44 
KILNHURST POTTERY. 
A place which one would naturally say took its name from pot- 
works, Kilnhurst is situated mid-way between Doncaster and 
Sheffield, nine miles from each town. It is in the parish of Raw- 
marsh on the extreme boundary line, and adjoins the collier) 7 
village from which it takes its name. The works were first 
instituted in the year 1746, and the manufacture of earthenware 
has continued uninterruptedly to the present time. It can be 
claimed therefore, that it is the oldest established pottery business 
in Yorkshire. The works were started soon after the Act for the 
navigation of the river Don was obtained. They were erected on 
the estate of the Shore family, and held at the beginning of the 
19th century by a potter named Hawley, who had a pottery at 
Rawmarsh. 
From him it passed into the hands of George Green (one of the 
family of the Greens at Leeds) by whom on the 25th of April, 1832, 
it was purchased by Messrs. Brameld and Co. (subject to Mr. 
Shore, the owner, accepting them as tenants) at a valuation, Mr. 
Green to retain all the manufactured goods, copper plates, moulds, 
etc., and to reduce as much as convenient the stock of raw 
materials. 
In 1839 it passed into the hands of “ Twigg Brothers,' 5 who 
worked it conjointly with the Newhill Pottery after the death of 
their father, Joseph Twigg, who started the Newhili works in 1822. 
This Joseph Twigg was formerly employed as a working potter at 
the Rockingham Pottery, Swinton, before commencing for himself. 
His three sons, Joseph, John, and Benjamin, constituted the firm 
of Twigg Brothers. The two eldest, Joseph and John, were 
potters by trade, and, like their father, were employed at the 
“ Rockingham Works.” The youngest, Benjamin, was a joiner 
by trade. 
The firm of “ Twigg Brothers ” continued until the year 1852, 
when Benjamin Twigg died. Joseph Twigg, the eldest brother 
having died previously, John Twigg thus became sole proprietor 
of the Kilnhurst Pottery, and remained so up to the date of his 
death on June 22nd, 1877. He was born on December 1st, 1801. 
John Twigg had five sons, but with the exception of the youngest, 
Daniel, they all pre-deceased him, and the business was carried on 
by the said Daniel Twigg and under his own name to March 1884, 
when it was purchased by William Simpson Hepworth and his 
