Mexborough and Swinton Times February 22, 1929

The Old Potter

Swinton Veterans Reminiscences

One of the most interesting old couples in the district is Mr. and Mrs. George Dale, who live in Wagon Yard, Bowbroom, Swinton.

Mr. Dale has for seventy years worked as a potter in the Stoke district and at Rotherham and Mexboro’. He is 84, and his wife nearly 80. They are the oldest couple in Swinton. Mr. Dale is a native of Stoke, and the son of a potter. He began work in a pottery at the age of seven, and it was not until he was forty that he came to Swinton and obtained employment at the Don Pottery, Mexboro”, now defunct. He worked there several years, returned to Stoke for a spell, and came back to South Yorkshire, this time to work at the Northfield Pottery Rotherham, which was closed two years later, when he moved on to the Don Pottery, Swinton.

There have been great changes in the industry since Mr. Dale entered it. The conditions are much healthier now; in his time the average life of a potter was only about 45 years. In his day there were potteries working at Mexborough, Swinton, Northfield (Rotherham) and Holmes (Rotherham).

It is not generally known, or at any rate realised, that Kilnhurst derives its name from its pottery. At one time the Don Pottery, which was owned by Messrs. Adamson and Smith, and managed by John Long, of Mexboro’, provided work for nearly 500 people. The material was largely imported, and brought by canal. Mr. Dale was engaged on earthenware generally, and a woman turned the wheel, or ‘jigger,” as it was called. Some beautiful work was made in those days, including plaster of Paris moulding. The transferring of designs to the earthenware was done by women and the men did the printing. The baking was done in huge kilns each with twelve fire holes.

Mr. Dale was a highly skilled potter, and had experience of the famous Wedgwood Works at Stoke. While there he was employed on the production of patent tea-pots, invented by a man named Ryall, which poured by pressing a button, thus saving the labour of lifting the pot; but for some reason the idea did not take the public fancy, and the invention was a failure commercially. Mr Dale has also spent a short time in America (in 1872). He worked for about a year in a pottery in New Jersey, but the pottery was broken up in a financial panic, and he soon found himself back in England, and glad to be home again. There are

Mrs. Dale was the daughter of a Swinton stonemason, and has lived in. Swinton practically all her life.    The couple were married in Rawmarsh in 1854. They are both, very active and healthy, with few ailments, and as Mrs. Dale says, “no troubles and nothing to trouble about.”

Mr. Dale is very active and spends most of his time walking about, smoked cheese pie, as an occasional glass of beer, which he says never did him any harm, and enjoys the wireless kindly provided by the next door neighbour.