Lowestoft Porcelain: aspects of its origins, factory-site and workforce

CREDIT: Ivan Bunn and David Butcher

Origins

This article is in its original form, with minor alterations. It was published (with editorial adjustments and changes) in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, vol. 21 (2010), forming pp. 49-74 of that journal.

Acknowledgements

The authors of this paper wish to express their gratitude to Ann Butcher and John Bussey for assistance in preparing the illustrations used, and to the latter for his presentation of certain parts of the article to members of the English Ceramic Circle at a meeting, in London, on 12 December 2009. Thanks are also due to Richard Green for genealogical information relating to the Aldred family and to Geoffrey Godden for helpful comments on the Lowestoft porcelain enterprise generally. 

Introduction

As an introductory statement, it needs to be said that neither of the writers of this piece can claim detailed knowledge or specialist appreciation of eighteenth century soft-paste porcelain – nor, for that matter, of any particular interest in it from an artistic point of view. What they can offer to specialists in the field is many years of research into the history of the town of Lowestoft, some of it carried out conjointly, and the desire to convey their findings to a wider audience. The porcelain factory was an important feature of Lowestoft’s economic and social development during the second half of the eighteenth century and, in continuing its production for a period of forty years or more, has assumed a significant place in English ceramic history. Investigation of its site and surroundings over a prolonged period, both in terms of documentary sources and topographical features, has produced a number of facts that may be of interest to specialist collectors and non-specialists alike. This essay is an attempt to present the writers’ more significant findings and place them in a wider context than has sometimes been the custom previously, when other people have written about the Lowestoft factory and its wares. Nearby locations, the names of relevant streets and most of the plots and buildings referred to in-text can all be found on the map reproduced at the end of the article (illustration no. 14).

At the time it was in operation, the factory was located in a coastal town, in the north-eastern corner of Suffolk, at England’s most easterly point. Thus, it was in isolation from other centres of ceramic production in London, in the Midlands and in the North-west. The town had a population of about 1,800-2,000 people and was self-governing by means of its manorial court and parish vestry (it did not receive a charter until 1885 – the result of a great increase in population, following the coming of the railway and the expansion of the harbour forty years earlier). It had a complex occupational structure, with a wide range of trades, and it served as the market-town for the local area – though with much of its total economic effort devoted to maritime trade and herring fishing. Lowestoft occupied a cliff-top site, with the soft cliff-face itself terraced to make it usable and with the wide beach below accessed by a number of steep tracks known as scores. It had one main street (containing the principal houses, inns and shops), about 1,000 yards in length and with a slight sinuosity caused by following the line of the cliff – and there was a fifty-foot drop over that length from north to south. To the west of it lay an area of densely-built smaller houses and workshops, set out on a grid of cross-lanes. The whole built-up area covered about sixty acres and there were around 400 dwellings in all. Some contemporary opinions of the town were not flattering, while others were more laudatory. Much would have depended, of course, on the individual commentators and their criteria for judgement.

Background commentary

Various aspects of the porcelain enterprise’s origins have been commented on over the years, but it is worth pointing out that they were rooted in a national movement, whereby society developed a sense of growing “politeness” (at least, in those levels which could afford it!) and the wish to display this publicly. (1) Lowestoft’s social development as a coastal resort occurred a generation later than what has been observed in other places, with the first bathing machines being placed on the beach in 1768, (2) but it was only one feature of which note should be taken. Of equal importance was the building of an assembly room c. 1760 at The Queen’s Head inn, in Tyler’s Lane (now Compass Street), and the starting of a book club in town – cultural advances which were reinforced by the construction of a new turnpike road.  (3) This facility linked Lowestoft with Great Yarmouth, an important regional centre, and led to the provision of a mail-cart (which passed through the town twice daily with letters to and from London) and to a daily stagecoach service with the capital. (4) It is, therefore, no coincidence that a porcelain-making venture should have begun at a time of such social innovation.

Illustration 1 - A view of the middle section of Lowestoft High Street, produced in ink-and-wash by local artist and porcelain decorator, Richard Powles during 1784. Reproduced with the permission of the former North Suffolk Record Office. Now held by Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

Nor should the rise of what has become known as “conspicuous consumption” be ignored as a contributory factor in the production of soft-paste porcelain. (5) The growth in the manufacture and sale of luxury goods during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been well recorded, with the role of women recognised as crucial (6) – and Lowestoft had a variety of retail shops to satisfy the need to purchase consumer items. (7)   Furthermore, tea-drinking, as a polite activity and visible means of cultural expression, was well established in the town by the third decade of the eighteenth century, if the presence of the silver tea-spoons listed in certain of the wealthier citizens’ probate inventories is anything to go by. (8) Imported Chinese hard-paste porcelain had begun to be brought into Western Europe in increasing quantities from the early seventeenth century onwards, and rising demand for it across a widening range of social levels eventually led to the establishment of European factories such as Meissen and Vienna about a hundred years later. By the middle of the eighteenth century, English factories were producing less technically challenging soft-paste porcelain to satisfy growing home demand. (9)      

Thus, in the light of national trends, the establishment of a soft-paste porcelain enterprise at Lowestoft can be seen as part of a wider cultural pattern – not something which occurred in a particular location simply because the physical circumstances there favoured it. Or, put another way, the historical process of cause and effect may be seen to have been at work.  This is not to dismiss the combination of local factors out of hand. Far from it. The collaboration of Philip Walker, Obed Aldred, Robert Browne and Robert Williams was crucial in starting and sustaining the venture (especially the input of the first three men named). So was the coincidence and combination of what may be termed “geo-economic” influences.

Foremost among these was the possible presence of suitable, nearby, white clay in the adjoining parish of Gunton – to the north of Lowestoft – the exact location of which has been much debated, but never precisely established (nor has any evidence yet been found of clay being brought into the town from distant sources, either by land or sea).(10) Flint was abundant on the area’s beaches to provide a necessary source of silica in the porcelain’s body, while the third major constituent, cattle bone (burnt and reduced to ash, before use), was in plentiful supply as a by-product of Lowestoft’s butchery trade. This not only supplied the town and its neighbourhood, but was also an important element in the provisioning of trading ships which anchored offshore.(11) Thus, with three of the main constituents necessary to make soft-paste porcelain easily available locally, all that was needed was the motivation to produce it and the technical expertise.(12) The former requirement was to be had from the first two men named in the paragraph above; the latter had to be acquired from the third one and from other, outside sources.(13)

The maritime connection referred to in the previous paragraph was of possible importance in another matter, too: that of fuel for the factory’s kilns. If this was coal, ready supplies were available from a long-established traffic with Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Sunderland – a fact that at least partly contributed to the granting of port status to Lowestoft in 1679.(14) On the other hand, if wood was used for firing, that material was also freely available in the form of the hardwood billets (ash or oak) used to cure red herrings. The parish of Lowestoft itself was not well endowed with timber, but it had long-established links with communities that had productive coppiced woodlands and kept the town supplied with the material it needed.(15)

With some kind of context thus established for the factory’s existence, it is time to turn to consideration of the site – including its history before the manufacture of soft-paste porcelain began. There are two key sources to facilitate the process: the manor court minute books, recording transactions between 1616 and 1917,(16) and transcriptions of the earlier volumes in the series made by Lowestoft’s vicar, the Rev. John Tanner, between 1720 and 1725 (17) – the latter being reinforced by a listing of all copyhold property-owners of the time, which he also compiled in 1725.(18) By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Lowestoft court baron had long ceased to be a court of dispute and arbitration between lord and tenants and dealt very largely with property transfer. Eighty-five per cent of the town’s houses and other buildings were held by copyhold tenure (the other fifteen per cent were freehold), which meant that every transaction involving them, be it sale, bequest or mortgage, had to be entered in the manorial records.(19) In terms of specific location, the factory was situated at the western end of Bell Lane (now Crown Street West), on the southern side of the roadway, in an area where the Lowestoft built-up area merged gradually with the smallest of the town’s seven commons, Goose Green.(20)

Illustration 2 - Ink-and-wash study of the Low Lighthouse and beach, executed by Richard Powles during 1784. Permission to reproduce, as noted in the previous illustration.

This made it of comparatively easy access for the transportation of clay and other materials from Gunton, to the north, and for carriage of either of the fuels used to fire the kilns (coal would have been offloaded onto the beach;(21) billets or other wood brought in overland from parishes to the west or south). The comparatively open nature of the location also allowed space for the disposal of waste materials of various kinds and ultimately for the building of houses, some of which accommodated members of the workforce. One suggestion that the kiln-fuel may well have been wood (at least, in the early years) is to be found in a Lowestoft leet court entry of 23 February 1760, when “Messrs Walker and Company” was fined 9d. for “depositing timber on the lord’s waste”.(22)

The “waste” in question was almost certainly Goose Green and it looks as if wood may have been deposited there prior to use in the kiln. The word “timber” may also suggest a large size of material for sawing up, rather than ready-to-use billets. It could well be, therefore, that both types of wood were used.(23) Any kind of combustion (even that of a controlled nature) carries with it a certain degree of risk, but the factory was less of a fire-hazard to adjacent properties, situated where it was, than if it had been located in the more densely-built main part of town. At a later date, during the 1780s, a foreign visitor to the factory noted that coal was used to heat the kilns (there were two: biscuit and glost) and recorded a firing-time of twenty-eight hours for the body of the ware, followed by three days of allowing it to cool down.(24) Whatever the main fuel used, the fires would have had to be started by kindling of some kind. And, in any case, it is possible that wood was used as the main source of firing in the earlier phase of the factory’s existence and that coal was adopted later on.

Illustration 3 - a 19th century water-colour view of the Porcelain Factory, after it had been converted, showing its south-western aspect.

A further indication of the convenience of the site may be found in another leet court minute – this time of 23 February 1765. On this particular occasion, the surveyors of highways were presented “for want of repairing the roads and footpaths leading from the factory house to William Manning next the watering”.(25) Manning lived in a house on the site of a former windmill, close to the main roadway into town from the west (known at the time as Beccles Way and later called St. Peter’s Street).(26) The reference to the poor state of the roads and tracks leading from the factory to this well established route shows that there was considerable traffic across Goose Green as the result of commercial activity associated with the manufacture of soft-paste porcelain. Apart from the High Street itself, most of the roadways in the main part of town were narrow and with very tight turns at the junctions. Ease of access to the factory from the south, west and north was therefore a key factor in its location (perhaps the most important consideration of all).

As production increased to meet demand, certain of the named pieces which have survived create an awareness today of the geographical spread of the factory’s goods in East Anglia. Many of the sales originally must have resulted from people visiting Lowestoft during August and September to enjoy its resort amenities and commissioning personal items as mementoes of their visit.(27) A number of towns and villages are named (particularly in east Suffolk and in south and east Norfolk), which gives a sense of the town as place of social activity for the area’s middling orders. Then there are the pieces showing recognisable local scenes – items which again convey the sense of their being commissioned and produced to order (largely, one imagines, for people who lived locally). Most of the views portrayed are instantly recognisable and have been identified, but there is one notable exception: the polychrome jug in the Norwich Castle Museum collection, showing a post mill and bearing the name Jeremiah Warner.(28)

Illustration 4 - Polychrome jug in the Norwich Castle Museum collection, showing a post-mill and bearing the name Jeremiah Warner. Reproduced with the permission of Norfolk Museums Service.

There is no doubt that sets of useful ware, both underglaze-blue and polychrome, found a wider clientèle than in the Lowestoft area alone, with outlets in London and perhaps other places as well.(29) The question of export abroad has been considered, with Holland specifically referred to,(30) but it may well be that sea passage was also used to send goods to destinations in England. It would have been quicker than overland carriage and no less likely to cause damage. Great Yarmouth has been referred to as a point of departure (and this is entirely possible), but there is also no reason why porcelain shipments should not have been made directly from Lowestoft itself – even though the authorities in Yarmouth may not have been happy about it.(31) The Suffolk town had a good, safe anchorage offshore and very well established trading links with ports all round the east and south coasts of England – as well as with the near-continent, the Baltic and the Mediterranean.

           Edmund Gillingwater’s contemporary description of the enterprise in his An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft makes interesting reading, because he refers to the factory’s partners supplying porcelain wares to “many of the principal towns in the adjacent counties” and keeping a London warehouse “to execute the orders they receive both from the city and the adjoining towns”.(32) He does not reveal the source of his information, but he may have had an aunt who worked at the factory (whose identity will be revealed later) and his older brother Isaac was based in the town (see end-note 59). Even more intriguing than the information he divulges is his mode of expression in three particular places, where he comments on the successful nature of porcelain manufacture. It suggests that he was writing not a great length of time after the venture began, yet the preface to the book is dated 11 November 1790 and the year of publication is generally reckoned to have been 1793.(33)

           Consider these three statements relating to the proprietors: 1. “… have brought this ingenious art to a great degree of perfection; and, from the prospect it affords, promises to be attended with much success”; 2. “…have now established the factory upon such a permanent foundation as promises great success”; 3. “…and have brought the manufactory to such a degree of perfection as promises to be a credit to the town, useful to the inhabitants, and beneficial to themselves”.(34) They hardly read as if they apply to a long-established activity – and yet the book they feature in was published during the final phase of the factory’s forty-year-plus existence. Is the explanation to be found in the fact that Gillingwater wrote his book over a considerable number of years and did not update this particular small section to take account of the passage of time? It is difficult to believe that he could have written in such a way of an enterprise that had been up and running for three decades or more, as his work edged its way towards publication. There is no sense whatsoever of looking back at an established part of the town’s economic activity.     

The Factory Neighbourhood

The listing of copyhold premises in Lowestoft drawn up by the Rev. John Tanner in 1725 describes what was to become the “core” of the porcelain works as “several tenements”, held by Susan Errington, widow. The word “several” almost certainly means “separate” in this particular context, because the court baron minutes themselves reveal that there were two different dwellings on the same plot – though under the same roof.(35) The messuage lay between the holdings of Sarah Patting and Robert Neal to the east and a common way (footpath) to the west, abutting onto common pasture (Goose Green) to the south and Bell Lane to the north.(36) As well as the dwellings built thereon, the minute books also refer to fish-houses (for curing red herrings) which had once been part of the complex and to shared use of a well for drawing water.(37)

The first specific mention of the plot in the surviving manor court books is dated 20 November 1611, when Thomas Roden (member of a family of local butchers) surrendered it to William Bugge, a labourer. After Bugge’s death (in April 1636), it passed to his widow Joan for the term of her life and then to his son William, with the latter’s entry being recorded on 15 December 1641. William Bugge Jnr. held the property until 14 February 1657, when he sold it to Michael and Jane Bentley. This couple remained in possession for a couple of years or so, before selling to John and Elizabeth Morris, whose ownership was recorded on 22 June 1659. Their tenure was even shorter than that of the Bentleys, because on 15 February 1660 they sold out to Thomas and Ann Brown, who promptly mortgaged the property with the vendors for the sum of £8 10s. 0d.(38) This was only a short-term loan, however, with repayment being made on 2 March 1661, and Thomas Brown remained in ownership until his death. The entry of his son, Daniel, to the property took place on 14 December 1670 and that of his daughter, Elizabeth Hathornwhite, on 31 May 1676, after the death of the aforesaid Daniel. The latter transaction took place on the same day as the one on which Elizabeth Hathornwhite (obviously her brother’s heir) sold the property to Robert and Elizabeth Sherrington – thereby bringing it into the possession of a family which held it for about eighty years.

Robert Sherrington’s father had emanated from the Suffolk village of Westleton and variants of the surname are found as Errington and Herrington. After the Sherringtons’ purchase of the messuage, they mortgaged it at some time for the sum of £71 to Simon Canham, a well-known Lowestoft mariner. No date is given for the transaction, but the debt was repaid on 24 March 1697 and Robert Sherrington continued in ownership until his death in September 1701. His wife survived him, but she forfeited the property at some point to the lord of the manor (the date is not disclosed) for failing to carry out necessary repairs, and her older son Robert (a mason by trade) took possession of it on 9 October 1706.(39) As with a number of previous owners, it was held jointly with his wife Rachel and they immediately raised capital by mortgaging it to a relative, Michael Errington. The exact relationship has not been established, and no specific sum is mentioned, but less than two years later, on 7 April 1708, the couple mortgaged the property to Michael Errington for a second time, borrowing £63 against its value.

The period of loan seems to have been short-term and, with Robert and Rachel Sherrington being unable to pay back the money on time, the property passed to Michael Errington on 25 February 1710. Six years later, on 11 January 1716, it came into the possession of his widow Susan by the terms of his will. She was, of course, the Susan Errington referred to in John Tanner’s listing. Eventually, the messuage devolved upon her son William (a Norwich schoolmaster) on 7 August 1754, who in his own turn sold it to Obed and Tryphena Aldred on 18 September that same year. It was this last transaction which placed the land and buildings in the ownership of one of the men involved in the porcelain-making enterprise.(40)

Illustration 5 - The Lowestoft factory buildings, shown here fronting Crown Street (formerly Bell Lane) c. 1900. The Errington-Aldred property is the one seen on the right-hand side of the frame. 

Not that this holding was the sole component of the factory complex. The property belonging to Robert Neal, which was referred to four paragraphs above, also became incorporated. At the time of John Tanner’s listing, it consisted of two tenements (again, under one roof) standing on land that had once accommodated a single dwelling only. The earliest mention of the property (and eastern tenement, as it eventually became) in the manor court data occurs on 25 October 1620, when Samuel and Susan Pottell purchased it from Simon Warner. Samuel Pottell was a tailor by trade and he died in September 1631, but his wife retained possession of the property. She remarried in February 1635, to Edward Townsend, and their joint ownership continued until 29 July 1640, when sale was made to Richard and Margery Brathet. The latter died only three months after the transaction, but her husband (a tanner) held the tenement until 4 June 1645, when he sold it to John and Ann Townsend. No details are available for this couple, but their daughter Mary Rumor (wife of Thomas) inherited the property by terms of her father’s will and was admitted to it on 19 August 1657. The Rumors remained in possession until 22 December 1669, when it passed to a certain Francis Butcher. On 23 August 1676, he or she (the spelling of the Christian name not being standardised at this time) sold the property to Robert and Catherine Neal – the first stage of consolidation of the two houses into a single holding.(41)

Illustration 6 - A drawing by the Lowestoft architect and surveyor, H.C. H. Blyth, depicting the factory’s frontage onto Crown Street c. 1905. The Neal property is the one seen on the left-hand side of the frame. 

There is far less information concerning the western tenement, with the first specific reference in the manor court books coming on 13 September 1676, when Diana Worts entered the property after the death of her mother Margaret.(42) She obviously sold it as soon as it came to her, because an entry of the same date records its transfer to Robert and Catherine Neal. And thus did the two units come under the same ownership. Twenty years later, the combined property came into the possession of Robert Neal Jnr. (mariner) after the death of his parents – the change of ownership being recorded on 30 December 1696. Neal died in October 1729 and he left the property to his wife Mary for the rest of her life, directing that it should be divided equally among his surviving children after her death. Mary Neal died in 1747 and was buried on 2 June. The two surviving children, John and Robert (both mariners) were admitted to their inheritance at a manor court held on 21 April 1748 – the dwelling at this time being occupied by a spinster, Anne Mason. Twelve years later, John Neal (acting on his own behalf and on that of his brother) conveyed the property to Robert Williams of Bungay on 23 February 1760. Williams remained in possession for ten years before selling to Obed Aldred,(43) Robert Browne Jnr. and Philip Walker – a transfer recorded on 3 March 1770. Both transactions stand as formal acknowledgement of the fact that another part of the factory site had been incorporated into the whole.

The earlier-acquired of the two properties (that belonging to the Errington family) was in multi-tenancy at the time of its transfer to Obed and Tryphena Aldred, the occupants being named as Mary Trip, Anthony Waters, Nicholas Battledore, James Mower and James Bull.(44) The messuage abutted onto Bell Lane to the north and “the common pasture of Lowestoft” (Goose Green) to the south. To the east was the property of Robert Neal, previously referred to, and to the west “a common way” (track or footpath) which separated the property from a small, half-acre meadow that would later provide space for the factory’s expansion. The second of the two component plots, the one belonging to Robert Neal, was probably untenanted at the time of acquisition because the manor court records state that it had been “formerly occupied by Anne Mason, spinster” – the woman referred to in the paragraph above. It was presumably purchased to allow the factory to expand and one interesting feature of the transaction is that Obed Aldred acted as Robert Williams’s attorney in the manor court. There may even have been a denominational aspect to the deal, in that the Neal and Aldred families were part of Lowestoft’s Nonconformist community and both men would have known each other as co-religionists.(45)

The factory kilns were housed at the rear of the premises acquired in 1754 and the complex must have made a definite visual impact on this part of the town. Any kind of industrial works, even though modest in scale, would have been an intrusion into what was an otherwise semi-rural environment. As previously explained, the western end of Bell Lane was on the outer fringe of Lowestoft’s built-up area and, apart from a handful of cottages and one small block of four almshouses at its western extremity, there were few dwellings in the short stretch of road from the factory site to what is now Thurston Road.(46) Beyond any of the buildings which existed was the open expanse of Goose Green and beyond that, to the north, south and west, lay open farmland, across which ran the road to the neighbouring market town of Beccles.(47)

Illustration 7 - Present day junction of Thurston Road with Factory Street.

On the north side of Bell Lane was a small estate, or holding, about one and a half acres in size. Its northern boundary was Goose Green (this particular piece of the former common now forming part of Dove Street), so was the western one, and to the east it abutted onto Lowestoft’s main built-up area. On the northern boundary of this holding stood two large houses, overlooking Goose Green – one of which was known as “the House on the Green” and was of considerable antiquity. Other buildings on the latter’s site included two small cottages, stables and a “summer house”, and at the extreme eastern end of the messuage was a late fifteenth century barn. Also belonging to this modest estate was the half-acre meadow referred to two paragraphs above.

The whole of what became known as “the Tithe Barn estate” had been purchased on 25 September 1667 by a Pakefield yeoman called William Church, and the following year he had added the half-acre meadow to it.(48) He had previously acquired the impropriation of Lowestoft’s parish church, St. Margaret’s (specifically, the corn tithes), which had passed into private hands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the years 1536-40.(49) The asset had come to him on the execution of his brother Richard’s will in September 1652.(50) William Church’s three grand-daughters and heirs were forced to sell it in 1719 (together with the barn estate) to settle their deceased grandfather’s debts, and the Rev. John Tanner (by a combination of public subscription, Queen Anne’s Bounty and personal mortgage) raised the £1,050 required to buy the combined asset – not for his own personal advantage, but for the benefit of the living itself and for his successors.(51) It was this acquisition of two separate sources of income, united under the ownership of William Church, which effectively turned the barn into the parish “tithe barn” – and it may well have served that function originally.

Over the next few years the Tithe Barn messuage was divided into three separate parcels.  The first, at the western end, containing one of the large houses previously mentioned (with its outhouses and stables) was sold to William and Mary Winstanley in February 1724. Winstanley erected a beerhouse called The Keel – the forerunner of the present-day First and Last public house. Twelve years later, in June 1736, John Tanner conveyed the eastern portion, including what had become the tithe barn, into the hands of trustees – to be held by them in perpetuity “for such person or persons who at anytime….would be entitled to the great tithes”.(52) The barn survives to this very day as part of Crown Street Motors. It had its roof replaced at some point during the second half of the nineteenth century (probably when a cross-wing fronting the street was added), but it retains its lower timber-frame of aisle posts, scarfed roof-plates and arch braces.

Illustration 8 - Lowestoft tithe barn, of aisled construction, dating from c. 1600.

The previous year, in March, Tanner had sold the central portion – that containing “the House on the Green”, with its stables and two cottages, to William and Margaret Bull. Included in this sale was the half-acre meadow on the south side of Bell Lane. A year later, in March 1736, the Bulls sold one of the cottages to Samuel Lane (labourer). It is described as having a frontage of forty-four feet onto Bell Lane and is the left-hand one (as the reader looks at it) of the two dwellings situated on location no. 2 on the map reproduced at the end of this article. William Bull’s father (also named William) was both an innkeeper and a carter, and it is possible that his son (a carter himself) saw the Goose Green premises and nearby half-acre meadow as ideal for carrying out the latter occupation – the meadow offering both a grazing facility for horses and the opportunity to grow a modest crop of hay.(53)

After the death of William Bull Jnr., in June 1754, the premises was sold by his executors to Matthew Arnold, a Lowestoft merchant, and after the latter’s death eight years later (in August 1762) it was sold once more to Philip Walker – described in the transaction’s record as “a farmer of Gunton”.(54) On 9 November 1763, Walker sold “the House on the Green”, together with its land and remaining cottage, to Obed and Tryphena Aldred. The main dwelling became their principal home, only a stone’s throw from the porcelain works, in whose institution the husband had played such an important part.

Walker did not, however, sell the half-acre meadow to the Aldreds. He kept this until 3 March 1770, when it was combined with the two plots accommodating the factory: that purchased by Obed and Tryphena Aldred from William Errington in September 1754 and that acquired by Robert Williams from John Neal in February 1760. The whole site, as it had then become, was re-granted to the proprietors in “four undivided shares”. Obed Aldred and Robert Browne Jnr. each received one share, while Philip Walker had two.(55) This transaction obviously established a formal partnership, because up until then the various parts of the site had been owned by individuals in their own right. It was also around this time that the partners leased a barn and stables close by, near the Green Well.(56) Among the uses of the former building was the preparation of the body used in the manufacturing process.(57)

It is not specifically known what the half-acre meadow was used for, but there is evidence that the factory expanded westwards onto it, thereby blocking the “common way” which had initially separated the factory itself from the meadow. A manor court entry of 3 March 1770, referring to the plot, mentions “A Common Passage in the middle of the said piece of land, about three yards wide, leading out of the said Bell Lane to the said Watering, being lately made”. Thus, the meadow was effectively cut in two. Evidence that the factory expanded onto the eastern half can be found in a later manor court record, dated 15 November 1793, which describes it as “ all that piece of land….upon the east end of which another part of the aforesaid China Factory is built”. There is no indication of what the western portion was used for. It may perhaps have provided grazing for the factory’s horses, which were stabled close by, or it may have simply served as a storage-yard for fuel and other materials.

In addition to the proximity of Obed Aldred (and his wife) to the porcelain works, records show that another of the men involved in the enterprise, Robert Browne Snr., lived close by. Sheena Smith identified his house and yard, which were situated in Bell Lane, as being directly opposite the factory buildings.(58) However, the premises indicated on the map in her book are, in fact, the tithe barn and yard vested in trustees by the Rev. John Tanner! The house purchased by Browne on 29 December 1763 from Edmund Gillingwater (barber and wig-maker) was situated a little further to the east along Bell Lane – still on the northern side of the road, but closer to its junction with West Lane. Gillingwater had acquired the property on 4 April 1733, by virtue of the forfeiture of a mortgage taken out with him by the owner, Matthew White (fisherman).(59) It was indeed directly opposite the factory, whereas the barn plot was situated a little further to the west of the premises. Clear locations for the respective properties may be seen in the map accompanying this article (illustration no 14).

In July 1766, Obed Aldred, in his own right, purchased the western end of the old Tithe Barn estate upon which William Winstanley had erected The Keel beerhouse. As well as the hostelry, a large sixteenth century house with yards and stable was included. In February 1769, Aldred increased his holding further with the purchase of the cottage that William and Margaret Bull had sold to Samuel Lane (March 1736). The tenant at the time was Elizabeth Cooper, widow, and it is possible that she was the same “Mrs. Cooper”, a decorator of underglaze-blue ware, who is mentioned as one of the factory’s workforce.(60) With the acquisition of this cottage, Aldred had effectively gained possession of all the old Tithe Barn estate – with the exception of the barn itself and the yard in which it stood. Obed Aldred died in July 1788 and, under the terms of his will,(61) his wife inherited the property for life, after which it was devised upon his grandson, Samuel Higham Aldred – together with his quarter-share in the porcelain factory. Sheena Smith stated that it is not known who inherited Obed Aldred’s share in the business,(62) but on the admittance of Samuel Higham Aldred to all his grandfather’s holdings, an entry in the Lowestoft manor court records of 9 November 1793 clearly states that Aldred senior’s quarter-share was included in the legacies.(63)

The will directed that the grandson (a Great Yarmouth shopkeeper, described in later documentation as a watchmaker-silversmith) was to sell all the property bequeathed and that the money accruing be used to fulfil bequests to various children and grandchildren. Consequently, by 1799, the whole estate had been parcelled up and sold off in smaller lots. This division and subdivision continued well into the nineteenth century, producing the “hotch-potch” of buildings and plots that exists there today. It is clear from the manor court entries regarding this area, from 1784 onwards, that the sixteenth century house owned by William Winstanley and fronting Goose Green had been split into tenements, and that the stables on Bell Lane had been converted into cottages. Entries in the court books from 1784 to 1802 give the names of the tenants in these properties and it is evident that some of them were employees at the factory. Those that can be identified are John Bly 2 (decorator), Edward Dinmore 2 (decorator) and Susanna Stevenson (née Barret).(64) The last-named may or may not have been an employee, but she was the widow of John Stevenson, potter, born in the London parish of Bow and with a father originally from Staffordshire. Her husband had died in February 1783, aged only thirty years – having begun his connection with the factory at the age of seven and a half years, when he was apprenticed to Robert Browne Snr. in June 1760.(65)

Illustration 9 - The only part of Goose Green not built upon, known today as St. Margaret’s Plain.

The proprietors of the factory sold the site in 1802 (production possibly having ceased c. 1800). The first part of the complex to be disposed of was the western part of the divided half-acre meadow. Measuring fifty yards east to west and twenty-six yards north to south, it was conveyed to William Cleveland, a local carpenter, on 29 July, and he used it as a timber-yard. In November 1810, his son William sold a small plot at the extreme western end to David Fisher, “Comedian”, of Halesworth, who erected Lowestoft’s first purpose-built theatre.(66) Although much altered, this still stands today, in the form of Crown Street Hall. By the 1840s, the residue of the Cleveland timber-yard had been sold and a terrace of small cottages, called West Meon Place, had been erected on it.(67)

On 15 November 1802, the remainder of the factory site was conveyed to John Elph of Lowestoft (maltster). This comprised the former Neal family tenement “now converted into an office for the manufacture of China or porcelain ware”; the piece of land with two tenements thereon, late William Errington, “now converted into a parcel of the said china factory”; and the eastern part of the half-acre meadow, “in length from east to west forty-two yards….on the east end of which another part of the china factory is built”. Three years later, on 1 February 1805, these plots were sold to another maltster, James Brame. From the conveyance, we learn that the old Neal property had been converted back to a dwelling-house and that the former Errington buildings (the site of the kilns) had been converted to a malthouse. By the mid-nineteenth century, the latter had been acquired by Thomas Morse Jnr., a Lowestoft brewer. It was known as Bowling Green Malthouse, after the remnants of the half-acre meadow which had become a bowling-green. This, in turn, gave its name to a public house, The Bowling Green, which had opened nearby in Bell Lane. Later development saw Morse’s malthouse extended over the bowling-green, with a brewery premises accompanying it.

Morse’s Brewery was eventually acquired by the Morgans Brewery Company Ltd. of Norwich in December 1936 – by which time it covered the whole of the porcelain factory site, including West Meon Place (which had been demolished as part of the expansion).(68) The brewery also covered the “common way” or “common lane” which had been cut through the middle of the old half-acre meadow, necessitating that the ancient right-of-way from Bell Lane to the former common pasture be moved thirty yards westwards (during the late 1890s) onto a narrow passage, which today forms the eastern boundary of Crown Street Hall. At this time, the semi-derelict remains of the old porcelain factory were still standing, consisting of “picturesque old cottages adjoining the front of the [brewery] building [in Crown Street] as well as the old kiln in Factory Street”. Their existence gave rise to the hope that “some means may be devised to acquire for the town the historic kiln and preserve it for the future”.(69)

The brewery was empty when it was purchased by Morgans Ltd., and it never re-opened. During World War Two, it was commandeered by the local authorities for a number of purposes – including the use of part of it as a British Restaurant (one of many such “no frills” establishments up and down the length of the land, which provided cheap, subsidised meals to members of the public). The porcelain factory site was neglected and when the old brewery was purchased in 1946 by Winsor and Newton Ltd., manufacturers of artists’ brushes and materials, the last remnants of the original factory were in a sad state of repair. By 1950, the old Cottages in Crown Street had been demolished and the manager of Winsor and Newton announced that the then crumbling walls of the former kiln building would be reduced to ground level “in the interests of the safety of our men working there”. He said that he had agreed to preserve the kiln for the time being, adding the ominous qualification “until the expansion of the business demanded the taking in of the site, or until the kiln itself could be moved”.(70)

The kiln was never moved and it had been destroyed by the mid 1960s. Today, nothing remains to remind us of its existence, except the name Factory Street.(71)  Much of the site of the original Errington and Neale properties, from which the works was originally converted, is now a small car park for the present-day business. The former brewery premises (the old water-storage tank still a prominent feature of the building) continues to be used for the production of artists’ brushes by Crown Artist Brush Ltd., a company currently owned by the Swedish firm, Beckers – makers of industrial coatings. Thus is a tenuous link with the porcelain decorators still maintained.

Illustration 10 - Crown Artist Brush factory, clearly showing its 19th century origins as a brewery.

Workforce details     

There has been a good deal of speculation in various publications regarding both the starting-date of the manufacture of porcelain in Lowestoft and where the first skilled workers were drawn from. The following piece of information is both inconclusive and slight, but it is nevertheless worth revealing. As well as containing a possible clue to what may be described as the “proto-enterprise”, said to have taken place at Gunton in 1756 under the aegis of Hewling Luson,(72) it also serves to show how parish registers are often less detailed than the day-books from which they were written up. The single burial entry in the Lowestoft registers for 14 March 1756 says “Ralph Bourne, Potman”. The reference in the Rev. John Tanner’s day-book has the same wording, but with the following marginal comment: “He came from Burselm [sic] in Staffordshire”.(73) Does this suggest a connection with “The Potteries” (as the Five Towns later became known) in the recruiting of labour for the Gunton/Lowestoft enterprise? Or was Ralph Bourne’s presence in town just coincidental? John Tanner’s day-book gives his age as twenty-three, so he would have been of journeyman status and able to make his own way in the world. In the opinion of at least one authority on Lowestoft porcelain wares, the reference to the young man may be suggestive of a link with Staffordshire salt-glaze manufacturers – at least, in the earliest phase of the factory’s existence.(74)

No settlement certificate exists for Bourne and the same holds true for many of those people who worked at the factory once it was established and whose origins were obviously from outside Lowestoft. One missing piece of the jigsaw can be supplied for the Dinmore family, however, because a record of their settlement order has survived.(75) Edward and Margeret Dinmore and their children came from Thirsk, in North Yorkshire, in 1752 – a journey of considerable length, and one for which it is possible to attach a reason – though without being able to establish the specific means of contact. The husband was a soap-boiler by trade and Philip Walker had a soap-making facility on the farm that he leased at Gunton.(76) Much less arduous was the move made by Mary Cooper (another possibility for being the “Mrs. Cooper” referred to eight paragraphs above). She and her two children, John and Mary, moved into Lowestoft from the neighbouring parish of Pakefield in 1764, and the younger Mary may have been the woman who married John Bly 2 (a decorator or general factotum at the factory) in November 1775 – her candidature being as good as that of the woman otherwise cited as his wife.(77) A further close, local association concerning a known decorator at the factory, John Sparham, has nothing to do with the process of certification, but is manifested in register material relating to the parish of Kirkley, immediately to the south of Lowestoft, where his father Matthew’s baptism is to be found (18 June 1732).

Illustration 11 - Philip Walker’s house at Gunton, dating from the early 18th century.

In the case of Richard Powles, another decorator and also an accomplished artist, the Lowestoft parish registers describe his grandfather Thomas as a “sojourner” in the record of the latter’s marriage, in July 1726, to Susanna Harwood.(78) Later in the same year, the couple (and their baby son, Thomas) were admitted back into town on certification from the south Norfolk town of Loddon – presumably the parish of origin of Powles the elder. The child died in March 1727, with his age being given in the register burial entry as fifteen weeks. It does not take a mathematical genius to work out that the mother was four or five months pregnant at the time of marriage. Thomas Powles himself died in March 1740 and is described as a labourer in his burial entry. A younger and surviving son (also Thomas), born in January 1735, was the man who fathered Richard, artist and decorator – though the latter’s birth in September 1763 was posthumous, his father having pre-deceased him and having no reference to his demise recorded in the Lowestoft registers. One possible explanation for this is that he was working away from home when his death occurred.(79)

The settlement certificate data for Lowestoft is generally less detailed for the middle of the eighteenth century than for the earlier decades, eventually petering out in 1769, but evidence of the origins of three other family groups associated with the factory is to be found. First of all, in 1743, the entry into in town of James Curtis, the twine-spinner father of Thomas (decorator) is recorded, his place of origin being Great Yarmouth.(80) Next, in 1756, comes the arrival of George and Susanna Butcher, and their children George and Sarah, from Aldborough in North Norfolk – George Jnr. eventually becoming a kiln operative. Finally, in 1761, the arrival of Leticie Blye [sic], widow, and her sons Phillip and John from Henstead (a Suffolk parish about six miles south-south-west of Lowestoft) was duly noted – though there is no mention of the third child, Abel. All three brothers worked at the factory in varying capacities and their presence there has been well recorded.(81)

Further information regarding two other factory employees has come to light from the court baron records. On 6 September 1765 Thomas Olly, following the death of his mother, Mary, was admitted to “one messuage lately divided into three tenements now in the occupation of John Stephenson, [ ? ] Mansfield and Robert Sewell [mariner], or their assigns, as is situated in Lowestoft near the common way called the Bell Lane towards the south and abuts upon the messuage of Margaret Bull in part and the messuage of Henry Botson [mariner] in part on the part of the north and abuts upon another common way [West Lane] towards the east and the messuage and lands of Robert Brown towards the west”. The spelling of Stephenson (ph instead of v) and Brown (no final e) need not be an obstacle or problem. Variant spelling (especially of people’s names) was still quite common at this time – and, in the case of Robert Brown(e), it is known that the name refers to one of the porcelain factory’s partners. 

What, then, of John Stephenson/Stevenson? It is probable, given the date of the manor court transaction, that the man in question was John Stevenson Snr., the Staffordshire potter referred to earlier, who had worked at the Bow factory in London before moving to Lowestoft. One of his sons, also John, had been apprenticed to Robert Browne in June 1760. How convenient, then, to have one of the most highly skilled members of the workforce living next door to a man who was not only one of the partners in the porcelain-making enterprise, but also effectively the works’ manager! And how convenient it must also have been to have had that man take a key employee’s own child (aged only seven and a half years) under his wing for training. By 1785, the will of Robert Browne Jnr. reveals that the dwelling formerly occupied by the Stevensons was inhabited by Abel Bly, brother of John Bly 2 and a workman of some kind at the factory.(82)

No argument surrounds the identity of Margaret Bull, who perhaps can now be regarded as the most likely person to have been the “Mrs. Bull” referred to as being a decorator at the factory.(83) She was the widow of William Bull Jnr., her husband being the son of the carter-innkeeper referred to earlier in connection with the purchase of the central portion of the Tithe Barn estate in March 1735.(84) She had married him on 2 May 1734 (at the age of twenty-two) as Margaret Frary, daughter of John Frary (blacksmith) and his wife Elizabeth. Her older sister, Alice, had married Edmund Gillingwater in June 1729 – he being the man mentioned earlier, who had sold to Robert Browne Snr. (in December 1763) the house which became the latter’s place of residence.(85) Margaret Bull, in being Gillingwater’s sister-in-law, was therefore also the aunt of the Lowestoft historians, Isaac Gillingwater and his younger brother, Edmund. Such is the web of acquaintance and relationship which manifests itself in local communities when different primary sources are cross-referenced and which helps the historian of today achieve intimate social and genealogical reconstruction.

A similar process of juxtaposing parish register material and manor court data is able to place Robert Allen, a leading decorator at the factory and also probably its foreman,(86) in a house close by – at the very end of the enterprise, at least. He lived for a time in a cottage on the west side of Back Lane (sometimes – not without a certain degree of humour in today’s thinking – referred to as The Backside), one of a row of seven such dwellings backing onto a meadow known as Pond Pightle.(87) A number of these had been erected during the 1680s by a builder called John Patteridge, who had parcelled up a single piece of land into individual plots before developing four of them himself (he may also have built the dwellings on the other three). There were six earlier houses on the land (two to the north and four to the south), making thirteen in all, and Allen occupied the eighth dwelling down from the factory barn. This particular building stood on the north-eastern corner of the plot and has been referred to earlier. After taking up residency some time during 1799, after the death of his aunt, Elizabeth Buckle (which had occurred in March), Allen eventually transferred the property to George Smith, kiddier [corn dealer], on 8 July 1813 for the sum of £225.

Illustration 12 - Lower half of a painted glass Chancel window, by Robert Allen, in St. Margaret’s parish church.

Robert Allen’s origins are not entirely clear. His father, Edward, had married a local spinster, Ann Buckle, on 11 August 1745. She was from a maritime family and coming up to thirty years of age,(88) but there are no antecedents for her husband in the documents. Six weeks after the ceremony, Robert was baptised (29 September 1745), which means that his mother was in an advanced state of pregnancy at the time of her marriage. She died less than two years later, towards the end of May 1747, possibly as the result of childbirth complications following the birth of a second son, Edward (baptised 3 May 1747). This baby died in July 1748, at the beginning of a smallpox outbreak (though not from the disease), and the father appears neither to have remarried in Lowestoft, nor to have stayed in town. The older child’s upbringing seems to have been taken on by his mother’s younger sister, Elizabeth (baptised 1 October 1717),(89) who may have sacrificed her own marital prospects for the well-being of her nephew. A close family bond between the two – even a sense of obligation on the part of the nephew towards his aunt – may help to explain Allen’s comparatively late age at the time of marriage to his first wife, Anne Landifield (he was thirty-seven years old on 12 January 1783).(90) Affection towards Elizabeth Buckle may also perhaps be seen in the underglaze-blue service-ware he is said to have decorated for her during 1768.(91)

Coincidentally, the house on Back Lane had once belonged to a member of Anne Landifield’s family (her father’s uncle, Thomas), but this was not the route by which Robert Allen acquired it (Anne had died in March 1785, aged thirty-six years and he had remarried six months later to Tryphoena Richmond).(92) It had come to him from Elizabeth Buckle, who had been admitted to the property on 19 December 1770 after purchasing it from Thomas Graves (mariner) and his wife, Sarah. The Graveses had, in their own turn, acquired the property on 30 October 1745 from John Landifield, a London wine merchant (and the son of Thomas Landifield), who had been admitted to it on 19 December 1744 following the death of his mother – she having died seven months earlier, in May. Elizabeth Buckle seems to have rented the house to a tenant, Sarah Harris, for some of her period of ownership, but she is described as living in it in a court baron transaction of 17 October 1796 when she requested a re-grant of the property for the term of her life and for it then to pass to Robert Allen of Lowestoft, shopkeeper – a description of the man’s occupation which has been previously commented on elsewhere.(93)

Even more interesting in the web of acquaintance and relationship is another property transaction involving Elizabeth Buckle – this time concerning a house that she owned on the east side of the High Street, opposite the market-place, three plots north of a common score. (94) At the same court baron, of October 1796, that had devised her house in Back Laneupon Robert Allen following her decease, another transaction reveals that she was confirmed in ownership of the High Street property on evidence given by her nephew, William Buckle, porcelain painter of Old Change, Cheapside, in the City of London. Buckle deposed by letter (his signature being witnessed as authentic by two other porcelain painters, Matthew Fourniss and Christopher Mellor) that his aunt had been in possession of the house for “upwards of forty years last past”. He also formally surrendered any interest that he might have had in the property to his aunt (using Robert Allen as his attorney). After the court had accepted William Buckle’s deposition, the house was immediately surrendered by Elizabeth Buckle and conveyed to John Chambers, a Lowestoft merchant and the husband of Philip Walker’s daughter, Mary.

William Buckle, porcelain painter, was the son of Elizabeth Buckle’s younger brother, William. The latter had been baptised on 4 November 1722 and the court deposition referred to in the paragraph above describes him as a yeoman at the time of his decease – but this does not necessarily mean that he was involved in agriculture (the term “yeoman” was sometimes used by urban craftsmen and tradesmen as a means of social elevation).(95) There are no positively identifiable Lowestoft parish register transactions for this branch of the Buckle family other than William the father’s baptism, which may mean that its members either lived in one of the adjacent parishes, simply slipped through the registration process, or became Nonconformists.(96) The “porcelain painter” reference, however, is extremely interesting, for it seems very likely that William Buckle the younger had trained at the Lowestoft factory (perhaps alongside his cousin, Robert Allen) before moving off at some stage to make a living in the City of London.(97) If his father had married at about the average age for the time, in 1746 or 1747, a first or only child might well have been born a year or so later – which would have made him (or her) two or three years younger than Robert Allen. 

This is all speculative, of course, but it does seem that there is some kind of “in-house” link regarding William Buckle’s acquisition of the skills required to become a porcelain painter. And if he was proficient enough afterwards to hold his own in the country’s great centre of commerce and fashion, may he not therefore be considered as a possibility for the title of “The Tulip Painter”.(98) He would probably have been in his mid twenties by 1774, the earliest year associated with the anonymous artist’s work, and he might well have migrated to London by about 1780 – the year given for the cessation of decoration in the distinctive and particular style. Furthermore, if he was drawing on personal knowledge of his aunt’s ownership of the High Street house, as cited two paragraphs above, it would seem to suggest that he must have been well into his forties when he made his deposition. And appointing his cousin, Robert Allen, as his representative in the confirmation-of-title process would appear to suggest some degree of close acquaintanceship and trust between the two men.

Illustration 13 - Polychrome inkwell decorated by the “Tulip Painter” and marked on the under-side of the base with Elizabeth Buckle’s name and the year 1775.

There is further comment to be added regarding Robert Allen’s first wife, Anne Landifield. The possibility of her being a decorator at the factory has been mooted and reference given to a coffee pot made by an acquaintance, decorated by Anne herself for a brother, and bearing the initials D.L on the under-side of the base.(99) The letters were said to have stood for Daniel Landerfield [sic], but no one of that name features in the Lowestoft parish registers. Ann Landifield did, however, have a younger brother Dixon, who was baptised on 5 August 1750, so it possible that he was the person for whom the pot was made. His Christian name derived from his mother’s surname, for it was as Anne Dixon, daughter of a local mariner, that she had married Thomas Landifield on 23 December 1742. Her husband was himself from a long-established maritime family (which included Trinity House pilots among its members), but his burial registration of 3 December 1753 describes him as a grocer.(100)

Conclusion

As a final comment, the writers would like to focus on a statement cited earlier from two newspapers of the time, whereby the hope was expressed during the mid/late 1930s that the factory’s kiln might be preserved as part of the town’s heritage. This was never to happen, mainly because the Second World War interposed and effectively negated any possibility of it going ahead. In the years following the end of the war, Lowestoft was faced with a major task of reconstruction resulting from extensive bomb damage – and preservation of a derelict factory premises dating back to the second half of the eighteenth century must have been of very low priority, when set against more pressing needs. In the event, as a result of both contingency and short-sighted policy, the town did not rise gloriously from its ashes, but (as with so many other places throughout the UK) underwent redevelopment of a banal and inferior kind. Among a number of casualties of the post-war clearance mentality that prevailed in local government in Lowestoft at the time (in common with nearly everywhere else) was the remnant of its soft-paste porcelain works.

Illustration 14 - A map of the Lowestoft factory environment and associated buildings during the second half of the 18th century.

Illustrations (extended captions)

1. A view of the middle section of Lowestoft’s High Street, produced in ink-and wash by local artist and porcelain decorator, Richard Powles, in 1784.  The focal point is Lion Score (later renamed Crown Score) and liberties have been taken with the perspective by expanding it to left and right. A mixture of Georgian buildings and earlier ones, with upgraded facades, is observable. The inn sign visible on the left is that of The Queen’s Head, which stood further to the west, in a side-street, and was where the local assembly room was located – at no great distance from the porcelain factory. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the North Suffolk Record Office – now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich. 

2. This ink-and-wash study of the Lowestoft low lighthouse and beach, also executed by Richard Powles in 1784, shows a variety of fishing and trading craft, as well as bathing machines. The single-masted vessel in the middle of the picture is the revenue cutter, Argus. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the North Suffolk Record Office – now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

3. A nineteenth century water-colour view of the porcelain factory, after it had been converted to a malthouse, showing its south-western aspect. The kiln’s chimney is the dominant feature, with heat from the internal furnace used for roasting barley rather than baking clay. For topographical location, see illustration 14, nos. 6 and 7.

4.  The landscape features on the Warner jug are fully explained in end-note 28. Variations of the scene, featuring the mill and cottage (but not the view of Lowestoft itself), are also to be observed on other Lowestoft pieces both blue-and-white and polychrome. Image reproduced with the kind permission of the Norwich Castle Museum.

5.  The factory buildings shown here fronting Crown Street (formerly Bell Lane), in this late Victorian/Edwardian-period view, leave no doubt as to their domestic origins and, with their brick-and-cobble bond, are typical of much of the vernacular architecture to be found in Lowestoft at the time. The one-time Errington property is on the right-hand side of the picture (as viewed), the Neal one on the left. Part of the former has been “cut” by the photographer, but its cross-wing can just be discerned on the far right of the picture. Only the right-hand half of the Neal cottage was used for factory purposes; the left-hand section was a normal dwelling. See illustration 14, nos. 6 and 7.

6. A drawing of c. 1905 by Lowestoft architect and surveyor, H.C.H. Blyth, depicting the factory’s frontage onto Crown Street. It clearly shows that only half of the old Neal family property constituted part of the premises and it includes the whole of the Errington cottage, with the cross-wing referred to in the previous illustration’s caption.  The upper doorway and adjacent derrick reflect function as a malthouse, after porcelain production had ceased, being the means of moving barley and malt in and out of the building.

7. The present-day junction of Thurston Road with Factory Street. The empty space, next to the block of cottages in the middle of the picture, was once occupied by four terraced almshouses known as St. Martin’s Hospital. The taller building (to the right of the cottages), with rearward extension, is Crown Street Hall – once Lowestoft’s first purpose-built theatre and now converted into two flats (also, see illustration no. 10).

8.  The Lowestoft tithe barn dates from c. 1600 and is one of the town’s important listed buildings (radio-carbon dating of its ground-floor timbers show that the trees were felled during the winter of 1609-10. Though completely surrounded now by more recent development, it once helped to define Lowestoft’s “soft” urban edge where housing and countryside gently merged. The high-rise building, partly seen on the extreme left of the picture, is a block of flats constructed in the 1960s  (and due for demolition) on the site of the porcelain factory’s barn and yard. Robert Browne’s house and yard occupied the open space beside the tithe barn (a small part of it taken up by a rubbish skip, at the time the picture was taken). See illustration 14, no. 3.

9. The only remaining part of Goose Green, not built upon – known today as St. Margaret’s Plain. The First and Lastpublic house, in the middle of the picture, stands on the site of William Winstanley’s beerhouse, The Keel. Obed Aldred’s House on the Green once stood behind the trees on the left of the view seen here. Goose Green was the only part of town where the birds were once allowed to graze and it sat next door to Fair Green, where the annual fairs were held. The car parking area seen was probably more a part of Fair Green than of Goose Green itself.

10. The bulk of the Crown Artist Brush works, as seen here, is of 19th century construction, with the water-supply tank for the former brewery being plainly visible high up on the building’s street-frontage. The extreme left-hand side of the picture is where the two cottages, purchased in 1754 and 1770 respectively (see illustrations no. 5 and 6), once stood on the ground now occupied by the single-storey structure and the parking-spaces fronting it. The white building next to the factory, in the middle distance, is Crown Street Hall (see also illustration no. 7).

11. Philip Walker’s house at Gunton: the building dates from the early eighteenth century, with a later fashionable doorcase, and has long been known as Kingsmead (No. 122 Yarmouth Road). Modern development (ironically, in debased mock-Georgian style) has seriously compromised its integrity, but the elegant appearance may still be appreciated. 

12. The lower half of a painted glass window, by Robert Allen: to be found on the south side of the chancel in St. Margaret’s parish church, Lowestoft (it was once set in the main east window). Though lacking in the sophistication of a genuine glass artist, Allen has still managed to produce an interesting and attractive piece of work. The central (and highest) one of the three main panels shows the crucifixion, the lower left Christ talking to the Samaritan woman at the well (John, 4. 7-30.) and the lower right Christ healing a blind man (Mark, 8. 22-26; John, 9. 1-7.). Other painted window-glass by Allen is to be found in the parish churches of St. Ethelbert, Thurton, and St. Gervase & St. Protase, Little Plumstead (both in South Norfolk). 

13. A polychrome inkwell, decorated by the “Tulip Painter” and marked on the under-side of the base with Elizabeth Buckle’s name and the year 1775. Could it have been produced by William Buckle for his aunt? Image reproduced with the kind permission of Geoffrey Godden, in whose collection it once was. Since being stolen some years ago, this unique item has failed to re-appear. 

14. A map of the factory environment and associated buildings, showing the area’s layout during the second half of the eighteenth century and indicating key locations and the names of people connected with them. Structures shown in black are those associated directly with the factory (one way or another) or with the tithe barn estate.

End-notes

1. Borsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989).

2. Gillingwater, E., An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (London, 1790), p. 51. Hereafter, Gillingwater.

3.  Butcher, D., Lowestoft 1550-1750: Development and Change in a Suffolk Coastal Town (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 321. Hereafter, Butcher. 

4. Gillingwater, p. 51. There would have been periodic stops along the route, to change horses and rest passengers.

5. The term was first coined by the American sociologist, Veblen Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study off Institutions (New York, 1902).

6. Two of the best books on the subject are Weatherill, L., Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain London, 1988 - 2nd ed. 1996 - and Peck, L.L., Consuming Splendour Cambridge, 2005).

7. Butcher, pp. 104-5.

8. Ibid., p. 123.

9. Hard-paste porcelain was fired at about 1350°C to 1450°C, soft-paste at about 1100°C. The former variety requires greater technical expertise for successful production. The Lowestoft soft-paste body was made from local clay found in Gunton, with the addition of calcined cattle bone and flint (the latter ground down by milling into a fine powder).

10. The cliff-line itself is a possibility, enabling easy access to deeper and finer deposits than those nearer the surface of the ground. The late Ernie Childs of Great Yarmouth Pottery demonstrated that pottable clay, producing a sufficient body and able to withstand firing, can be found in the local cliff strata. In 1988, he produced commemorative mugs and plates as a fund-raising venture for the Corton Playing Field committee, using clay from Corton cliffs to produce the latter (Corton being the parish immediately north of Gunton).

11. Butcher, pp. 62 and 214. The Lowestoft North Roads, as they were known, had been an important anchorage from the fourteenth century onwards. Some sense of this is conveyed in Richard Powles’s view of the High Lighthouse in 1784 – an ink-and-wash study forming part of the Isaac Gillingwater collection of illustrations: North Suffolk Record Office (Lowestoft) 193/2/1. Hereafter, NSRO(L). Now among the ancient records moved to Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, during 2020. The view is similar in concept to that used on the famous “Trinity House” polychrome mug/tankard, made at the factory during the 1780s or 90s. 

12.The matter of where the technical knowledge derived from has been variously speculated on. S. Smith, Lowestoft Porcelain in the Norwich Castle Museum, vol. 1 (Norwich, 1975), pp. 8-9 (hereafter, Smith 1), considers the possibility of Robert Browne Snr. having gained inside experience at the Bow factory. Reference here is also made to the claim in Gillingwater, pp. 112-13, that workers from London were “poached” in order to begin a preliminary attempt at manufacture in Gunton under the direction of Hewling Luson, lord of the manor there. 

13. Gillingwater, p. 112; G. Godden, The Illustrated Guide to Lowestoft Porcelain (London, 1969), p. 4, and  hereafter, Godden; Smith 1, pp. 2 and 9.

14. W.A. Shaw (ed.), Calendar of Treasury Books, v, ii (London, 1911), p. 1219, and vi (London, 1913), p. 65. Not only did the town have specified rights of export and import on various commodities (including coal), it had its own resident customs officers to scrutinise the loading and unloading of cargoes.

15.Butcher, pp. 93 and 183. Surviving sixteenth century wills show that a number of Lowestoft’s wealthier inhabitants left billet-wood as fuel bequests to the poorer members of society. Billet fires can be seen curing speets of red herring on the blue-and-white mug made for John Cooper in 1768 (see Smith 1, p. 45).

16. NRSO(L), 194/A10/5-41. Now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

17. NRSO(L), 194/A10/5-17. Now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

18. NRSO(L), 454/1. Now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

19. Butcher, pp. 18, 19 and 84.  

20. It was the only area in the parish where geese were allowed to graze. It was also variously known as Fair Green (being the venue for the town’s two annual fairs) and Mill Green (after the construction of a windmill in the south-western corner, during the first half of the seventeenth century)

21. The harbour at Lowestoft was not constructed until 1827-30.

22. The leet court was held annually on the first Saturday in Lent, in one or other of the town’s premier inns. It adjudicated upon matters of misdemeanour and infringement of the manor’s rules. Up until the middle of the eighteenth century, strict control was exercised as to what could and couldn’t be done on the six parish commons, but restrictions gradually loosened thereafter. All leet court proceedings were recorded in the same books as those which contain court baron business.

23. The other possibility is that the timber was for use in building work at the factory.

24. Smith 1, p. 59.

25. Two surveyors of highways were appointed annually by the parish vestry and the post (largely an honorary one) was usually held by the more substantial male members of the local community. The Watering, or Common Watering Place, was a large pond at the southern extremity of Goose Green, close to where the present-day Thurston Road meets St. Peter’s Street. As well as being a watering-place for livestock, it had also once been the site of the town’s ducking-stool.

26. Plaisir House, a sheltered accommodation complex, occupies the site today. 

27. The only member of the aristocracy who seems to have adopted Lowestoft as a summer resort was Charles Sloane, the third Baron Cadogan, who built an impressive cliff-top house at the northern end of the High Street in 1789 (the present-day No. 3, Beacon House). His name features among the subscribers listed at the front of Edmund Gillingwater’s history of the town.

28. S. Smith, Lowestoft Porcelain in the Norwich Castle Museum, vol. 2 (Norwich, 1985), pp. 39 and 97 (hereafter, Smith 2). The mill is one that stood in Gunton, near the junction of Grene Score (now Links Road) with the main north-south trackway across Gunton Heath (now Corton Road). It occupied a site where one of a pair of beacons, warning of coastal attack, had formerly stood. This had been set up on the order of the Marquis of Northampton, in 1552, in tandem with another on the north cliff at Lowestoft. The scene on the jug shows the Warren House (on Gunton Denes) in the right foreground, the mill in a central elevated position, and the town of Lowestoft in the left background (the spire of St. Margaret’s Church is plainly visible). In general terms, the view is topographically accurate, though with compressed lateral dimensions – the cleft in the ground between the town and the mill almost certainly representing the access track from the cliff-top to the beach-area at Lowestoft’s northern end. This was known as Gunton Score (now The Ravine).

29. Smith 1, p. 11.

30. Godden, p. 7; Smith 1, pp. 11, 58 and 59. The latter publication, p. 30, also reveals that during the 1760s Philip Walker owned a brigantine, the Philip and Mary, which took on Norwich merchandise at Great Yarmouth. It was commanded by a Lowestoft mariner, Flint Ramsey (als. Ramsdale).

31. Smith 1, p. 58. As previously explained in text, Lowestoft had been granted port status in 1679 (after three hundred or more years of independent trading, which flouted Great Yarmouth’s status as head-port and its theoretical control of the Suffolk town’s traffic). Any porcelain destined for shipment would have been packed in straw, inside casks. Coopering was a major land-based trade in the town, making the containers required for cured fish and other merchandise. Smith 1, p. 58, also makes reference to the Yarmouth Collector of Customs objecting to the shipment of Lowestoft porcelain “coastwise”, in January 1782, because of possible revenue fraud. The real objection, however, was probably both procedural and economic. The Yarmouth authorities did not like the Suffolk haven’s degree of independence, which they saw as a threat to their own town’s hegemony.

32. Gillingwater, p. 113. The London warehouse has long been identified as that belonging to Clark Durnford, in Cheapside. It would not have handled Lowestoft wares alone, but also those of other factories. Gillingwater was probably grandifying the local product by suggesting exclusive retailing in the capital.

33. Among the subscribers to the book were two men directly connected with the porcelain factory: Philip Walker and Richard Powles (the latter then living in Helsingførs, in Denmark). Three other subscribers either leased premises to the company (James Brame) or purchased parts of the factory estate after manufacture had ceased (John Elph and William Cleveland). Obed Aldred’s nephew Jabez is listed as subscribing, and so is a member of the Errington family (George Errington Jnr. of Great Yarmouth). Robert Reeve, whose manuscript history is referred to in en. 48, purchased four copies of the book, while Scrivener Capon, the man who introduced bathing machines to Lowestoft, had one.

34. Gillingwater, pp. 112 & 113.

35. In order to prevent an excessive number of end-notes being generated, archival reference numbers for individual manor court minute books will not be given. The series was previously referred to in notes 16 & 17.

36. Bell Lane took its name from The Bell inn, which stood on the southern corner of the roadway’s junction with the High Street. The building is still standing today – a late sixteenth century structure long divided into a shop unit and a private dwelling. The modern name, Crown Street, derives from The Crown inn, which stands on the other corner of the junction  – currently, empty and unused.

37. A number of the houses in Lowestoft shared wells with neighbouring properties, specific rights of access being laid down both in property transfer records and also in people’s wills. The spring-line was located at the level where the surface sands and gravels met the underlying, impervious glacial clay. A convenient supply of water would have been an important factor in the preparation of clay for potting and modelling and also for other factory processes.

38. The mortgaging of property in Lowestoft, as a means of raising capital, was widely practised. See Butcher, pp. 145-52. The varying amounts of money raised do not usually reflect the value of the individual properties, but rather the sums required by those borrowing.

39. There were two ways in which a copyholder in Lowestoft could forfeit his or her property. One was neglecting to keep a premises in good repair (as outlined in text), the other failure to carry out transfer in the presence of two other copyholders.

40. Aldred was a bricklayer by trade. So was his father Caleb, who died in December 1723, aged thirty-nine years. His burial entry in the parish registers makes reference to his occupation; so does his will of 14 October 1723 (Norfolk Record Office – hereafter, NRO – 201 Megoe). The term bricklayer, at this time, does not simply imply building skills; it also describes a man involved in the manufacture of bricks. Smith 1, p. 3, says that Caleb Aldred’s occupation was not known.

41. Women holding property in their own right is a noticeable feature of Lowestoft society during pre-industrial times. This may have been the result of enhanced social status caused by them having to act as surrogates for men while many of the latter were absent on fishing or trading voyages. See Butcher, p. 159. 

42. This almost certainly means that the dwelling was the result of subdivision, which had taken place at some stage and not been recorded.

43. The name is Obed and not “Obediah”. Obed was the father of Jesse and therefore grandfather of King David. The Aldreds were a family of Dissenters and the use of Old Testament names for their children is noticeable. Obed Aldred’s grandfather, Jabez, and his five siblings had all been baptised at the Independent Chapel in Great Yarmouth during the 1650s and 60s.

44. House-sharing is a recognisable feature of Lowestoft’s pattern of accommodation. See Butcher, pp. 80-2. James Bull was the younger brother of William Bull Jnr. (carter), the man who had purchased the middle part of the Tithe Barn estate in March 1735. He was thirty-eight years of age in September 1754.

45. Until the small proto-Methodist community formed during the 1760s, Lowestoft’s long-established Nonconformist element in the population was mainly of Independent (Congregationalist) persuasion. There were also one or two Quaker families.

46. The almshouses were known as St. Martin’s Hospital, after the founder Martin Brown. He was born in Lowestoft, but had made a fortune as a merchant in Rotterdam and endowed accommodation for four poor women in his native town. The apartments, consisting of a ground-floor room each and chamber above, were built in 1716 under the supervision of Brown’s relative, James Wilde.

47. One aspect of Lowestoft’s existence often overlooked (largely because of the dominance of maritime activity) is the fact that it was the market-centre for most of the Hundred of Mutford and Lothingland. The grant of the right to hold a market in the town had been granted to the lord of the manor, John de Dreux, Earl of Brittany, on 15 November 1308 (see The National Archives, Kew: PRO, Charter Rolls, C53/188).

48. He had acquired the holding from Thomas Mewse of Bermondsey (house carpenter), member of a well-known family of Lowestoft butchers. The manor court minute book recording this particular transaction is missing, but the information is given in R. Reeve, ‘A History of Lowestoft and Lothingland’, 4 vols (c. 1810), iv, p. 237. Once NSRO(L), 193/3/1-4, and now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich. Robert Reeve was a local lawyer and steward of the manor. His manuscript is an important source document.

49. The impropriation, and the right to appoint vicars, had been in the hands of St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Smithfield – the latter privilege also shared with the Diocese of Norwich.

50. Reeve, iv, p. 235. The will itself was written on 12 September 1650 and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 30 September 1652. Prior to the Churches’ tenure, the impropriation had belonged to a London family named Burnell – relatives of the Baspole family of Gunton.

51. Gillingwater, pp. 247-53.

52. The great tithes of a parish were of corn, hay and timber – those producing the greatest amount of money. In Lowestoft’s case, the term referred to corn alone, the parish having only very limited woodland capacity and not producing notable quantities of hay.

53. It is interesting to note that William Bull Snr’s. daughter, Sarah (born in August 1711), had married Obed Aldred’s older brother Caleb (also a bricklayer by trade) on 13 January 1730, thus making her Obed’s sister-in-law. Smith 1, p. 22, incorrectly gives her status as that of a widow. Caleb and Obed Aldred’s parents had twelve children in all. Caleb was the oldest (baptised 25 May 1706) and Obed the youngest (baptized 1 July 1721). William Bull Jnr. and his wife, Margaret, lived at The White Horse inn – a building situated on the corner of Fair Lane (later Dove Street) and West Lane (later White Horse Lane) and therefore in close proximity to what became the porcelain factory.

54. His dwelling was the eighteenth century house which stands on the south side of Gunton Church Lane, near the junction with Yarmouth Road (the name for this particular stretch of the A12). It has long been known as Kingsmead (No. 122 Yarmouth Road). Walker manufactured good-quality bricks and tiles at Gunton, and he and Obed Aldred also collaborated in this line of business in Lowestoft. A manor court entry of 1 April 1761 records that both men had written permission from Sir Thomas Allin of Somerleyton Hall, lord of the manor, to enclose ten acres on Drake’s Heath (one of the seven manorial commons), lately purchased by them and on which they had built a brick-kiln. They were also granted the right to dig clay there. Experience of brick-making would have given both men knowledge of firing techniques and kiln-management.

55. The omission of Robert Williams from this transaction would seem to suggest that he was a “sleeping partner” in the porcelain-making venture, with a financial interest only. Robert Browne Jnr., son of the man who was the technical brains at the factory, was obviously assuming an increasing role in its running. His father died in February 1771. Philip Walker, with his 50% stake in the business, would appear to have been the senior partner – this perhaps reflecting both the scale of his financial involvement and the fact that the clay was dug from land he rented at Gunton. The use of the title Walker & Company for the enterprise is also indicative of his importance.

56. This was a facility for communal use, located at the junction of Back Lane, West Lane and Frary Lane (now Wesleyan Chapel Lane), the maintenance of which was the responsibility of the parish’s two churchwardens. Its former position now lies somewhere underneath Jubilee Way. The barn itself belonged to James Brame, who rented it to the factory proprietors (see Smith 1, p. 26). It was situated in the north-eastern corner of a piece of land known as Pond Pightle, at the junction of Back Lane (later Chapel Street) and a trackway onto Goose Green (later to be known as Factory Street). Again, there was a possible denominational link in the leasing of the barn in that members of the Brame family, like the Aldreds, were long-established Nonconformists.

57. Smith 1, p. 26 (citing information collected by the nineteenth century writer, William Chaffers). Proximity to the well would have ensured the ready supply of water needed. It was far safer in eighteenth century Lowestoft to use the water from wells for utilitarian purposes rather than for drinking, because of the pollution caused by the dumping of perishable waste and sewage in the streets.

58. Smith 1, pp. 9 and 16. Browne’s origins are not known, but it is possible that he was the son of John and Elizabeth Browne from the neighbouring parish of Kirkley, whose admission (with children) into the parish of Lowestoft is recorded in surviving settlement records for the year 1715. See NSRO(L), 01/13/1/3. There is a John Brown, carter, whose burial was registered on 24 May 1750 and who may have been the incomer referred to. If Robert Browne were indeed a blacksmith by occupation, it is conceivable that a carter father might well have had his son apprenticed into an allied trade. Another possible factor linking the two men is that Robert Browne had his own first son baptised with the name of John (10 May 1732). The Elizabeth Browne, widow, who was buried on 18 December 1759, may well have been the relict of John and the mother of Robert.

59. The building was a cottage subdivided into two parts. It stood on land that had originally been part of a half-acre messuage containing one dwelling only. Subdivision of the plot had ensued in 1707, producing two further dwellings, of which that belonging to Matthew White (and his wife) was one. Edmund Gillingwater Snr. had come into Lowestoft from Beccles in 1719 and married into the long-established Frary family (blacksmiths) in June 1729. His sons, Isaac and Edmund, followed their father into the barbering trade – the former staying in his native town and carrying on the occupation for the whole of his adult life. Both men were competent antiquarians. Isaac Gillingwater produced a fine, three-volume manuscript entitled ‘A History of Lowestoft and Lothingland’, with an accompanying collection of illustrations (including local views by Richard Powles, two of which have been used in this article) – see NSRO(L), 193/1/1-3 and 193/2/1 (now Suffolk Archives, Ipswich). It was never published, but his younger brother drew heavily on it for his own An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790). He had, for many years, operated as a stationer-bookseller in the Norfolk town of Harleston. For further information on Edmund Gillingwater Jnr., see The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 22 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 287-8. The biography reproduced here was written by the Suffolk historian, J.M. Blatchly.

60. Godden, p. 38; Smith 2, p. 30.

61. Dated 18 January 1787 (with a codicil of 5 September 1787) and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 27 August 1788. See National Archives, Kew: PCC Wills, PROB 11/1168.

62. Smith 2, p. 14.

63. Obed Aldred’s will shows that his wife, Triphoena, and Robert Browne Jnr. were co-executors and that Robert Reeve, author of the manuscript history referred to in en. 48 above, was one of the witnesses. Triphoena Aldred’s own will of 20 October 1778 (proved in the Suffolk Archdeaconry Court on 21 February 1791) made Robert Browne Jnr. her executor and had Edward Dinmore 2 (a factory decorator and near-neighbour) as one of the witnesses. Both testators signed their wills with a mark (X), which may mean that they were illiterate. On the other hand, literate people are sometimes known to have made a mark either for convenience or because of a fragile state of health at the time the document was signed and attested.

64. Dinmore was the son of Edward and Margaret Dinmore, Bly the child of John and Laetitia Bly. The number 2 has been used to identify these men because each of them was in the second generation, out of three, bearing identical Christian names. Dinmore and Susanna Stevenson are named as tenants of Obed Aldred in the latter’s will of 18 January 1787.

65. Smith 1, p. 8, and 2, p. 29. Apprenticeships at this time, in a number of trades, could be as long as eight to ten years, depending on the age of the child. Childhood as we know it today, with full-time education and protracted home-life, did not exist. It only developed after the Forster Act of 1870 began the process of compulsory schooling for all children.

66. The Fisher family was well known for its ownership of theatres in the market towns of Norfolk and Suffolk (one still exists in the town of Bungay, for instance) and operated them on a rotational basis.

67. The 1840s marked the beginning of decades of rapid expansion for Lowestoft, largely because of the activities of the contractor, Samuel Morton Peto, who improved the harbour facilities and established rail links with Norwich(1847) and Ipswich (1859).

68. The 1890 edition of Cook’s Directory of Lowestoft and Kirkley shows that the small terrace of cottages was still standing, situated between Nos. 16 and 18 Crown Street. 

69. The Lowestoft Journal, 5 and 12 December 1936, and The Lowestoft Mercury, 20 February 1937.

70. The Eastern Daily Press, 6 March 1950.

71. This roadway was situated immediately to the south of the works, on part of Goose Green. It became integrated into Lowestoft’s street layout during the early decades of the nineteenth century.

72. Gillingwater, p. 112; Godden, p. 2; Smith 1, p. 2. Yet again, Nonconformist associations manifest themselves: on 19 August 1761, Hewling Luson and his son (of the same name) were admitted, along with six other local men, as trustees of the Lowestoft Independent Chapel. See Gillingwater, p. 357.

73. Surviving day-books are rare. The Lowestoft one began its life as a “woollen burials” register, recording the names of people who were buried in linen shrouds in contravention of the Woollen Burials Act of 1678 and whose relatives paid the stipulated £5 exemption fine. See NRO, PD 589/3.

74. Mrs. Joan Bennett (in the course of conversations with one of the authors of this paper) has commented on the Bournes as makers of salt-glazed wares and says that she and other Lowestoft specialists have long suspected a possible connection with such manufacture. One branch of the Bourne family, of course, was that which established the pottery at Denby, in Derbyshire.

75. NSRO(L), 01/13/1/3: the Lowestoft Settlement and Apprenticeship Book, 1696-1785. Now, Suffolk Archives, Ipswich.

76. Smith 1, pp. 3 and 4. Reference is also made to Dinmore’s absconding with one of Walker’s female servants and stealing both money and a silver watch from his employer. Walker’s soap-making enterprise was almost certainly carried out in tandem with his manufacture of bricks, the wood ash from the kiln(s) serving to provide one of the major constituents of soap. The other main ingredient was animal fat (especially from cattle) – a plentiful by-product of Lowestoft’s butchery trade.

77. Smith 2, p. 17.

78. A sojourner was someone from outside a parish, who was temporarily resident there. The term tended to be applied to men rather than to women.

79.   There are a number of examples of this occurring to Lowestoft men over the years – especially those who went to sea. There are also frequent references to “strangers” from other places dying in the town. Sometimes their names are recorded in the parish registers, sometimes not.

80. His occupation probably means that he was producing the material from which fishing nets were made, but he may also have been involved in rope manufacture as well. Hemp fibre was what the twine itself was spun from.

81. Godden, pp. 35-7; Smith 2, pp. 16 and 17.

82.  Smith 2, pp. 16 and 17. Interestingly, just as his father had taken on the young John Stevenson, Robert Browne Jnr. took on an apprentice himself in 1781 – a boy named James Lane. The Lowestoft Settlement and Apprenticeship Book does not state whether or not this was for training at the factory, but it is possible that it was. 

83. Godden, p. 27; Smith 2, p. 30.

84. William Bull’s father had come into Lowestoft from Beccles at some point during during 1703 and married a local woman, Sarah Annison, on 5 September that same year. William Jnr. was baptised on 12 July 1705. Margaret Bull’s house, as referred to in the manor court records, was The White Horse inn, which she had been admitted to at the age of seventeen (on 5 January 1728) by the terms of her father John Frary’s will. This hostelry had once been one of the town’s premier inns, but had declined in importance by the beginning of the eighteenth century. It stood only a very short distance from the porcelain factory.

85. Edmund Gillingwater Snr’s. house was situated about halfway along the north side of Tyler’s Lane (now Compass Street). The site today lies somewhere beneath the western extremity of the Lowestoft Town Hall complex and its adjoining car park.

86. Godden, p. 34; Smith 1, p. 13.

87. It derived its name from a pond generally known as The Watering (see en. 25). The word pightle itself (occasionally rendered pikle) is an old English one for a small field or enclosure, sometimes of irregular shape. It has been claimed as an East Anglian dialect term, but it was in general use at one time over a much wider area of lowland England.

88. Her father, Nicholas, was a boatwright and his father (also Nicholas) a fisherman. Boatwrights customarily made smaller craft, shipwrights the larger vessels. Ann Buckle’s baptismal registration of 29 September 1715 mistakenly refers to her as Ann Bollard – the surname being that of her mother, before marriage. Her mother’s brother Nicholas had married Elizabeth C(h)andler in October 1710 and the couple had a child (yet another Nicholas!) baptised on 22 December 1715.

89. Smith 2, p. 14.

90. The average age for both men and women, at the time of first marriage, would have been round about twenty-five years. The Landifields were a prominent local Nonconformist family, consisting mainly of mariners and fishermen. They can be traced back in Lowestoft to the time of the 1524 Subsidy and early spellings of the name (Lawndyvyle, Lawndevile) suggest possible French origins.

91. Godden, p. 33; Smith 1, p. 46.

92. Anne Landifield was related to Obed and Triphoena Aldred by marriage. Her mother Anne (née Dixon) was the cousin of Triphoena Aldred’s mother (also named Triphoena, and also née Dixon). Two mariner-fishermen brothers, Robert and Samuel Dixon, had married two half-sisters, Anne and Triphoena Mayes (also from maritime families), to create the connection. Both couples had once lived next door to each other on the south side of Blue Anchor Lane (now Duke’s Head Street) close to the market place’s northern entry.

93. Smith 1, p. 14.

94. The scores at Lowestoft are footways (though three of them are also used by vehicles) which link the top of the cliff with the denes and beach area below. They began life as surface-water drainage channels down the face of the cliff, but were adopted as a means of access and passage, eventually being walled and paved (and stepped also, in a number of cases). The word “score” derives from the Old Norse skora, meaning “to cut” or “to incise”. The score near to the house owned by Elizabeth Buckle has long been known as Maltsters Score.

95. The evidence given also makes reference to the deponent’s grandfather, Nicholas Buckle, boatwright. The Buckles were a long-established Lowestoft family, with antecedents going back to the sixteenth century. A much earlier Nicholas had married Elizabeth Barnard (member of a family of shipwrights) in November 1588.

96. Another possibility is that the father married a woman from outside Lowestoft in her home parish. If William Buckle Jnr. had been the first-born child, he was very likely (by a custom of the time) to have been baptised in his mother’s parish of origin. A search of the following transcribed registers belonging to parishes close to Lowestoft has not revealed traces of the Buckles: Carlton Colville, Corton, Gunton, Hopton, Kessingland, Kirkley, Oulton, Pakefield and Somerleyton. The Blundeston and Lound registers were not studied because they have not been transcribed. If the family had become Nonconformists, baptism details would be impossible to trace (the Lowestoft chapel’s register not having survived) – though it is interesting to note that certain of the town’s Dissenters (such as Obed Aldred) continued to use the Anglican rite in their local parish church.

97. The men who authenticated his signature in the Lowestoft manor court transaction lived in the same area – all classified today as part of the postal area EC4. Buckle’s home was in Old Change Court, near St. Paul’s Cathedral; Matthew Fourniss lived at no. 4, Crown Court, Great Trinity Lane, Queenhithe (near the Mansion House); and Christopher Mellor resided at No. 2, Bell Court, Doctors’ Commons (Paternoster Row) – again, close to St. Paul’s. With his home address in Queenhithe, Fourniss may have had a connection with Miles Mason, and it is possible that the other two men were also working for the latter during his pre-Liverpool and Lane Delph days. All three of them (especially Fourniss) also lived near to where Clark Durnford acted as a wholesaler of Lowestoft porcelain, from his premises at No. 4, Great Thomas the Apostle. And even when the latter relocated to Knightrider Street, they were still within easy walking distance. Is there the possibility, then, of Lowestoft blanks having once been decorated in London by the men in question?

98. A list of possible identities for this important decorator at the factory is to be found in Godden, pp. 50-3. If it were possible to carry out a comparison, any known surviving Miles Mason pieces from his London enterprise, which have floral decoration, might shed light on Tulip Painter motifs. Of particular interest also in any suggestion of William Buckle being the Tulip Painter is the inkwell (once in the Godden collection) made for Elizabeth Buckle in 1775.

99. Smith 2, pp. 12, 14 and 16. The last page cited has a specific reference to a sale catalogue of 14 August 1873, which gives details of the coffee pot.

100. The limited number of Christian names used at the time sometimes causes problems when identifying members of specific family groups. Ann Landifield’s father, Thomas, was the son of Cornelius Landifield (mariner) and it was his father’s brother, Thomas (also a mariner), who had owned the house in Back Lane eventually acquired by Elizabeth Buckle.