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ClaySources

Page history last edited by PBworks 17 years, 4 months ago

Sources of Potters' Clay

Page being prepared by Peter Tipton

 

FARNHAM

There are two documents, 75 years apart, which provide insights into one of the main sources of potter's clay, Claypit Wood in the Great Park of the Bishop of Winchester's large estate at Farnham, Surrey.

 

In 1594 Julius Caesar wrote from the Inns of Court in London to Sir William More of Loseley asking him urgently to intervene to allow the bearer of the letter to continue to dig potters' clay as he had previously been accustomed to do. This letter is preserved in the Loseley Papers at Surrey History Centre in Woking. I have seen the original document but unfortunately it does not name 'the bearer' anywhere on it.

 

In 1668 the Bishop of Winchester granted a lease to John Trimmer, husbandman of Farnham, of the clay pits in the recently disparked Great Park, together with a licence to dig and sell the clay.

 

There was a previous lease of Claypit Wood to William Piggott of parts of Farnham Great Park, including the claypits. This lease was written in 1665 but appears to me to be an attempt to back-date the lease to 1642 in the Commonwealth when the Bishops did not control their estates. It also appears that there was a second lease or sublease by Piggott, or the relevant authority during the Commonwealth, of the claypits to Thomas Dymarsh, senior. It is likely that the Bishops had always leased the claypits. The task is therefore to find the names of those who controlled the claypits and research if there were any relationships with the potters.

 

Claypit Wood in Farnham Great Park was not the only source of potters' clay, but is seems to have been the main source of the white clay used to make the 'Tudor Green' drinking pots purchased by the Inns of Court.

 

FARNBOROUGH

In the 1980s Don Ridgers was a member of the Yateley History Project leading the team transcribing Elizabethan wills and inventories. The wills of many potters living in Cove led him to investigate the Blackwater Valley potteries. He had a theory that the reason that mediaeval potteries were sited in Farnborough was that there was a source of clay there which, by Elizabethan times, became worked out. This led to the necessity of transporting clay from the larger deposits in Farnham, and the opening up of pits on Cove Common.

 

Don Ridger's theory seems very plausible but there was no documentary evidence. The obvious document to look at is the Customal of Farnborough Manor. Having now looked at this document I believe it adds considerable weight to Don's theory, and that Farnborough potters and brickmakers had a customary right to dig clay from the commons.

 

 

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