Pottery

The village is almost certainly of Saxon origin. There is no definite evidence of earlier occupation in the village area. Local place names strongly suggest that there was an influx of Viking settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries, and since one of the place names refers to the Northmen, there were presumably Saxons in the area to watch the Northmen arrive.

Domesday book gives the name of the village as Hanworde, a latinized version probably of Hanworth meaning Hanas’ Enclosure, or Hanas’ Place. In the period until around AD 1300, it is Hanworth, Haneworde or Hanworth juxta Nocton in the records, to distinguish it from several other Hanworths within Lincolnshire. Certainly, by around 1330, official documents begin to refer to the place as Potter Hanworth because of the well-established pottery industry within the village.

Based on finds of the typical pottery that the village produced in datable contexts elsewhere, it is thought that the pottery industry in the village began somewhere around the year AD 1250. The industry continued until around the year AD 1400, possibly being at its peak in the 1330s. The industry probably came to an end because the local supply of clay was used up. Quite a lot of medieval pottery had fragments of deliberately broken shells, typically oyster or mussel shells, added to it to strengthen it. Potterhanworth pottery has such added shell fragments, but rather than being the remains of recent shellfish, the material appears to be fragments of fossilised shell taken from the outcropping of Jurassic Oolitic limestone on the west side of the village.

The availability of the limestone was probably a factor in the development of the industry. The clay itself was probably a glacial deposit, formed from material dragged along and ground up by the ice sheet which once covered the area. The clay likely existed in relatively small and thin lenses amongst the sand and gravel also left behind when the glaciers retreated around 10,000 BC. Once the readily accessible clay was used up, the pottery came to an end.

The exact site or sites of the industry in the village are not known. However, large amounts of waste pottery, broken or misfired, have been found in, around and along the whole of Barff Road. Anyone digging in a garden around the area of Barff Road is likely to find bits of broken pot relatively close to the surface. There are also waste pottery dumps at a couple of places on the Main Road, and as far away as the Old Rectory on Station Road. Two probable sites have been identified.

A large clay pit is known to have existed on the site of the primary school extension. This was found during archaeological excavations before the building of the extension, and there were signs of walls and fences, possibly sheds, in which the clay might have been worked to make pots. No kilns were identified, but there were probably some close to this area, possibly under the oldest part of the school building. Evidence was found of limestone being heated and crushed to extract the shells for strengthening the pottery.

Several smaller medieval pits, probably produced by clay extraction, together with large amounts of waste pottery and fragments of kiln fittings, were recovered from the area of Norman Hay Farm Cottage and Kingsley Court.

The pottery produced in the village has been found at a large number of sites throughout the East Midlands and it was obviously well regarded. It is of two types: ordinary everyday ware with a fairly coarse texture and a rather finer material, usually glazed, which seems to have often been used to make tall, fairly narrow jugs.

As previously stated, the industry seems to have come to an end around AD 1400, probably because the supply of readily available clay was used up. The two sites were abandoned, and neither was reused other than for farming, until early modern times. A map of Potterhanworth dated 1775 shows a smallholding on part of the school (kiln?) site and an indeterminate building on part of the other. Redevelopment occurred in the 19th century.

Pottery began to be found and reported upon around the village from the 1850s, with much of the early finds being thought to be Roman. The true nature of the material and the range of its use emerged through the 20th and into the 21st centuries. The realization that there had indeed been kilns and an industry in the village gradually emerged.