The ceramic art of Great Britain from pre-historic times down to the present day, Volume 1 (of 2)

During the Romano-British period the fictile art was much practised in England, and not only was a large variety of wares produced, but an almost endless number of vessels were made. Potworks were established in many parts of the kingdom, some of which grew to very large dimensions, while others of a less important character and size still made wares of extremely good quality. The three principal potteries—at least so far as present researches have enabled us to judge—in England at this period were those on the Medway, in the Upchurch marshes, extending towards Sheerness, in Kent; the Durobrivian potteries on the river Nen, in Northamptonshire; and the Salopian potteries on the Severn, in Shropshire. Smaller pot works, however, being scattered over various parts of the kingdom.

With the well-known “Samian Ware,” the finest and most beautiful of the pottery of the Romans which is found in this country, I have, of course, nothing to do in my present work; for, although found so frequently and so abundantly in England, it was not manufactured here, and therefore does not come within its scope. I proceed, therefore, to speak of the various English seats of the manufacture.

Upchurch Ware.—The district wherein this pottery was made and is found so abundantly, is of five or six miles in length, and from one to two in breadth; and over the whole of this tract of country, at a distance of some few feet below the surface, a regular layer of remains of Roman fictile art occurs. To Mr. C. Roach Smith is due the greatest credit of bringing these under notice:—“There can be no doubt,” says Mr. Wright, “not only from the extent of ground covered by the potteries, but from the frequent occurrence of the sort of pottery made here, among Roman remains in Britain belonging to different periods, that these potteries were in full activity during the whole extent of the Roman period. The site of the kilns was moved as the clay was used up, and at the same time the refuse pottery was thrown on the ground behind them, so that, when at last abandoned, this extensive site presented a surface of ground covered almost entirely by a bed of refuse pottery.” Here, then, the Roman figuli exercised, more extensively than anywhere else in England their art, and continued its practice for a long series of years. In those days the ground would of course be firm and dry. Since then, as is usually the case in so long a number of years, the soil has accumulated to the thickness of about three feet—the inroads which the Medway is constantly making upon it forming the creeks, and continually disclosing the remains left by the potters.

The ware made at Upchurch must have been in considerable repute, for it is found in Roman localities in most parts of the kingdom. On Roman sites in France and Germany and in Flanders, &c., wares of a precisely similar kind are found, and show that it is probable they were simultaneously made at different places. The prevailing colour of the ware is a bluish or greyish black, with a smooth and rather shining surface. A good deal, however, is of a dark drab colour. The black colour has been produced by the process of “firing” in “smother kilns”—a process well known to potters. The forms of the vessels, as well as the sizes, vary to a surprising extent, but they are all remarkable for the gracefulness and elegance of their outline, and, in many instances, for the simplicity and effective character of the patterns with which they are decorated. The decorations consist chiefly of circles or semi-circles; lines, vertical or otherwise; bands, and numbers of raised dots arranged in a variety of ways. The clay used is fine, and the vessels are light and thin, and remarkably well “potted.”

The instruments used in the ornamentation of this pottery appear to have been of a very rude description, and were, as it seems, chiefly mere sticks, some sharpened to a point, and others with a transverse section cut into notches. The former were used in tracing the lines already described; the latter had the section formed into a square or rhomboid, the surface of which was cut into parallel lines crossing each other so as to form a dotted figure, and this was stamped on the surface of the pottery in various combinations and arrangements. Sometimes these dots are arranged so as to form bands;[5] and in others simply “patch” ornaments. Other vessels were covered with reticulation, the lines being simply scratched into the surface of the clay; and others have bands of serrated lines.

The forms of some of the vessels from the Upchurch works will be seen on Fig. 78, and a series of other characteristic examples are given on Figs. 79 to 95.

One example (Fig. 80) is ornamented with half-circles traced on the clay as with compasses, from which run downwards rows of incised lines. On Fig. 78 is an example of much the same character of ornamentation although different in form.

Figs. 81, 85, 86, 87, and 88 are of different form, and are ornamented with raised dots in bands and patches; while 83 and 84 are “engine turned.” They are of remarkably elegant form.

Figs. 91, 92, 93, and 95 are more bottle shaped—in fact, approaching somewhat to the form of the mediæval bellarmine. Many varieties of this general form have been found in the marshes and elsewhere. Fig. 89 is particularly simple and elegant in shape, as are also several shown in the groups on this and the preceding pages. Among these is an example of another variety of ornamentation common to the Upchurch ware. It is formed by diagonal intersecting lines, and in form is much the same as the ordinary kind of Roman cinerary urns. In the group, Fig. 94, are some examples of Upchurch and other wares.

No kilns have as yet been discovered in the Upchurch marshes, but doubtless further researches will yet bring them to light. Mr. Roach Smith, to whose incessant labours we owe the principal notices of these potteries, has discovered the remains of the extensive village of the potters, with traces of their habitations and of their graves, in the higher ground bordering on the marshes.

Castor Ware, or Durobrivian Ware, as it is variously called, is the production of the extensive Romano-British potteries on the river Nen, in Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire; near Castor and Chesterton, in those counties respectively. In this locality, as the names of Chesterton and Castor undeniably prove to have been the case, an important settlement of the Romans was made, and excavations have brought to light the remains of a considerable town, and in connection with it, of a settlement of potters with the remains of their works extending over a district many miles in extent.

The great interest attaching to this locality is in the fact that this was not the first, but the first well ascertained discovery of a Roman pot-manufactory in this kingdom, and that at this spot the first kilns of that period have been uncovered, and the processes adopted by the Roman figuli brought to light.

The situation of the potteries was well chosen for carrying on an extensive trade with distant parts of the kingdom, and from researches searches which were made, the late Mr. Artis, to whom the discovery is due, computed that probably two thousand people had been employed in the fabrication of fictile vessels. It is on the line of one of the most important of the Roman roads—the Ermyn street—and close to the navigable river Nen; and that the products of the manufactory were supplied to places throughout the kingdom is abundantly testified by the remains which are almost invariably found in course of excavations wherever Roman occupation is known. Mr. Artis unfortunately, although he published a fine folio volume of plates[6] of the more remarkable of the objects he discovered, never issued the descriptive and historical text which was intended to accompany it. The great bulk of the information he had gleaned he never committed to paper, and consequently it died with him. Mr. Artis, however, communicated some valuable particulars to Mr. C. Roach Smith, and these have been made public by him in the “Journal of the British Archæological Association”[7] and in the “Collectanea Antiqua.”[8] Mr. Artis in one of these says that during an examination of the pigments used by the Roman potters of Castor and its neighbourhood, he was “led to the conclusion that the blue and slate-coloured vessels met with here in such abundance were coloured by suffocating the fire of the kiln at the time when its contents had acquired a degree of heat sufficient to insure uniformity of colour. I had so firmly made up my mind on the process of manufacturing and firing this peculiar kind of earthenware, that I had denominated the kilns in which it had been fired “smother kilns.” The mode of manufacturing the bricks of which these kilns are made is worthy of notice. The clay was previously mixed with about one-third of rye in the chaff, which being consumed by the fire, left cavities in the room of the grains. This might have been intended to modify expansion and contraction, as well as to assist in the gradual distribution of the colouring vapour. The mouth of the furnace and the top of the kiln were no doubt stopped: thus we find every part of the kiln, from the inside wall to the mouth on the outside, and every part of the clay wrappers of the domes penetrated with the colouring exhalation.”

The researches further proved that the colour could not be attributed to any metallic oxide (although it must be confessed that in many instances the surface has a strongly developed metallic appearance) either in the clay itself or applied externally, and this conclusion is confirmed by the appearance of the clay wrappers of the dome of the kilns; and it may be added, the colour is so fugitive that it is expelled entirely, by submitting the pottery to an open fire. During the examination of the Upchurch pottery, Mr. Artis remarked that he thought a coarse kind of sedge had been used in the manufactory. His practical eye alone guided him to this conclusion, for he had never visited the site, and was quite unaware that below the strata of broken vessels, a layer of sedge peat is in several places visible. The same kind of arrangement probably obtained pretty generally with the Roman potters.

The kilns for firing the Castor ware, discovered by Mr. Artis, are among the most interesting of all the remains of Roman arts which have been brought to light. The kilns which were removed in the course of the investigations were “all constituted on the same principle: a circular hole was dug from three to four feet deep, and four in diameter, and walled round to the height of two feet. A furnace, one-third of the kiln in length, communicated with the side. In the centre of the circle so formed was an oval pedestal, the height of the sides, with the end pointing to the mouth of the furnace. Upon this pedestal and side walls the floor of the kiln rests. It was formed of perforated angular bricks, meeting at one point in the centre; the furnace was arched with bricks, moulded for the purpose; the side of the kiln was constructed with curved bricks set edgeways (see Fig. 100) in a thick slip (the same material made into a thin mortar) to the height of two feet. The process of packing the vessels and securing uniform heat in firing the ware was the same in the two different kinds of kilns—namely, that before described, called ‘smother kiln,’ and that for various other kinds of pottery. They were first carefully loose-packed with the articles to be fired, up to the height of the side walls. The circumference of the bulk was then gradually diminished, and finished in the shape of a dome. As this arrangement progressed, an attendant seems to have followed the packer, and thinly covered a layer of pots with coarse hay or grass. He then took some thin clay, the size of his hand, and laid it flat over the grass upon the vessels: he then placed more grass on the edge of the clay just laid on—then more clay—and so on until he had completed the circle. By this time the packer would have raised another tier of pots, the plasterer following as before, hanging the grass over the top edge of the last layer of plasters, until he had reached the top, in which a small aperture was left, and the clay nipped round the edge; another coating would then be laid on as before described. Directly after, gravel or loam was thrown up against the side wall where the clay wrappers were commenced—probably to secure the bricks and the clay coating. The kiln was then fired with wood.[9] In consequence of the care taken to place grass between the edges of the wrappers, they could be unpacked in the same size pieces as when laid on in a plastic state; and thus the danger in breaking the coat to obtain the contents of the kiln could be obviated. In the course of my excavations I discovered a curiously constructed furnace, of which I have never before or since met an example. Over it had been placed two circular vessels; the next above the furnace was a third less than the other, which would hold about eight gallons; the fire passed partly under both of them, the smoke escaping by a smoothly-plastered flue, from seven to eight inches wide. The vessels were suspended by the rims fitting into a circular groove or rabbet, formed for the purpose. They contained pottery, both perfect and fragmentary. It is probable they had covers, and I am inclined to think were used for glazing peculiar kinds of the immense quantities of ornamented ware made in this district. Its contiguity to one of the workshops in which the glaze (oxide of iron) and other pigments were found confirms this opinion.”

Fig. 102 is a kiln of a different construction. “In it, instead of modelling or moulding bricks for the kiln, the potters, after forming a tolerably round shaft, commenced plastering it three inches thick with clay, prepared for that purpose, leaving a flange twenty inches above the furnace floor to receive the floor of the kiln; a mode of construction unnoticed by me before in these kilns. In the centre was placed an oval pedestal, for the double purpose of dividing the fire and of giving support to the centre of the floor. To attach the pedestal to the back of the kiln, and to shut out the cold air which would lodge in the angle formed by the pedestal being so placed, the angle was filled with coarse materials, which were stopped up with clay, so as to draw the flame more towards the centre, and induce a union with the flame and heat entering the front part of the kiln.” The more usual plan with the potters of this district in packing their kilns was, when the contents had reached the surface of the earth, to form a dome by covering the urns and vases lightly with dry grass, sedge, or the like, and plastering it over with patches of prepared clay, divided by strewing a small quantity of hay between each portion to facilitate removal. In place of this usual process, in this kiln bricks were used of an oblong shape, four inches by two and a half inches, wedge-shaped at one end, with a sufficient curve to traverse the circumference when set edgeways, with the wedge ends lapped over each other. The sides would be thus raised for three or four courses or more, as circumstances might require, and probably be afterwards backed up with loose earth. These bricks were modelled and kneaded with chaff and grain.”[10] The numbers indicate as follows:—1, front of the pedestal supporting the floor of the kiln; 2 2, slopes, probably intended to produce a more uniform heat; 3 3, part of the kiln floor; 4, bricks, before used; 5, area of the furnace; 6, mouth of furnace; 7, wall of kiln; 8, top of the pedestal. The mouth of the furnace, No. 6, was arched over.

The ware of the Durobrivian potteries was superior both in style of art and in form and material to that of Upchurch, and has an especial interest over it in the fact that it bears figures and various ornaments in relief, in the same manner as on the Samian ware. The ornament, especially the scrolls, &c., were laid on “in slip.” The vessel, after having been thrown on the wheel, would be allowed to become somewhat firm, but only sufficiently so for the purpose of the lathe. In the indented ware, the indenting would have to be performed with the vessel in as pliable a state as it could be taken from the lathe. A thick slip of the same body would then be procured, and the ornamentation would proceed.

“The vessels—on which are displayed a variety of hunting subjects, representations of fishes, scrolls, and human figures—were all glazed after the figures were laid on; where, however, the decorations are white, the vessels were glazed before the ornaments were added. Ornamenting with figures of animals was effected by means of sharp and blunt skewer instruments and a slip of suitable consistency. These instruments seem to have been of two kinds—one thick enough to carry sufficient slip for the nose, neck, body, and front thigh; the other of a more delicate kind, for a thinner slip, for the tongue, lower jaws, eye, fore and hind legs, and tail. There seems to have been no retouching, after the slip trailed from the instrument. Field sports seem to have been favourite subjects with our Romano-British artists. The representations of deer and hare hunts are good and spirited; the courage and energy of the hounds, and the distress of the hunted animals are given with great skill and fidelity, especially when the simple and off-handed process by which they must have been executed is taken into consideration.”[11]

Two vessels with these hunting subjects are given in Figs. 108 and 110; and other designs of this character, exhibiting stag and hare hunts, are shown on Figs. 103 to 109.

Gladiatorial combats are also frequent subjects for representation on the Castor vases. One of these is given on Fig. 111, which represents one side of the celebrated “Colchester vase;” Fig. 103 being the design of another of its sides. The next engraving (Fig. 112) shows the chariot race in the Roman racecourse or stadium—the quadriga being well, although rudely, fashioned, and the position both of the horses and charioteer boldly conceived. Mythological subjects were also common. One of these, of the indented form, restored from fragments, is given in the accompanying engraving (Fig. 113).

Another and equally pleasing variety of ornamentation, and one peculiar, it may be said, to the Durobrivian potteries, is that whereon the pattern consists of scrolls and flowers in white slip on the dark bluish black ground. The effect of these simple patterns, which are generally graceful and always elegantly formed, is remarkably pleasing. Examples of these are given on Figs. 114 to 124, which will serve to show the general style of this kind of decoration. Figs. 125 to 128 are admirable examples of the indented form of vessel. Many other shapes and varieties of Castor ware might be adduced, but the illustrations I have given will be sufficient to give a clear insight into their general characteristics.

One of the most curious and interesting urns of this ware (Fig. 129) was dug up in Leicester in 1869, and is preserved in the museum of that town. It is of a fine rich deep colour, with the pattern in white slip, and has borne an inscription, also in slip, the only letters of which now remaining are M E i I VI. In the same museum, among other varieties of Romano-British ware, are the beautiful vessels shown on Figs. 132, 133, 134. There are also fragments of ware which seem to point at pottery which I believe, at one period of Roman occupation, existed in the neighbourhood of Leicester.

Potters’ kilns of the Romano-British period have been found in other places, but those at Castor are the most perfect, and in every way the best. Indeed, the others may be said, more appropriately perhaps, to be indications of kilns rather than the kilns themselves. A curious record of the discovery of a kiln in London, at the north-west of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in 1677, by John Conyers, a collector of antiquities, is preserved in the British Museum,[12] and has been published by Mr. Roach Smith,[13] the eminent archæologist, to whom the antiquarian world is indebted for so much valuable information concerning Roman antiquities. This very curious and valuable record is as follows, in the handwriting of Conyers, and the accompanying engraving is carefully reduced (see Fig. 138) from Conyers’ own drawing:—

“This kill was full of the coarser[14] sorts of potts or cullings,[15] so that few were saved whole, viz., lamps, bottles, urnes, dishes.

“The forme of a kill in which the olde Romans’ lamps, urnes, and other earthen pottes and vessels was burnt, and some left in the kill; and that within a unstired, loamy ground about 26 foot deep near about the place where the Market House stood in Oliver’s tyme, the discovery made anno 1677 at the digging the foundacion of the north east part of St. Paull’s, London, among gravel pitts and loam pitts, where the ground had been at tymes raised over it 3 or 4 tymes, and so many 8 foote storyes or depths of coffins lay over the loamy kill, the lowest coffins made of chalk; and this supposed to be before or about Domitian the emperor’s tyme.

“Of these (kilns) 4 severall had been made in the sandy loam on the ground in the fashion of a cross foundacion and only this height standing, viz. 5 foot from topp to bottom and better; and as many feet in breadth; and had no other matter for its form and building but the outward loame as it naturally lays, crusted hardish by the heat burning the loame redd like brick. The floor in the middle supported by and cut out of loame, and helped with old-fashioned Roman tyles shards, but very few, and such as I have seen used for repositorys for urns in the fashion of like ovens, and they plastered within with a reddish mortar or tarris; but here was no mortar, but only the sandy loam for cement:

“observed and thus described

“by Joⁿ Conyers, Apothecary.”

In accordance with the above description, the sketch by Conyers shows also the four kilns placed crosswise, leaving ample space in the centre for the workmen. The vessels found in the kiln are thus described by Conyers, who also made sketches of them, which are preserved along with his MS., and have been engraved in the “Collectanea Antiqua:”—

“1. 1 quart earthen dish.—2. 2 gallons, whitish.—3. 4 quart bason, whitish.—4. 8 ounce censer or lamp, whitish earth.—5. 2 quart colinder, whitish.—6. 2 pint lipp waterpott.—7. Lamp, or censer, reddish.—8. 3 pint urne.—9. 3 quarts urne, whitish.—10. 2 ounce lamp, gilded with electrum.—11. 2 quart, white.—12. 1 pint bottle.—13. 2 pint black urne.—14. 1 pint urne, black.—15. 6 ounce urne.—16. 3 quart urne, blewish.—17. Half pint urne, electrum Britan.—18. 1 pint dish, blewish.—19. 1 ounce urne, whitish.—20. 3 ounce urne, cinamon collour.—All these a sort of earth almost like crucibles, except the black, will endure the fire like brass, as in this day in use about Poland.”

From the drawings which accompany these descriptions, the Romano-British origin of the examples found actually in the kiln is placed beyond doubt. Most of them are precisely the same types as hundreds of fragments which have been found all over London, and are the common table and culinary ware of the period. Some bear a very striking resemblance to the vessels from the Upchurch pottery. Amongst them is a mortarium. Most of the vessels are plain, but some are ornamented with rows of dots, &c., and others with a reticulated pattern. The forms are elegant and simple.

In another part of his MS. Conyers describes other kinds of pottery found during the excavations. “Now these pottsherds,” he writes, “are some glass and some potts like broken urns, which were curiously laid on the outside with like thorne pricks of rose trees and in the manner of raised work: this upon potts of murry collour, and here and there grey houndes and stags and hares all in raised work: other of these cinamon collour urne fashion and were as gilded with gold but vaded: some of strange fashioned juggs the sides bent in so as to be six squares, and these raised work upon them and curiously pinched as curious raisers of paist may imitate: some like black earth for pudding panns; one the outside indented and crossed quincunx fashion. Now many of these potts of the finer kind are lite and thinn and these workes raised or indented were instead of collours; yet I find they had some odd collours, not blew, in those tymes, and a way of glazing different to what now; and here takes notice that the redd earth before mencioned bore away the belle.”

The manuscript contains also the following note:—

“The labourers toulde me of some remains of other such kinds of small kills that was found up and down nere the place of the other pott kills, and these had a funnel to convey smoke which might serve for glass furnaces, for though not anny potts with glass in it whole in the furnaces was there found, yet broken crucibles or tests for melting of glass, together with boltered glass such as is to be seen remaining at glass houses amongst the broken glass, which was glass spoyled in the making, was there found; but not plenty, and especially coloured and prepared for jewel-like ornament, but mostly such as for cruetts or glasses with a lipp to drop withall, and that a greenish light blew collour; and of any sort of glass there was but little.”

Remains of potteries of this period have also been discovered in Norfolk (between Brixton and Brampton); at Botham in Lincolnshire; in Somersetshire; at Worcester; at Marlborough; at Sibson; at various places in Yorkshire; in Shropshire; in Oxfordshire; in the New Forest, Hampshire; at Colchester, in Essex; at Wilderspool, near Warrington; and in many other parts of the kingdom. Of some of these I shall now proceed briefly to speak.

To the Shropshire potteries—those of the clays of the Severn Valley, probably at Brosely,—a vast number of varieties of vessels are to be traced; and it is, as I shall show in a later chapter, interesting to know that the same bed of clay which at the present day produces articles of daily use, produced fifteen hundred years ago the vessels for the table, &c., of the inhabitants of the then great neighbouring city of Uriconium. In the excavations which have been undertaken on the site of this ruined city immense quantities of fragments of pottery have been found, and, with the exception of the Samian ware and the Durobrivian ware, it is not too much, perhaps, to say that the whole, or nearly so, has been made in the Severn Valley. Of these wares, two sorts especially are found in considerable abundance; the one white, the other of a rather light red colour. The white, which is made of what is commonly called Brosely clay, and is rather coarse in texture, consists chiefly of rather handsomely shaped jugs or bellarmine-shaped vessels, of different sizes, the general shape of which somewhat resembles Fig. 96; of Mortaria; and of bowls of different shapes and sizes, which are often painted with stripes of red and yellow. The other variety, the red Romano-Salopian ware, is also made from one of the clays of the Severn Valley, but is of finer texture, and consists principally of jugs not dissimilar to those in the white ware, except in a very different form of mouth; and of bowl-shaped colanders.[16]

Two examples of Romano-Salopian ware—the first of the white, and the second of the red variety—are given on Fig. 139, and on Fig. 140 is represented a group of vessels of this make, from the cemetery at Uriconium.

The potteries of the New Forest in Hampshire, for a lucid account of which we are indebted to Mr. Wise,[17] were of great extent, and, as is proved by the researches which have been made on their sites, of considerable importance. The potteries were noticed in 1853 by the Rev. J. P. Bartlett,[18] who prepared an account of his researches for the Society of Antiquaries, and since that period both that gentleman and Mr. Wise have with great success continued their explorations. The names of the localities where these ancient potteries exist—Crockle (crock kiln or crock hill) and Panshard—are highly suggestive. During the excavations kilns were found in a perfect state. The kiln at Crockle was circular, and measured six yards in circumference, its shape being well defined by small hand-formed masses of red brick-earth. The floor, about two feet below the natural surface of the ground, was paved with a layer of sand-stones, some of them cut into a circular shape so as to fit the kiln, the upper surfaces being tooled, whilst the under remained in their original state. At the potteries at Audenwood no kilns were discovered; but at Sloden, where the works cover several acres, “two large mounds marking the sites of kilns” are remaining, along with the sites of potters’ huts, &c. At Island Thorn more kilns and innumerable fragments of vessels of various kinds were discovered. In Pitts Enclosure, besides mounds opened by Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Wise discovered in one mound five kilns, ranged in a semicircle, and paved with irregular masses of sand-stone. They were close together, separated only by mounds of the natural soil. Besides fragments of various vessels, “two distinct heaps of white and fawn-coloured clay and red earth, placed ready for mixing, and a third of the two worked together, fit for the immediate use of the potter,” were found with these kilns.

Some of the more usual and more striking forms of the vessels from New Forest potteries are grouped together on Figs. 141 to 151. A selection of patterns from the wares are grouped on Figs. 152 to 157, some of which will be seen to bear a close resemblance to those of the Castor ware.