There was one factory, however, skilfully managed and established on a firm financial basis which remained entirely independent of him. Of the origin of this factory--the Worcester China Works--we have, quite exceptionally, a full record. These works, we may add, are also exceptional in another respect--they have had a continuous history from the year of their foundation to the present day, that is to say for more than a century and a half. Mr. R. W. Binns has in his possession a copy of the articles of association ‘for carrying on the Worcester Tonquin manufacture.’[237] They are dated January 4, 1751. The forty-five shares of £100 each were divided among fifteen original partners, of whom two claim to possess the secret, art, mystery, and process of making porcelain. These two were John Wall, doctor of medicine, and William Davis, apothecary. We have no record of the preliminary experiments said to have been made by these two men in a laboratory over the apothecary’s shop, nor do we know for how long these experiments had been carried on. Two workmen, however, who had already been employed by them for some time, were retained by the new company and well paid as an inducement to keep secret the process of manufacture. It was the apothecary Davis, probably, who brought the scientific knowledge, but Dr. Wall also, besides being a portrait-painter who had acquired some renown at Oxford and in his native town (he had made designs for painted glass among other things), was an energetic, practical man with some scientific pretensions; nor must we forget the two workmen, who probably had a good deal to say in the matter. A site for the new factory was found in Warmstry House, a fine old mansion that had belonged to the Windsor family, situated some hundred yards to the north of the cathedral, and the kilns were erected in the grounds which sloped down to the river. The biscuit kiln and the glazing-kiln were enclosed in long roofed buildings apparently without conspicuous chimneys. Only the great kiln for the ‘segurs’ takes the conical shape that we associate with pottery-ovens.[238] The pressing, modelling, and throwing galleries were established in the old house itself, where there was also a ‘secret room.’