The ceramic art of Great Britain from pre-historic times down to the present day, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b being a history of the ancient and modern pottery and porcelain works of the kingdom and of their productions of every classJewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
History
The ceramic art of Great Britain from pre-historic times down to the present day, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b being a history of the ancient and modern pottery and porcelain works of the kingdom and of their productions of every class
Jewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
Pottery, British -- History
[Illustration: Fig. 200.]
[Illustration: Fig. 201.--Colchester.]
A kiln was discovered in 1868 at Winterton, near Brigg, on a site about
half a mile from the Roman road, and not far from where a tesselated
pavement had been previously discovered. By the falling of a portion of
the side of a pit where sand was being dug, there was exposed a rudely
constructed kiln or oven, made by sinking a circular cavity about
six feet deep and six feet in diameter at the top, becoming narrower
towards the bottom, so as to be in fact an inverted cone. The lower
half of it is in the sand, and the upper half in the surface soil, and
in a thin bed of clay between this and the sand. A little more than a
foot in depth of the bottom of the pit had been filled with soil from
the surface, quite compact, as if it had been mixed with water and
well rammed down. On the top of this rested the oven itself, formed
by lining the pit with a mixture of coarse mud or clay with small
stones and pebbles, to a thickness of about four inches at the bottom,
increasing upward to ten inches at the brim, which is about one foot
and a half below the present surface of the field. From the centre of
the floor thus made rises a pillar of one foot nine inches in height,
and widening from one foot diameter at the bottom to one foot ten
inches at the top, which pillar widens suddenly so as to form a sort
of mushroom head, continuous in structure with the clay or mud floor
and walls just described. Two shallow grooves run all round the inside
of the oven, a little above the top of the pillar, and broken pieces
of blue Roman pottery are laid across from the pillar to the side of
the basin so as to cover in a sort of circular flue. Over these has
been spread a thin coat of clay similar to the rest of the lining, so
that the upper storey, so to speak, is a shallow pit, about three and
a half feet diameter and one foot and a half deep. A large quantity of
black ashes, and of fragments of Roman pottery, was found in and around
the kiln. An account of this discovery, with an engraving of the kiln
appeared in vol. ix. of “The Reliquary.” Another, in the same county,
was discovered near Ancaster; and in Somersetshire a kiln has been
uncovered.
[Illustration: Fig. 202.--Little Chester.]
[Illustration: Fig. 203.--Cirencester.]
Many potteries besides those whose productions have been here spoken
of might be described; but as their productions were the usual classes
of domestic or sepulchral vessels, or flue and other tiles, it is not
perhaps necessary to enumerate them. I will therefore proceed to speak
of some of the vessels not already particularised in this chapter.
[Illustration: Fig. 204.--Cirencester.]
[Illustration: Fig. 205.--Cirencester.]
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