Chapter 3

The Establishment of the Tin-Glazed Earthenware
Pottery Industry at Brislington

The Location of the Pottery

Brislington is now a suburb of Bristol, but in the 17th century it was a village four kilometres (2½ miles) east of the city on the main overland route from Bristol to Bath. It lay in the bottom of a wide, steep-sided valley through which the Brislington Brook flowed north from the eastern end of Dundry Hill to join the River Avon at Crew’s Hole. The village was centred around St. Luke’s church and derived its economy largely from agriculture.

Brislington parish encompassed a large area of land to the north of the village, bounded mainly by a loop of the River Avon which, until the construction of Netham Weir at the beginning of the 19th century, was tidal at this point and navigable by small vessels. This part of the parish, on the south bank of the Avon, was a generally flat spur of land cut by the deep, wooded valley of the Brislington Brook. The area was, and still is, known as St. Anne’s after a holy well, famed for its medicinal properties and many miraculous cures, which was situated on the east side of the valley. A chapel dedicated to the saint was established in the 13th century at the point where the Brislington Brook emerged from the valley, crossed a narrow flood plain and joined the Avon (Fig. 8). In the medieval period the holy well was an important place of pilgrimage: most notably Henry VII ‘rode on pilgrimage to Saint Anne’s in the Wodde’ during his visit to Bristol in 1486 (Bettey 1985, 5).

It was at St. Anne’s that a tin-glazed earthenware pottery was established in the middle of the 17th century and continued in production, under different owners, until at least 1743. It has generally been accepted by authorities on tin-glazed earthenware such as Ray (1968, 47) and Garner and Archer (1972, 52) that the site of the pottery was found during the excavations carried out by W.J. Pountney in 1914. However, a re-examination of the evidence shows that the exact location of the pottery remains open to doubt, as its position has not been confidently located by either archaeological excavation or documentary research.

Dumps of tin-glazed earthenware wasters, which certainly derived from the pottery, have been found in St. Anne’s on a number of occasions. Apart from Pountney’s discoveries in 1914 (discussed below) there have been at least five other recorded discoveries of kiln waste and the circumstances of these are set out in Table 1. The kiln waste recovered in 1975 is considered in detail in Chapter 7 below.

The presence of waste dumps in the area of Wootton Road and around the medieval chapel indicate a concentration of potting activity close to the confluence of the Brislington Brook with the River Avon. Until recently this area had been occupied by buildings and car parks belonging to the St. Anne’s Board Mills factory and now lies below an industrial estate.

From February until the end of June 1914 W.J. Pountney, a member of the family who owned the Bristol Pottery, carried out excavations on the site of St. Anne’s chapel and he was confident that he had found the remains of kilns and buildings which he attributed to the 17th-century pottery. In his book Old Bristol Potteries Pountney briefly described the results of his excavation:

‘Brislington Pottery was built on the site of the Chapel of St. Anne, near the River Avon, and close to the quarry below the hill on which Langton Court stood. When the site was excavated care had to be taken not to dislodge any portion of the walls of the Chapel below it. The Chapel stood upon a mound of soft marly rock, in the middle of a field bounded on the south side by the quarry … and on the east side by the Brislington brook and the mill dam. On the north side was some marsh land of considerable extent, bounded by the River Avon.
On the south side of the Chapel were evidences of many small buildings of the pottery works, including a flue and bed of two slip-kilns. The bed of the slip-kiln was built above a space left for the purpose of a furnace, wherein wood could be consumed, this heat being used to evaporate the moisture contained in the clay after levigation. Another of these slip-kilns was formed in the dwellings or cells of the monks, at the extreme south of the site.
On the south side of the Chapel, and overlapping the wall, about the centre of the building, was a kiln 15 feet in diameter, the round foundation of which still remained in 1914. This kiln-wall was previously discovered by the Rev. A. Richardson, a former Vicar of Brislington, and mistaken for part of the Chapel, and I think described by him, in his writings upon the subject, as the rounded end of the chancel.
On the north side of the Chapel, partly over the outer vault, and partly on the rock, stood a much smaller and probably much earlier kiln, of peculiar construction. The floor is of pennant stone, giving evidence that the fire was placed below it. A flue or draught hole ran upwards through the kiln, the fire being fed from the outside, from one opening in the circle only.
The pottery stables and out-buildings extended towards the north from the outer wall of the Chapel. The floor of these stables was formed of pennant stone, standing edge upwards, like very thin cobbles, ample evidence of their use as a stable being found between the floor and the rock.
Farther to the west of the stable buildings are traces of other potters’ workshops, the foundations being in evidence at the time of the excavation. About 80 or 90 feet from the north wall of the chancel of the Chapel, towards the River Avon, I discovered a well in the graveyard … Around this well was evidence of many other pottery buildings. From this well we obtained the fragment [of delftware] with the head of Queen Anne upon it, also the other fragment … dated 1712, and several pieces of dishes with the tulip pattern.
The whole of the graveyard yielded an enormous amount of fragments of blue and polychrome deflt ware. In fact nearly a quarter of a ton of finished and unfinished fragments was found in this immediate neighbourhood’ (Pountney 1920, 23-27).

Unfortunately no other record of his excavation is known to exist and the only plan showing the results of the work is contained in his book (Pountney 1920, 24) (Fig. 9). All we know with certainty is that Pountney uncovered large quantities of tin-glazed earthenware wasters and kiln furniture and also what he assumed to be the remains of the pottery itself comprising two slip kilns, a circular kiln 15 feet (4.6m) in diameter, a much smaller and apparently earlier circular kiln of unusual construction, together with various stables and outbuildings which he called potters’ workshops. The main building which he identified as the medieval chapel does appear, from his plan, to conform with the dimensions of the chapel of 19 yards by 5 yards given in the 15th century in William Wycestre’s Itinerary (Richardson 1898, 192).

In the light of our present knowledge concerning the kilns used in early tin-glazed earthenware factories, doubt must be cast on Pountney’s analysis of his findings and his assumption that the kilns he had uncovered were used for firing tin-glazed earthenware in the 17th century. He described two of the kilns as being circular whereas it is known from excavations carried out on tin-glazed earthenware pottery sites, and from descriptions and drawings contained in contemporary records, that the kilns used were all of a rectangular plan (see Chapter 2 above).

Pountney also mentioned the excavation of two slip kilns (although neither of these are shown on his plan of the excavation) and Pountney’s knowledge of the techniques of pottery production from his close association with the family pottery would seem to make an incorrect identification of the use of these kilns seem unlikely. However, slip kilns would not have been required in the production of tin-glazed earthenware as slip was not used for decorating the wares. Only clay used for slip decoration would have required drying in the manner he described as clay used for making the vessels themselves was levigated to remove impurities and then allowed to partly dry naturally in the levigation tanks before being stored in a moist, plastic condition until required. The detailed inventory of Nathaniel Oade’s Southwark pottery compiled in 1727 does not include slip kilns amongst the structures listed (see Chapter 2 above).

Although Pountney recovered large quantities of tin-glazed earthenware wasters from around the chapel it is doubtful whether the kilns found belonged to the 17th-century pottery. It seems more likely that he uncovered the remains of a later 18th-century pottery which is known to have existed at St. Anne’s and the structures found would be consistent with a pottery of that date producing glazed and slip decorated red wares.

In his book Pountney does acknowledge that a later pottery operated at St. Anne’s and states that: ‘On the south side of the chapel-pottery site, towards the bottom of the wood, and close to the bank of the brook, we dug up an enormous quantity of fragments of the latest ware that was made here. It consisted of a brown mottled body, lead glazed, and was chiefly the remains of teapots, small milk jugs, and the like. Although some of this ware was very coarse indeed, and very roughly finsihed, other samples were found of extreme thinness and very fine finish. Some of it was left in the cloudy state of the mixed clays, but many pieces were adorned with bands of white [slip], blown on when the moulded article was revolving in the lathe, and afterwards scratched with a four or five-toothed comb… Nearly all the teapots had strainers in the body of the pot where the spout joined, and all the handles were evidently made in moulds.
This is the work that was probably done by Richard Frank when he lived in the farmhouse [St. Annes Farm] near the mill. Before Richard Frank came to Brislington, or at all events before he did any potting there, the pottery had been abandoned, and the premises used for many years as a bakery. The mill was always a flour-mill, and part of the pottery became a bakery…’ (Pountney 1920, 27).

A find of red ware waste was made in the area in the 1970s by David Dawson, then Curator of Archaeology at Bristol City Museum (pers. comm.). According to the finder the waste was recovered ‘close to the site of the chapel’. Although unpublished, an examination of the sherds found show these to be waste material in the biscuit, slip and glazed stages of manufacture of vessels such as mugs, tea bowls, saucers and teapots. Some had been decorated with white slip and incised geometric patterns produced by turning on a lathe. The forms of the vessels and the type of decoration dates their period of manufacture to between the 1760s and 1780s.

Hugh Owen in his book Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol also referred to this later pottery and stated that ‘The manufacture was carried on by RICHD. FRANK and his family, at Brislington, but became extinct before the end of the last century … The late Mr. R. F. Ring remembered the Brislington works and described the locality to the author. They are situated at the bottom of St. Ann’s Wood, between St. Arno’s Vale and the river, on a line about half a mile beyond Netham Dam; … The premises, afterwards used as a flour mill and last occupied as such by BENJAMIN REYNOLDS, are still standing; and are converted into tenements (Owen 1873, 372-374).

Both Pountney and Owen refer to Richard Frank as operating this later pottery at Brislington although Owen thought that the pottery was located in the mill building adjoining the chapel whereas Pountney felt it was in a building, later a bakery, next to the mill. Richard Frank is known to have been a tin-glazed earthenware potter in Bristol from his freedom in 1734 to his death in 1785. He owned a pottery at Redcliff Back and then, from 1777, another at Water Lane in Bristol. Despite extensive documentary research no reference has been found to Frank owning a pottery at Brislington although, apart from the Gore-Langton family estate papers, 18th- and 19th-century documentary sources relating to Brislington are scarce. The R.F. Ring referred to by Owen was Richard Frank Ring, a 19th-century potter and clay tobacco pipe maker in Bristol, and the brother-in-law of Richard Frank (Price & Jackson 1984, 268-270). It seems likely that he would have first hand knowledge of his relative’s ownership and use of the pottery at St. Anne’s.

A water-colour of St. Anne’s by the Reverend Eden, painted sometime in the late 1820s, is contained in the Braikenridge collection in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery (Fig. 10). It was published by Pountney (1920, Plate II) and shows the cone-shaped kiln of the later pottery. Some degree of artistic licence must have been used in portraying this somewhat arcadian scene as the Avon valley is much wider at this point than appears from the drawing. The view was drawn by the artist from a point on the south bank of the Avon looking west across the approximate location of the medieval chapel and showing quite clearly the cone of a pottery kiln partly hidden by trees, lying behind a complex of buildings which may be St. Anne’s mill. On the hill in the distance is Langton Court. Pountney implies that this was part of the 17th-century pottery and his own experience of potting may have caused him to assume that the kiln illustrated, which would have been similar to those in contemporary use in his family business, was of the type used for tin-glazed earthenware production in the 17th century.

The archaeological and historical evidence points to there having been a pottery, almost certainly on the site of St. Anne’s chapel, in the late 18th century and this would have been using the circular coal-fired kilns typical of that date. It seems most likely that the structural remains Pountney excavated belonged to that later pottery. It is possible that the 17th-century potters had previously adapted the medieval chapel for their pottery and some of the structures found by Pountney could have been the fragmentary remains of the earlier pottery which had been largely destroyed or built over by the later works. The discrepancy over the identification of the site of the 17th century pottery cannot be resolved on present evidence due to the absence of detailed notes kept by the excavator and the nature of the excavation, which did not involve use of stratigraphic recording techniques or an analysis of the sequence of construction of the structural remains. Perhaps due to the assumption that the kilns had been found and fully excavated by Pountney in 1914 the area has been completely neglected by archaeologists despite its importance to the history of ceramics. Although later buildings have been constructed on parts of the site excavation of the remaining areas should be a priority.

The documentary evidence is also inconclusive and does not help in identifying the location of the 17th-century pottery.

The potters, or gallypotmakers as they were often called in contemporary documents, who were associated with the early tin-glazed earthenware industry such as John Bissicke, Robert Bennett, Robert Collins and Robert Wastfield were described only as living in Brislington (sometimes called ‘Bussleton’) parish, so there is no doubt that their pottery was based somewhere in the parish.

Some parts of Brislington parish were surveyed in 1745 to record ‘a parcell of Bartholomew Lands belonging to the Grammer Free School in Bristoll’ (BRO 00568(16)) (Fig. 11). This included part of the area of St. Anne’s and showed a building called ‘the Potthouse’ situated to the west of what appears to be the Brislington Brook. If this ‘Potthouse’ is the tin-glazed earthenware pottery, which seems likely as it continued in use until at least 1743, rather than the later red ware pottery, then the pottery appears to have been located further west than the medieval chapel site excavated by Pountney which lay closer to the the brook. However, this survey and the positioning of the ‘Potthouse’, which was not relevant to the Grammar School’s land, may not have been particularly accurate.

A map of the Gore-Langton family estate at Brislington was produced in 1791 by Benjamin Pryce (SRO DD/Gld 5) and although the pottery was not recorded as such on the map the names given to some of the fields in the area of St. Anne’s provide clues as to its location. These are shown on Fig. 12 and comprise ‘Potters Leaze Wood’, ‘Four Acres and Potters Leaze’, ‘Hither Pothouse Mead’ and ‘Further Pothouse Mead’. They were concentrated around the eastern side of the valley of the Brislington Brook where it joins the Avon valley. The map also shows the grist mill on the brook and a farmhouse called ‘St. Annes’.

On the Brislington tithe map of 1844 and the accompanying apportionment (SRO T/PH/ti) (Fig. 13) the fields retained their 1791 names, except for Four Acres and Potters Leaze which had become ‘Home Ground’ and Hither Pothouse Mead which had become ‘Nether Pothouse Mead’. Of particular relevance on the 1791 and 1844 maps is the field called ‘Hither Pothouse Mead’ or ‘Nether Pot-House Mead’ which would indicate that it was the closest to the pottery, ‘hither’ having the meaning ‘to’ or ‘towards’ and ‘nether’ meaning ‘lower’ or ‘lowest’. It is interesting that Hither Pothouse Mead adjoins the complex of buildings known as St. Anne’s Farm rather than the area of the chapel, from which it is separated by a withy bed and the brook, and from this it is tempting to speculate that St. Anne’s Farm might have been the site of the 17th-century pottery. While the field names may have been of long standing and derive from the 17th-century pottery, it is also possible that they are of more recent origin and refer to the later pottery.

When was the Pottery Established?

Before the present research was undertaken the earliest known documentary reference to a potter connected with Brislington was the will of Robert Bennett, dated 20 December 1658, in which he described himself as ‘of the parish of Brislington … Galypotmaker’ (PRO Prob. 11/296). However, new documentary evidence, in the form of an abstract of title to various areas of land, has been found which links a John Bissicke with property at Brislington as early as 1652 (SRO DD/BR/tb 7) and there is evidence that this John Bissicke had been a tin-glazed earthenware potter at Southwark in London before moving to Brislington. The newly discovered document refers to an assignment of a lease by Thomas Jones to John Bissicke on 13 January 1652, and also an assignment of a lease on the same land from John Bissicke to Robert Bennett on 8 November 1656. The document also directly links these two early references to a more detailed document concerning the land. The latter document, dated 17 November 1656 (SRO DD/GL 18), refers to the sale by Rowland Lacy, Esq., to ‘John Bissicke of Brislington … Potter and Ann his wife of the other part … in consideration of the sume of eight & twentie pounds of lawfull money … All that late customary cottage or tenement and garden and orchard to the same belonginge and appurtynances conteyneing by estimation one ffarrandell of ground standing scituate and being in Brislington … aforesaid heretofore in the occupation or possession of Alice Willmott widdowe deceased and late in the tenure and possession of Thomas Jones and now in the tenure or possession of the said John Bissicke …’

The discovery of this abstract of title enables us to associate the potters John Bissicke and Robert Bennett with Brislington in 1652 and 1656 respectively, in Bissicke’s case some six years before the previous earliest known documentary reference to a potter living in the parish.

In John Bissicke’s will of 22 October 1659 he described himself as ‘of Brislington … Potter’ (PRO Prob. 11/297) and his relationship with the Bissicke family of potters in Southwark, London, is confirmed in the will as he left two acres of ground called the Moor in Brislington to ‘my kinsman Richard Bissick (sonne of Richard Bissick of the Borough of Southwark in the County of Surrey, Gallypott maker) …’. Thus it seems certain that John Bissicke of Brislington was the same person as the John Bissicke recorded at Southwark in London (Edwards 1974, 37-38). In 1629 Bissicke was living in Montague Close, St. Saviour’s parish, Southwark, with Jacob Prynn, a Dutch Huguenot and from then until at least 1642 he is known to have been living at Montague Close which was the site of one of London’s earliest tin-glazed earthenware potteries.

It is still not known precisely from the documents when the Brislington pottery was founded, only that it was almost certainly between 1642 when Bissicke was in Southwark and 1652 when he was first recorded in Brislington.

If the documentary evidence is inconclusive as to the date of the establishment of the pottery, then the archaeological evidence is also unhelpful. The discovery by W.J. Pountney of a waste sherd bearing the date 1652 on the alleged site of the pottery (Pountney 1920, 28) has led to speculation that the pottery was founded by that date. Anthony Ray refers to a sherd from Brislington in the British Museum dated 1649 and calls this ‘the earliest dated evidence we have of the manufacture of delftware at Brislington’ (Ray 1968, 42). However, a date on a post-medieval pot is not necessarily its date of manufacture and could well commemorate the date of an event such as a birth, marriage or death and may consequently have been made sometime later.

The confusion has been added to by the late Frank Britton who stated that the Brislington factory was established ‘in about 1645’ but does not give any documentary or other evidence for such an early date (Britton 1982, 14).

Why Brislington?

Since its introduction to England in the 1570s tin-glazed earthenware had become a very popular form of ceramic among fashionable society as its quality and style of decoration was far superior to other contemporary earthenwares. It has been found in early 17th-century contexts on archaeological excavations in Bristol showing that the requirements of the inhabitants to keep abreast with the latest fashions were being met by potters working in the Netherlands and London. However, the cost of transportation either by sea or overland would have made the prices of tin-glazed earthenware higher than in London and thus there would have been a demand for cheaper, locally produced wares if they could have been made and decorated to the same standard as the London products.

In addition to the potentially large sales that could have been made by supplying Bristol and its hinterland, the overseas markets offered by Ireland and the newly established colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America and the West Indies would have been more easily exploited by a pottery situated on the west coast of England and by the middle of the 17th century the Bristol merchants had already established the city as the leading seaport for the transatlantic trade.

Given the importance of Bristol as a commercial centre it is perhaps surprising that John Bissicke set up his pottery in a rural corner of north Somerset rather than within the city as the transport costs involved in shipping raw materials upstream from the city and conversely sending finished wares downstream must have resulted in additional costs which would not have been incurred by a pottery in the city. Brislington’s geographical position must have offered certain economic, and perhaps political, advantages that did not exist in Bristol and outweighed the city’s obvious benefits. The siting of the pottery close to the bank of a navigable river would still have allowed the potters to take advantage of the ease and cheapness of the transportation of raw materials and finished goods by boat, rather than overland on often rough and difficult tracks.

It is perhaps significant that at St. Anne’s the Avon valley begins to cut through geology containing Pennant sandstones and coal measures and this type of strata includes clay deposits. These local clay deposits were certainly exploited by 18th- and 19th-century potters and it seems most likely that the tin-glazed earthenware potters also used this clay although it would not have supplied all their needs as clay from other, often distant, sources would have been needed to produce the specialised body required for their wares.

Wood was the only fuel used for firing tin-glazed earthenware kilns and this would have been required in large quantities by the Brislington potters. This was available in the St. Anne’s area as early maps show that the valleys of the Brislington Brook and the Avon were heavily wooded and there were other significant areas of woodland in the parish. The fact that one area of woodland was known as ‘Potters Leaze Wood’ may indicate its use or even ownership by the Brislington potters.

The presence of the Brislington Brook was probably an important factor in dictating the site of the pottery as a plentiful and constant supply of water was required for washing the unprocessed clay in ponds or tanks to remove impurities. The potters also needed a mill for grinding the ingredients of the colours used for decorating and glazing their wares. The London potters are known to have owned windmills at Battersea and Lambeth in the 17th century and sometimes a horsemill was used by potters. However, the Brislington Brook would have supplied power for a water mill and we know that such a mill, later used as a grist mill, was situated on the brook at St. Anne’s and was owned by tin-glazed earthenware potters in the 18th century.

It is possible that even the withy beds bordering the Avon were an attraction for the potters as these withies were cultivated for use in making baskets which could well have been needed by the potters as containers for transporting their finished, and highly fragile, wares.

The rural nature of the St. Anne’s area may have been an economic benefit to the 17th-century potters as they probably worked on a similar basis to the early Staffordshire potters who carried out farming activities in order to supplement their income from pottery production, the latter being a seasonal activity. It is known that the 17th-century Brislington potters were landowners in a small way. John Bissicke owned two pieces of land called the Moore totalling 3½ acres together with other un-named land (PRO Prob. 11/297) while Robert Wastfield owned 7½ acres of arable and pasture land in Brislington together with other land in Portbury parish (PRO Prob. 11/355). In the early days of the industry this dual economy may have been a lifeline for the potters and their families but as markets expanded the production of pottery became a full-time occupation employing people on a more industrialised basis.

Another factor which may have dictated the establishment of the pottery at Brislington rather than within Bristol was the religion of the potters as evidence indicates that there were Nonconformists, especially Quakers, amongst the 17th-century Brislington potters and later, when Nonconformism became more acceptable, in Bristol itself. Some of the leading Brislington potters of the 17th century such as Robert Wastfield and Thomas Dixon were members of the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers.

The Quakers were advocates of self-expression and their belief encouraged them to openly challenge the established church. Consequently they suffered much persecution for their religious belief; their meetings were frequently broken up and those attending suffered heavy fines or periods of imprisonment. They were expressly forbidden to take oaths and many had found themselves in difficulties by refusing to take the oath of allegiance or by refusing to remove their hats respectfully in front of magistrates or other officials. Under the Quaker Act of 1662 anyone who maintained that taking the oath was contrary to the word of God was fined £5 for the first offence, £10 for the second, and was sentenced to transportation for the third. Consequently, under Charles II, some fifteen thousand Quakers were fined, imprisoned or transported for refusing to take the oath of supremacy and allegiance.

The indications are that the London of the 1650s was a dangerous place for Nonconformists, where intolerance of their religion was rife. However, north Somerset had an active and strong community of Quakers who provided mutual support and were fairly well tolerated by the local inhabitants, so much so that court bailiffs made excuses to avoid levying fines or distraining the goods of the Quaker community. The presence of the New Model Army in Bristol at that time and its apparent leanings towards non-conformity, in that they even provided a safe escort for Quakers on occasion, would certainly have afforded a relative degree of security to those who might have been suffering persecution for their faith elsewhere.

It is likely that Bissicke himself was a Nonconformist as his father had an association with Dutch potters in London who were members of the Dutch Huguenot church and while in Southwark Bissicke had lived with Jacob Prynn, a Dutch Huguenot.

In order to carry on a trade within the city of Bristol it was necessary to obtain a ‘freedom’ and this could only be achieved by serving an apprenticeship (usually for a term of seven years in the case of a potter) to a master within a particular trade who was a freeman; by marrying the daughter or widow of a freeman; or, in exceptional circumstances, by paying a fine and purchasing a freedom. The system was designed to protect the economic prosperity of the city by ensuring that only citizens of Bristol could operate as tradesmen and merchants. In order to be admitted as a freeman or burgess it was necessary to swear an oath of allegiance. This system of apprenticeship and freedom might well have formed a barrier against the early tin-glazed earthenware potters from London setting up a business in Bristol and, if they were Quakers as seems possible, the requirement to swear an oath of allegiance even on the purchase of a freedom would have formed a further deterrent.

Table 1 – Recorded Discoveries of Tin-Glazed Earthenware Kiln Waste at St. Annes

Fig. 8, Site No.	Date of Discovery	National Grid Reference	Description	Reference
1	1914	ST 62117281	W.J. Pountney excavated the site of the medieval chapel of St. Anne’s and found two ‘slip-kilns’, potters’ workshops and large quantities of kiln-waste and kiln furniture.	Pountney 1920, 23-27.
2	c.1937	Not known	H.W. Maxwell found waste pottery and kiln furniture during the construction of a reservoir at St. Anne’s Board Mills, about half a mile to the north-east of the site of St. Anne’s chapel. Two decorated sherds bore the dates 1652 and 1653. Maxwell mentions in passing that the find spot was ‘evidently the site of a pottery, as some of the fragments were found in a recess in the brickwork of what appears to have been the foundations of a pottery oven’. It is unfortunate that he did not elaborate on the structures discovered.	Maxwell 1939, 117-118
General Area	1940		Louis Lipski, a pottery collector, found quantities of wasters on various sites in Bristol, including Brislington. He did not record the exact location of his discoveries and after his death the finds from the different sites became mixed together and therefore of little use in identifying the products of any individual pottery.	Pers. comm. David Dawson, former Curator of Archaeology, Bristol City Museum where the finds are now housed.
3	1975	ST 62327283	The writer found kiln waste and kiln furniture during the excavation of garden of 30 Wootton Road for the construction of a pond.	Unpublished. See Chapter 7 below.
4	1995	ST 62327292	During redevelopment work a quantity of biscuit ware and kiln furniture was found by O. Kent. Forms include distinctive chargers with wide rims, mugs, bowls and drug-jars apparently dating from the second half of the 17th century.	Ponsford & Jackson 1996, 309.
5	1995	ST 62217277	A deposit of kiln waste was found by Oliver Kent on the east slope of the valley of the Brislington Brook. This appeared to date to the second half of the 17th century.	Ponsford & Jackson 1996, 309.