Monument record MDO6202 - Verwood Pottery works at Sandalholme, Margards Lane, Verwood

Pottery works, part of the Verwood Potteries, (Verwood kiln 9), built in the early nineteenth century, and comprising a potter’s house, workshops, drying and firing sheds, storage buildings and a kiln. This works is known to have been owned by Henry Andrews in the 1840s, and continued production until around 1906, while production continued until the 1950s on other sites in the area. The Verwood Pottery industry was established in the sixteenth century, making coarse wares for domestic use. Field investigations in 1987 found most of the buildings in a poor condition and the potter's house had been demolished. The kiln survived as a mound 20 metres in diameter and 3 metres high. Another kiln mound, identified on an Ordnance Survey map of 1888 had been demolished. The site of the pottery kiln is visible as a mound in lidar imagery, it was digitally plotted during the Dorset Stour NMP.

(SU 079082). Sandalholme pottery works dates from the 19th century and was part of the coarse domestic pottery industry which existed in the Cranborne/Verwood area from 16th century until the 1950s.
The works at Sandleholme were in production from before 1841 until about 1906.

All the buildings were originally of rendered cob and survive mostly in their original state, although some walls have been rebuilt in brick. Remains include the potter's house, workshops, drying and firing sheds and storage sheds, together with a kiln-mound.

Investigation of the site, including minor excavations of the kiln, was carried out by Young (site 7) <4>. The site is a rare survival, one of only two remaining from the once extensive pottery industry of East Dorset. Scheduled. <4, 7>

Additional bibliography. <2>

The Sandalholme Pottery lies neglected and derelict sandwiched between houses of an in-construction development. The potters house has been demolished and while the main range of work-sheds survives
(SU 07940829) the roof is partly collapsed and they have been gutted: some at least are post-1988 (OS 1:2500 qv <1>).

The kiln-mound (SU 07940826) covers an area some 20.0m in diameter, and rises to a height of 3.0m. The centre has been gutted to accommodate a shed-cum-garage which in part at least seems to be of cob. The mound is densely overgrown and no evidence of the kiln was seen but a trench and terrace on the N side is full of broken pot and presumably marks the site of Young's excavation. A small range of buildings E of the kiln-mound, and a small wash-boiler oven on the E fringe of the mound seem to be domestic structures presumably part of the house.

Another pottery with kiln-mound some 150m WNW at SU 07800830, shown on OS 1:2500 1888 <1> has been demolished and build over. Unless this site is being preserved for excavation it is difficult to see any value in its scheduling. A house is being constructed feet from the work-sheds, which are a target for vandalism, and even the Kiln-mound is a doubtfully suitable monument in its present condition. Site needs reappraising.

Revised at 1:2500 <8>

The pottery works (Verwood 9) (Young's site 3) <4> was owned by Henry Andrews during the 1840s. His family continued to own and produce pottery here until the kiln was closed in c. 1907. <9>

A pottery works built in the early nineteenth century, and comprising a potter’s house, workshops, drying and firing sheds, storage buildings and a kiln. This works is known to have been owned by Henry Andrews in the 1840s, and continued production until around 1906, while production continued until the 1950s on other sites in the area. The Verwood Pottery industry was established in the sixteenth century, making coarse wares for domestic use. The site of the pottery kiln is visible as a mound 19m across, in lidar imagery <13>, it was digitally plotted during the Dorset Stour NMP.

<1> Ordnance Survey, 1:2500 scale, 1888 (Map). SWX1197.

(Centred SU 079082) Pottery (NAT)

<2> Hudson, K, 1965, Industrial Archaeology of Southern England, 163 (Monograph). SWX1424.

<3> Trehane, P, and Young, D, 1977, The Pottery Industry of East Dorset. A Proposal for Site Scheduling (Unpublished document). SDO16403.

<4> Young, D, 1979, The Verwood Potteries: Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 103-120 (Article in serial). SDO13877.

<5> Algar, D, Light, A, and Trehane, P, 1979, The Verwood & District Potteries (Monograph). SDO12592.

‘Henry Andrews was owner occupier of Site 9 in the 1840s and after his death in 1860 his son Stephen carried on the business. It was apparently the latter’s son Job who had taken over by 1885 and who eventually closed the kiln in about 1907. The site today is structurally the best preserved of all, with the kiln mound and several of the pottery kilns still surviving. (Fig. 15).’

<6> Young, D, 1979, The Verwood Potteries: Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society (Article in serial). SDO13877.

‘At the pottery sites three kiln mounds and some old mud-walled buildings survive, together with several of the cottages which were once the homes of the potters. The mounds are on the properties now known as Moor Lodge (SU 094088), Sandalhome (SU 079082) and Prairie Farm (SU 075 084) (Fig. 48, sites 4, 7 and 8). All that is visible are mounds of earth about the size and shape of prehistoric round barrows overgrown with bracken and trees, and with little to confirm their identity beyond the presence of may sherds of pottery and the few small buildings nearby in which the pottery was once made and stored.

These buildings are mainly single storied, long and narrow, with walls built of a mixture of mud, clay and chopped furze, and roofed with slate, thatch or sheet iron. At Sandalhome (site 4) and Prairie Farm (site 7) the walls contain many pottery sherds, and at the former the horizontal lines of the shuttering used to form each ‘lift’ during the construction can still be seen. A building at the Cross Roads Pottery (site 1), also of mud wall construction, is of two stories with a tiled roof. Here the wares were made on the ground floor and the upper storey was used for drying and storing pots before firing. Other single storied buildings remain intact in the gardens of Purbeck House and Moor Lodge in the Blackhill area (sites 3 and 4)). Some of these mud walled buildings are almost certainly a hundred or more years old and have withstood time and weather extraordinarily well. …

There were five potteries in Verwood in 1847 which were worked by Henry Shearing, Robert Shearing, James Bailey, Thomas Bailey and Henry Andrews. The locations of these are Fig. 48, sites 6, 1, 4, 5 and 7 respectively. By the turn of the century the industry had reached its peak. …

Dating the Kilns
The remaining kiln mounds are difficult to date precisely, and it has not proved possible to estimate their life span. There seems no reason why the brickwork should not have been renewed indefinitely, thus the mounds and some of the pottery sherds they contain might already have been old when production ceased.

Of the three kilns examined, Moor Lodge (site 4) and Sandalholme (site 7) were operating in the early years of this century, but Prairie Farm (site 8) probably ceased work about 1840. The evidence for this is principally derived from the 1841 Tythe Award for Horton parish, in which the property is described as a house and buildings, and not a pottery. This is in contrast with the clear identification of the potteries listed in the Verwood Tythe.

Manufacturing Processes
… The type of kiln used at Verwood consisted of an open-topped brick-built cylinder of 10 feet to 15 feet internal diameter, and 15 feet high, surrounded by a mound of earth and broken pottery to within a few feet of the top. The summit of the mound formed a working area for loading and unloading the kiln, and at the Cross Roads kiln (site 1) this area was paved with bricks. A single flue ran from outside the mound at ground level into the bottom of the kiln. The fire burned in the mouth of the flue and the hot gases passed into the kiln through apertures in a brick floor supported on brick arches, up through the pottery wares and out of the open top. A shed or shelter erected at the mouth of the flue provided weather protection during firing, and timber and corrugated iron sheets were set up temporarily to screen the open top from the wind. Although three of these kilns remain in Verwood, unfortunately they have all been severely damaged, the brickwork having been extensively robbed and the mounds plundered to provide hardcore for building and road foundations. A number of other kilns have been entirely demolished including those at Cross Roads. …

The Nineteenth Century Wares
The pottery described and illustrated (Figs 54-57) in this section is representative of the range of brownware made in Verwood during the nineteenth century. It all derives directly from the village, some … and from the kilns at Sandalholme and Prairie Farm (sites 7 and 8) where minor excavations were carried out. All these kilns had ceased production by the early 1900s, at which time the local traditions and technology were still vigorous, thus the forms illustrated are those developed during the previous two centuries or even longer, which fulfilled local needs and were subject to only minor changes in a slowly evolving rural community. … The Sandalholme kiln mound (site 7) was dug in only one place which was found to be solidly packed with pottery including many large sherds and several restorable pots. Additionally, at both places a single example of a large pancheon has survived substantially intact within the buildings. At Sandalholme this was used in the outside privy and is badly pitted and corroded …

The largest vessels produced in quantity at Verwood appear to have been pancheons about fifteen inches high and … twenty-two inches in diameter atSandalholme and Prairie Farm. The pots were all wheel-thrown with no subsequent turning or finishing except for glazing and occasional decoration with incised lines or simple moulded patterns (Fig. 55 Nos. 4-7). The bases were wire-cut and there are no potter’s marks. The typical glaze of the period is a glossy orange-brown with darker spots or speckles, but colours range from pale yellow to a rich dark brown, spotted or clear, and from apple green to dark olive green and black. …’

<7> Historic England, Scheduled Monument Notification, HBMC Rec Form 1.10.85 (Scheduling record). SDO17468.

<8> Wardale, C F, Various, Field Investigators Comments CFW, F1 CFW 09-AUG-87 (Unpublished document). SWX2704.

<9> Algar, D, Light, A, and Copland-Griffiths, P, 1987, The Verwood & District Potteries. A Dorset Industry, 32 (Site 9) (Monograph). SDO12825.

<10> Spoerry, P, 1988, Documentary and other evidence for medieval and post-medieval ceramic production in Dorset. Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society (Article in serial). SWX809.

<11> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1989, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society for 1988, 29-35 (Serial). SDO88.

<12> Draper, J with Copland-Griffiths, P, 2002, Dorset Country Pottery. The kilns of the Verwood district (Monograph). SDO13892.

‘The pottery buildings at Cross Roads and other sites were built of cob, as were smaller workshops, besides the cottages. At Sandalholme and Prairie Farm the cob had occasional small pottery sherds in – very unusual. Cob is found all over south and east Dorset and the New Forest, but there is a larger proportion of cob cottages on the heathlands, presumably because the heaths were poorer and had many more cottages built by their occupiers than agricultural areas where the cottages were built by large farmers and landowners. … The main workshop … was also built of cob, and was 52ft (16m) long by 16ft (4.9m) wide. These long narrow buildings are typical of the Verwood potteries, judging from buildings which survived until recently at Sandalholme and Prairie Farm. …’

<13> XX-XXX-2015, Environment Agency DTM Lidar 1m (Aerial Photograph). SDO15442.

<14> Historic England, Historic England Archive, BF076963 (Index). SDO14738.

SANDALHOLME, VERWOOD

<15> National Record of the Historic Environment, 213009 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<16> National Record of the Historic Environment, 537051 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

<17> National Record of the Historic Environment, 544458 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Jan 17 2025 4:08PM