Treasure in the soil

The formal borders at Betley Court Gardens, July 2019

We are huge fans of Channel 4’s archaeological programme Time Team here at Betley Court Gardens. We can only dream of finding a tiled mosaic floor from a long since forgotten Roman villa. The ‘lottery win’ would surely be unearthing a stash as magnificent as the Staffordshire Hoard, a haul of Anglo-Saxon treasure, thought to be the spoils of battle that were discovered by a metal detectorist exactly ten years ago buried under a farmer’s field. Staffordshire was part of the kingdom of Mercia in the 7^th century, so who knows what might be buried beneath the soil here at the gardens?

From time to time, a small artefact comes to the surface. Mr O, senior has brought us copper and silver coins from the reign of George VI, and pieces of broken clay tobacco pipes. I like to think of some unknown, bygone gardener, cursing quietly to himself as his pipe fell from his lips and broke on the ground whilst weeding.

Small pottery shard, found in the Betley Court formal flowerbed, July 2019

The other day, I was delighted to find a small shard of broken pottery as I was excavating a hole to transplant a new flower in the formal beds. The rough, triangular piece is about 3 cm at its longest. Rubbing the soil off with my finger, I could recognise traditional slip decoration. This is a type of decoration where a runny clay mixture or ‘slip’ is delicately poured, dotted or combed onto an item of pottery in patterns or lettering. It is then glazed and fired. A friend of mine still adorns thrown pottery this way (hello Anne Rogers, from Alsager Pottery), and it is quite a distinctive way to create attractive earthenware.


I wanted to find out a bit more about this shard of pottery. How old is it? Was it made locally? Is it possible to find out what it came from?  

Luckily, Betley Court is about 10 miles from an excellent museum, The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (also known as PMAG) in Hanley, so I popped in to see their collection. Upstairs, on the first floor is large collection of pottery and ceramics, much of it made in the local area during the heydays of the Potteries. It is best described as an eclectic collection with everything from post-war studio ceramics, to a collection of cow-shaped cream jugs, to a huge (2 metres +) eye-catching ceramic peacock. And in amongst it all is a collection of slipware dating from the 16^th century.

I looked through the display cases, hoping to find something that resembled our little piece of pottery, and was delighted to find what was described as a ‘red earthenware dish with yellow slip trailed decoration’. The dish had been discovered in pieces during an archaeological excavation in the nearby Potteries town of Burslem, at the Sadler site in the 1970s. It is thought to have been made in there in about 1680-1720.

Red earthenware dish with yellow slip trailed decoration, PMAG Collection

I’d bought the shard to the museum, and holding it up to the dish in the cabinet, realised that it was from a piece of similar circumference. It also had a rim and shaping that matched the lip of the dish behind the glass. Most excitingly of all, the yellow wavy slip decoration bore a striking resemblance to that on the dish in the cabinet, even to the extent that it was made by trailing the slip in a clockwise direction around the rim.

So, had that small piece of fired clay found in a flowerbed in 2019 once belonged to a large dish used by the housekeeper to serve food to the head of the household at Betley Court? Given the dates, this in theory could take us back to the very first owner of Betley Court, John Craddock, the lawyer who came to Betley in 1716 to build a fine country house away from the smoke of the town. Who knows? Perhaps it got broken when he moved into his new abode. Now wouldn’t that be annoying!

That little piece of pottery may not be everyone’s idea of treasure, but it is mine.

Ladybird Su