The founding of Armitage potbank

When Bill Wright wrote ‘Notes for a history of Armitage’ in 1950 he included a chapter entitled ‘The Armitage Sanitary Pottery’. He had joined the pottery in 1918 as an office boy and by 1950 he had become Sales Manager of what was then called Edward Johns Co. Ltd., (and later Armitage Ware and Armitage Shanks). As such he had access to documents that have since been lost and had spoken to people like Richard Marshall Salt who not only worked at the pottery for about 50 years but whose father had actually run the pottery in 1851. The documents to which he was able to refer – the actual purchase of the land from November 1817 together with the loan agreement for £4,000 also from November 1817 and a schedule of buildings from the 1820s – have all now been lost. (Or are still somewhere waiting to be found). Richard Salt remembered the ‘original kiln’ with ‘T. B. 1817’ emblazoned in the brickwork which had been knocked down in the late 1800s.

Bill Wright had access to the William Salt Library in Stafford but not, of course, to any documents deposited since the time he did research for his book. These later depositions include a series of miscellaneous records from the Beaudesert Paget family which have a number of documents (D603/X/6) which are entitled ‘Armitage Brickworks’. Although they do cover the brickworks they largely relate to Thomas Bond’s operation of Armitage pottery between 1817 and 1819.

Today we also have the benefit of the internet and particularly the ever-expanding list of newspaper titles from the British Newspaper Archive. The increasing use of optical character recognition (OCR) means that we can now search vast swathes of newspaper reports without having to read every paragraph of a newspaper. Using this OCR search shows us that, in Armitage, Thomas Alldritt was a partner with Thomas Smith until October 1817 as potters. (And as maltsters, brickmakers and corn dealers).

The Armitage Brickworks files give enough information to show that Thomas Bond built houses for his workers that were completed in March 1818. They do not however provide any information to show that he built a kiln. That doesn’t prove that he didn’t, of course. In May 1817 William Conway, a blacksmith from Handsacre, supplied Thomas with a replacement frame and reinforcement bands for a pot oven. So Thomas was repairing at least one kiln. In October 1817 William Conway supplied banding for the hovel, which is the name for the distinctive outer bottle shape of the kiln. This kiln repairing or rebuilding may have been the time that Thomas Bond stamped his name on the kiln. His pottery had two kilns though and only one appears to have had his name on the side. As well as work on the kilns he renovated the slip house, and built a painting shop, dipping house and warehouses.

Bill Wright’s book also included a chapter showing lists of former residents which was essentially extracts from Directories that had been printed in the first half of the 19^th C. The first one to list names of residents in the parish was the 1818 Parson & Bradshaw Staffordshire Directory. It included three names whose occupations were shown as potters – John Alldrett, John Bond and W. Smith. These Directories were the pre-telephone equivalent of the phone book and the Yellow Pages. They were designed to assist businessmen and merchants to identify the major professionals as well as the gentry, clergy and such like. They relied on the compiler having the knowledge of the area which was clearly a difficult proposition for one person and they relied on correspondents supplying information. The 1818 Directory utilised information which was in some cases from six or seven years earlier but missed the names of the other potters.

Between 1800 and 1820 then there were at least six men who ran a pottery business in Armitage:

• John Alldrett
• Thomas Alldrett
• John Bond
• Thomas Bond
• Thomas Smith
• W. Smith

In early 1817 Thomas Bond, who had already run two potteries in Burslem, was renovating and expanding a pottery in Armitage, (as well as working as a brickmaker and maltster).

Thomas Alldritt and Thomas Smith were producing pottery in Armitage in 1817 but their partnership was dissolved on 13^th October of that year.

In November 1817 Thomas Bond bought the land on which the pottery and the malting kiln stood from John Alldrett. Given the Parson and Bradshaw information above this shows that John Alldrett had actually been running the pottery before Thomas Bond. It also suggests that Thomas Alldritt and Thomas Smith had been running a pottery as well. Their venture may have used the same buildings but with their own craftsmen – they had after all shared the malting buildings with Thomas Bond.

Other than the mention of W. Smith in the Parson and Bradshaw Directory there is no other record of a W. Smith in any Armitage records that fit the time period. It is possible that he had been in partnership with John Alldrett.

After breaking his partnership with Thomas Alldritt, Thomas Smith then went into partnership with John Bond as potters until that also ended on 28^th June 1819. John Bond could have meant Thomas’ father, John, or Thomas’ brother, also named John. In newspapers at that time it was usual to recognise the difference by recording the father, John, as John Snr. As John Snr. wasn’t named in the newspaper report on the partnership this suggests that it was Thomas Bond’s brother who had been in partnership with Thomas Smith.

The four, presumably younger, potters found it difficult taking over from their predecessors as all of them became bankrupt before too long – John Bond, Thomas Bond and Thomas Smith in 1819 and Thomas Alldritt in 1824. Thomas Smith in fact entered another pottery partnership in Armitage with three others but this ended in 1822.

The subsequent troubles of Thomas Bond’s pottery and eventual global reach of Edward Johns’ pottery is covered in A History of Armitage Potbank Part 1;1809 – 1900 which is available from the Ridware History Society (RHS) via royfallows@btinternet.com. Book 2 covering the 1900-1945 period is also now available from RHS.