Outsheet Pottery in the 17th Century

Initial answer to Borderware Notes & Queries QB10 by Peter Tipton

Outsheet was an ancient farm in the Parish of Yateley in the Tithing of Cove close to its western boundary with the Tithing of Hawley, also in Yateley parish.  Outsheet's location just to the east of Sandy Lane is shown on the map in The Crondal Records, Baigent 1890.  The site was investigated during the construction of the M3 motorway (Haslam 1975).  I do not have access to either Jeremy Haslam's report or that of NEHHAS who assisted with the dig. The grid reference is given as 846569 in Table 1 of Jacqui Pearce's latest book Pots and Potters of Tudor Hampshire and is correctly labelled Outsheet, Sandy Lane. The excavation does not seem to have been under the motorway, but at what is now the northern end of a footbridge over the M3,  in a new housing estate called The Potteries.

A search of Yateley Parish Records reveals seven entries giving the abode as Outsheet:

Further investigation of these males reveals that John Rogers is stated to be a potter in the entry for the baptism of his next son John on the 28 Oct 1666, although this entry does not give his abode. The will of Robert Hall, potter of Cove, was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1659.  So we have the names of four men who lived at Outsheet, we know two of them were potters, and it is likely that Harmon Rogers was also involved in the potteries. We also know that Robert Hall's father, Robert Hall died 1633, was also a potter of Cove.

Robert Hall Senior's biography on this website discloses that John Rogers alias Marner, and his younger brother Henry, were his brothers-in-law. Robert Hall Senior left his cottage in West Heath, Cove to his daughter. West Heath Pottery was run by the Yeoman family in the 19th century, and may have had origins much earlier. But as yet we have no proof that Robert Hall Senior ran a pottery at Outsheet, West Heath, or at another location in Cove. My hunch is that later in life he started the pottery at Outsheet, until then a working farm, and that Robert had previously worked for someone else at West Heath. Investigation of property records in Cove, and manorial records in Hawley, may throw light on this.

So how did the John and Harmon Rogers who lived at Outsheet relate to Robert Hall the potter who died in 1659?  It is possible the Rogers brothers were second cousins to Robert Hall junior -- but proving this will need further investigation. We have no documentary indication that Edward James was a potter when he died in 1639, so he must be investigated.

The preliminary finding, therefore, is that the documentary evidence supports Jeremy Haslam's archaeological dating of the pottery. However it seems that the pottery could have remained in production well into the third quarter of the 1600s.  It also seems that the prominent style of the earlier output can be attributed to Robert Hall, father and son, and that the later production can be attributed to the Rogers family, and that both families were closely allied by marriage, as it seems were most potter families in this production area.

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