This pottery was one of but short duration, but during the time it was in operation some very good ware was produced. The works were commenced about 1797 or 1798, by Messrs. James and Fletcher Bolton, who were brothers, and members of the Society of Friends. These gentlemen got their idea of starting an earthenware manufactory at Warrington from the fact that the great bulk of the raw materials from Cornwall, &c., used in the Staffordshire manufactories for the finer kinds of wares, was brought by sea to Liverpool, where it was unshipped and sent on again by boats on the Trent and Mersey Canal, and thus passed within a short distance of Warrington. Messrs. Bolton, with this knowledge, and with the further fact before them that the Liverpool potters drove a very successful trade, very shrewdly argued that if the Staffordshire manufacturers could make money, with the longer freightage from Ellesmere, they, at Warrington, with the shorter freightage, might hope for equal success. Soon after the establishment of the works they associated themselves with Mr. Joseph Ellis, of Hanley, in Staffordshire, who was practically conversant with every branch of the manufacture. Joseph Ellis was born in 1760, and was apprenticed to Wedgwood, as a _turner_. He is said to have been very clever and ingenious, of careful and sober habits, and of a plodding disposition. He married a daughter of Ralph and Ellen Simpson, of Hanley, a family then considered to be in very fair circumstances, from whom he derived considerable pecuniary help, which, together with his own thrifty habits, soon placed him in comfortable circumstances. Mr. Ellis became superintendent of the Tabernacle Independent Chapel Sunday-school, now said to be the oldest place of worship of that denomination left in the Potteries. As his family began to increase, he disposed of his property in the potteries, joined Messrs. Bolton at Warrington, and became the managing partner of the firm. He is said to have directed his special attention in all his spare time to the discovery of new colours, glazes, and bodies, and to have been very successful in jasper and enamelled ware. To the manager of some adjoining glass-works he also gave many useful recipes for colours. Mr. Ellis’s manuscript recipes for different glazes and colours required in the manufacture are still preserved in the hands of his descendants, and show him to have been a man of considerable practical knowledge and skill.