr. H. 

 Bingham.* In 1820 Mr. Jewett, quoting 

 Goddard,says there were six or seven potteries 

 in Lambeth working some sixteen small kilns. 

 The produce of each kiln was under twenty 

 pounds' worth of ware. The principal articles 

 turned out were bottles for blacking, ginger- 

 beer, porter, cider, spruce beer, ink, oil, and 

 pickles and a few chemical vessels. In 1 860, 

 says the same authority, there were about 

 seventy kilns, each turning out on an average 

 about fifty pounds' worth and consuming up- 

 wards of 20,000 tons of coal. In these days, 

 when there is a necessity for the existence of 

 a Smoke Abatement Society, it is interesting 

 to be told that the potters were by law re- 

 quired to burn this quantity without smoke, 

 and that ' after immense cost and labour this 

 difficulty may be called surmounted.' Twenty- 

 three thousand tons of clay were annually 

 used, giving employment to more than 800 

 persons. The returns of the Lambeth pot- 

 ters were then estimated at not less than 

 ;^i 40,000.* 



Of the potteries which at the present day 

 still make Lambeth important as a seat of the 

 earthenware industry the principal are the 

 world famous works of Messrs. Doulton and 

 the London pottery of Messrs. J. Stiff and 

 Sons, both being long established. A more 

 special account of these and of some of the 

 other chief factories which have existed at 

 Lambeth may fitly conclude this attempt to 

 describe the history of the industry in this 

 parish. The order in which the several 

 works are taken is as far as can be ascertained 

 that of the date of their establishment. 



High Street. — According to Mr. Jewett 

 the delft ware works here were carried on 

 from about 175010 1770 by a Mr. Griffiths.' 

 Professor Church quotes an advertisement in- 

 serted in 1776 by Griffiths & Morgan in 

 Felix Farley" i Bristol Journal for a stone kiln 

 burner, a top-ware lifter and an ' ingenious 

 painter.' It is dated from their pot house at 

 Lambeth and concludes with the words : 

 ' These men must understand their business 

 well, as the Company have indifferent hands 

 enough already.'* There is an incidental 



' Lysons, Environs of London (ed. 2), i. 229. 



* Jewett, op. cit. i. 136. 3 ibid. 136, 137. 



* Church, English Earthenware, 4 1 . 



286 



reference to this factory in the account given 

 in the Monthly Magazine of October 1797 or 

 the potter James Doe, who committed suicide 

 in September of that year by drowning in the 

 Sea Mill Docks near Bristol. Doe, it appears, 

 was born at Lambeth, and at the age of four- 

 teen or thereabouts was put as an apprentice 

 to Mr. Griffiths at the Delft Pottery, High 

 Street, in that parish. When out of his time 

 he continued working there painting in the 

 biscuit before it was glazed, until work be- 

 came slack. Afterwards he went into Staf- 

 fordshire and worked there imder different 

 masters for upwards of twenty years. He 

 left Staffordshire to journey from place to 

 place, and seems to have acquired some 

 notoriety as the wanderer of the trade. 



The London Pottery of Messrs. J. Stiff 

 ^ Sons. — This pottery is the oldest estab- 

 lished in the county and continues to en- 

 joy a high reputation for the quality of its 

 productions. It is stated to have been origin- 

 ally established on a small scale in 1750 on 

 part of the site of the old palace of the Bishops 

 of Hereford. Allen, writing in 1826 or 

 thereabouts, states that it then bore on its 

 front an earthenware ornament with the date 

 1750." In 1840 it passed into the hands of 

 Mr. James Stiff, and the business was after- 

 wards carried on under the style of the firm 

 of Messrs. J. Stiff & Sons. 



In 1840 the works consisted of two small 

 kilns only and covered rather less than quarter 

 of an acre. Since that time under the present 

 firm the business has greatly increased, and 

 about 1878 there were fourteen kilns, some 

 of them of large size. The works extended 

 over two acres of ground, and the pottery had 

 a large frontage on the Albert Embankment. 

 A private dock had been made to permit the 

 firm to carry out directly its extensive export 

 trade and to import with greater economy 

 the coal, clay, and other raw material con- 

 sumed in the factory. Mr. Jewett enumerates 

 four classes of pottery made at this time in 

 these works : Firstly, brown salt-glazed stone- 

 ware in which were made drain pipes, filters, 

 bottles, jars, chemical apparatus, and the like; 

 secondly, white stoneware, double-glazed 

 ware or Bristol ware. The glazing of this 

 class was not obtained by the use of salt but 

 by the application of a liquid glaze to the 

 exterior and interior of each article before it 

 was placed in the kiln. The colour generally 

 varied from a rich yellow ochre in the upper 

 part to a creamy white in the lower part. 

 The manufacture of this ware was introduced 

 into this pottery about the year i860 and had 



' Allen, History of Lambeth, 345. 



