Happy New Year, 2022!

It’s been an unseasonably warm start to 2022 at Betley Court Gardens, along with most of England. The weather’s now adjusting, with more wintery forecasts for sleet, but we’ve had none of the hard frosts one might have expected in years gone by, as yet.

We’ve all returned to work refreshed after the Christmas break, and Nigel and I have been planning the year ahead in the gardens. We’re looking at 6 open weekends in 2022, with a blend of restoration tours up into the house, which proved very popular last year, heritage walks, and the return of the bluebell walk in Spring. Dates will be published as soon as we’ve cleared them with the wider Brown family. 2022 looks to be a busy year at Betley Court!

Planning the next year at Betley Court around the kitchen table

The lads, namely Shane, Nigel and our son have been working on the next phase of kitting out the visitors’ hub: installing a telephone line. This has involved pickaxing a narrow trench from Betley Court through the carpark down to the visitors’ hub by hand. The digging has uncovered some interesting pieces of pottery. One in particular caught my eye. Shane found what looks like a spout in a trench near the garage range. I decided to do a little detective work.

Is it a spout? - Shane's discovery from one of the telephone trenches

The spout is about 5cm (2”) long and is made from coarse red earthenware. The clay body looks quite unrefined – I can see little bits of grit within the clay. It looks roughly made. The spout tip has been reinforced by adding a thicker rim of clay. On the opposite end of the spout is a clean sloping edge (rather than a broken pottery edge) suggests the spout was once attached to something else – presumably a pot? I can make out the maker’s score marks, where slip (a ‘glue’ made of runny clay) would have been applied to join the spout to the body of a pot.

The end of the 'spout' that used to be attached to a pot. Note the scored cross hatches that would've been where the slip was applied to 'glue' the spout to the pot.

So, what was our mysterious spout once part of it? We wondered about a tea pot, a cooking pot/jug, or as it was found in the garden, a watering can. One of the sillier answers was, “it looks like a medieval bong pipe!”.

The reinforced rim of the spout. 

We ruled the spout out as a teapot spout pretty quickly, as the inside was not glazed (a protective glassy layer that stops contaminates from decoration tainting foodstuffs or liquids). It was, as I’ve said, roughly made, not refined like the pottery teapots common during the heights of the tea drinking fashion. Was it a handle then? And why is it hollow? A quick excavation of information on the internet threw up a likely purpose – a pipkin. Pipkins were clay cooking pots used to cook food in conjunction with open fires; they typically had three little legs to stand on, and were used to the side of the fire rather than directly on top of the burning wood. The spout is, in fact a hollow handle, and this allowed the cook to insert a stick to turn the pipkin as it was cooking, to distribute heat throughout the food and stop it catching. Examples found at archaeological digs often display carbon marks from their use on wood or charcoal fires.

A borderware pipkin cooking pot 17th century.Note the three little feet. Photo: mobile.antiquepottery.co.uk

I went off to the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, hoping to find an example of a locally made pipkin amongst the pre 17^th century ceramics, but alas, there was not one example, with the collection concentrating, perhaps not surprisingly on the rich ceramic legacy left by Wedgwood and the other great innovators of the Potteries industry. However, I have been able to find some examples on the internet, which give a pretty good idea of what this little archaeological find might have looked like before it smashed.

A post medievil pipkin. Note the hollow handle and evidence of fire damage. This example has lost its feet. Made between 1550-1700. Photo: www.museumoflondon.org.uk

Its an interesting little window onto how life was lived all those centuries ago in the environs of Betley Court, and a nice find to add to our collection of curiosities the soil has given up!

All best wishes

Ladybird Su