Brown ware

The Sunderland potteries used white clay in huge quantities, shipped in from Devon and Cornwall, in an effort to match the white-bodied wares of Staffordshire.  However, the Wear had its own reserves of coarse brown clay that was used for making utilitarian objects.  The sherds on this page are amongst the largest recovered from the site.

​​Baker writes, 'Simple coarse-ware of local brown clay was made at several Wearside potteries.  Some items, such as flower pots, were left bare, others were glazed to make them impervious to liquids.  Jugs and dairy bowls were often given white slip interiors to relieve the starkness of the brown body'.

The top two images to the right show either side of a large dairy bowl sherd – the outside is unglazed.  Beneath them, a cleaned-up sherd from the site and a complete dairy bowl (of unknown origin) for comparison.

Baker goes on to write that, 'certain items such as divided baking dishes were embellished with trails of white slip in much the same way as cakes are decorated with icing'. ​

Below right, is a typical brown-ware, divided baking dish of the kind described by Baker. The exterior (shown beneath it) is unglazed and the item is unmarked, so there's no way of knowing if it originated at North Hylton.  See Bell's Tyneside Pottery (p116) for a very similar example marked 'Stepney Pottery, Newcastle upon Tyne'.  Below left is a large sherd with a pie crust edge, the unglazed base of the reverse side shown beneath it.  In the centre, two similarly decorated sherds.

​Right, two large sherds of slip-decorated/marbled brown ware.

Below, the neck of a container, a large knop or handle, and a cream slip-decorated rim, perhaps of a bowl, all excavated in 2018 from the site.