“After this is done they are carried to the oven, which is ordinarily above 8 foot high, and about 6 foot wide, of a round copped forme, where they are placed one upon another from the bottom to the top: if they be ordinary wares such as cylindrical butter pots &c. that are not leaded, they are exposed to the naked fire, and so is all their flatware though it be leaded, haveing only parting-shards, i.e. thin bits of old pots put between them, to keep them from sticking together. But if they be leaded hollow-wares, they do not expose them to the naked fire, but put them in shragers, that is, in coarse metall’d pots, made of marle (not clay) of divers formes, according as their wares require, in which they put commonly three pieces of clay called Bobbs for the ware to stand on, to keep it from sticking to the shragers; as they put them in the shragers to keep them from sticking to one another (which they would certainly otherwise doe by reason of the leading) and to preserve them from the vehemence of the fire, which else would melt them downe, or at least warp them. In 24 hours an oven of pots will be burnt, then they let the fire goe out by degrees which in 10 hours more will be perfectly done, and then they draw them for sale, which is chiefly to the poor cratemen, who carry them at their backs all over the whole Countrey, to whome they reckon them by the piece, i.e. Quart, in hollow ware, so that 6 pottle, or 3 gallon bottles make a dozen, and so more or less to a dozen, as they are of greater or lesser content; The flat wares are also reckon’d by pieces and dozens, but not (as the hollow) according to their content, but their different bredths.”[12] Again, in discussing the great dairy produce market at Uttoxeter, at which the Cheesemongers of London had thought it worth while to set up a “factorage,” Plot says:—“the factors many mercat days (in the season) lay out no less than £500 a day, in these two commodities [butter and cheese] only. The butter they buy by the pot, of a long cylindrical form, made at Burslem in this County of a certain size, so as not to weigh above 6 lbs. at most, and yet to contain at least 14 lbs. of butter, according to an Act of Parliament made about 14-16 years agoe, for regulating the abuses of this trade in the make of the pots and false packing of the butter.”[13] Later on, too, he describes how the lead ores are “dug in a yellowish stone, with cawk and spar, on the side of Lawton Park;[14] where the workmen distinguisht it into three sorts, viz. round ore, small ore, and smithum.” He describes how the ores are cleaned; “which done, it is sold to the potters at Burslem for 6 or 7 pounds per tun, who have occasion for most that is found here for glaseing their pots.” For a contemporary inventory of a nascent industry Plot’s account is extraordinarily full and accurate. It is so important and so unique, that no apology need be made for quoting it at length.