THE BUCKLEY POTTERIES

The Buckley Potteries    

Buckley today is a town of around 16,000 people, and there has been a settlement on or near the present site since the Bronze Age. The town was first documented in 1294 as ‘the pasturage of the Manor of Ewloe’, and it was around this time that coal-mining and pottery making were recorded in this area. 

Buckley is surrounded by and contains many coal deposits which are so near the surface that they are easily accessible without deep shaft mining, and could be collected from shallow pits by lifting the coal up in baskets. Hard fire clay was found alongside the coal deposits, which could be collected after weathering in the elements. Sticky pot clay was found on the surface and in nearby fields.

This combination of available clays was perfect for making earthenware cheaply. Lead was another important ingredient for glazing the pots, and had been mined since Roman times in nearby Halkyn and Rhosesmor. 

Buckley was well positioned to export goods, as several streams started in and around the town, which flowed down to the River Dee Estuary. These streams formed channels in the sand, which at high tide boats could sail up, collect their cargoes of earthenware and coal, and return to sea. 

Pottery was also exported by land to Chester market along the ‘Dirty Mile’ - the local name for the road from Chester to Buckley – and after 1866, by railway to the rest of Great Britain.

The Buckley industries attracted migrant workers from the 12th Century onwards, one of the first being a colony of English miners and potters who lived amongst the native Welsh on Buckley Mountain. Thrown together as neighbours and co-workers in an isolated environment, the people of Buckley developed their own predominantly English dialect, borrowing many Welsh words and pronunciations. 

Mines, brickworks and family-run potteries were well established at the time of Elizabeth I, and Buckley began to attract more people to settle in the area. In 1737, Jonathan Catterall started the Buckley Firebrick Industry, which pulled people in from as far as Devon, Cornwall and Ireland, as well as the nearby counties of Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. 

© Buckley Heritage Society

The Buckley dialect began to develop through the generations of immigrants and natives, borrowing words and phrase from each other, and boiling them down to produce a vocabulary that was unique to the area. 

In the 19th Century, many outsiders from the border counties and Staffordshire will still moving to the district, but the main industries of Buckley were beginning to encounter difficulties. In coal mining, many of the surface coal seams were exhausted, and it became necessary to extract coal from greater depths. 

Mass production of crockery and enamel dishes, and the development of the railway system which made these products more available, began to pose a threat to Buckley’s family-run earthenware businesses. The outbreak of two World Wars in the 20th Century drew workers away from Buckley to the front lines, and reduced the number of family-run potteries to a handful.

This dish was excavated at Brookhill Pottery, Buckley, where it was made c. 1640-1670. When it is leather hard a design is scratched through the slip to reveal the contrasting body of the pot beneath.

© The Buckley Heritage Centre

Some potteries like Hayes’s Pottery, which was established in 1740, continued to produce Buckley pottery and remain in the same family ownership until its closure in the 1940’s. Others, like Powell’s Pottery, which was the largest Buckley Pottery until 1914, converted their production line to work in engineering and plastics. 

Sharret’s Pottery, which became The Art Pottery Co. and then J. Lamb & Sons was closed in the early 1940’s leaving a kiln of unbaked pottery. The owner’s son returned from the war in 1946 and fired up the kiln, baking the pottery that was left. After it was fired, it was found to be of an excellent quality, and was the last bulk produced earthenware in Buckley. 

Buckley’s surrounding countryside provided the town with a valuable combination of natural resources that sustained its earthenware, mining and brick-making industries for over 500 years. Although these industries fell into decline through mass production elsewhere, a legacy remains in the regional dialect that is still remembered and spoken today.