Why are the Borderware Potteries so important?

For over 600 years potters working on the Hampshire/Surrey borders in the Blackwater Valley have been major suppliers to the London market. In Tudor and Stuart times they were the dominant suppliers of all types of pottery, both white and redwares. Even from the start of the 18th century when the Blackwater Valley's whiteware was replaced by Staffordshire production using china clay, and London's own potteries were producing both 'deftware' and white salt-glazed ware, our local Borderware potteries continued to supply most of London's redwares.

Knowledge of this major local industry had been largely lost to the collective memory until a tree was blown down in the grounds of Farnborough Hill school in 1967, revealing sherds of pottery. An observant member of the public took the sherds to Guildford Muniment Room. Subsequent excavations over several years discovered a major production site dating from the middle to late 1500s. The considerable quantities of pottery from these excavations have never been fully catalogued and analysed, but this is now being rectified, and will be the subject of a new book to be published by the Museum of London in the summer of 2007.

Just as the archaeological evidence has long awaited full investigation, so there has been no comprehensive documentary research into the lives of the potters, and the commercial systems used to enable their products to reach their markets. The initial objective of the research on this website was to support the author of the forthcoming book Jacqui Pearce, specialist in medieval and later pottery, at the Museum of London. Because her book will concentrate on the archaeology from the last quarter of the 16th century, the documentary research initially focussed on the potters likely to have been working in this 25-year period.

Jacqui Pearce's previous book Border Wares, Museum of London, 1992 described the Museum's considerable collection obtained from excavations in London. Until then the production from the Blackwater Valley potteries had gone under various names such as Farnham Ware, Surrey Ware, and Tudor Green. The generic term Borderware used on this website covers all pottery production in the Blackwater Valley, whether whiteware or redware, whatever the products, from as early as 1250 to the closure of the last pottery in Cove in 1910.

The potteries in the Blackwater Valley existed because of the resources of the local area: the special clays, particularly from Farnham Park, and the free availability from the commons of the materials to fire the kilns. Before the 13th century there were Roman potteries in this immediate area, for instance at Alice Holt. Important reference points through the centuries are the payment in 1391 of two day's wages to a carter to transport 229 pots from Farnborough for the use of the royal baths in Windsor, Julius Ceasar's letter of 1593 asking that clay digging should resume so that the Inns of Court might continue to be supplied with the drinking cups to the purchase in 1900 of the Tower Hill Pottery, Cove, by Arthur Lunn's grandfather in order to turn the site into a plant nursery.

There is still much research to do to cover the 800 years span of this heathland topic. A comprehensive documentary study of the mediaeval is required. Some research on the post-1700 period has made and anyone wishing to contribute articles should contact the Wikimaster. We welcome anyone who would like to join in this collaborative project in community history.

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