Monument record MDO28134 - Poole Pottery, The Quay, Poole

A tile works on the site of Poole Pottery was started in 1861 by James Walker in a three storey building on East Quay. Walker became bankrupt in 1866. The pottery was purchased by Jesse Carter in 1873. Decorative pottery as well as tiles and architectural pottery began to be produced from the early 1900s. The size of the works increased following the creation of East Quay in the early 1900s and the reclamation of land behind it. In 1921, a subsidiary company called Poole Pottery was formed. There was significant new investment and development of the pottery in the post-war period. In early 2000s, the pottery was moved to a new site and the original site sold for redevelopment.

In 1861, James Walker, the former chief technician at the Architectural Pottery, Hamworthy, set up a tile works in a three-storey building on East Quay. However, the business was soon in financial difficulties and was put up for sale in 1866 but no buyer was found. After Walker’s bankruptcy, the works became derelict until 1873 when Jesse Carter bought the pottery. In 1881, Jesse Carter brought his sons Owen and Charles into partnership and by 1886, they were fully established as important tile manufacturers making a wide range of plain and decorated tiles and mosaic flooring. The business was so successful that in 1895 the Carters bought out the Architectural Pottery Company in Hamworthy. After Jesse Carter’s retirement in 1901, his two sons formed a new company called Carter & Co, which became one of the main suppliers of tiles and architectural decorations in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s. At the beginning of the 20th century, Owen Carter began to develop decorative pottery, as well as tiles and architectural pottery. In 1921, Cyril Carter (the son of Charles Carter), the designer Harold Stabler and the potter John Adams formed a subsidiary company to market their wares under the name Poole Pottery. The pottery struggled to survive World War II, but massive new investment and development, encouraged by Cyril Carter and the new works director Roy Holland, enabled the pottery to flourish once again. In 1964 the firm was combined with Pilkington Tiles of Manchester under the Thomas Tilling Group but in 1992 Poole Pottery regained its independence.(1) In early 2000s, the pottery was moved to a new site and the original site sold for redevelopment. The earliest pottery building was a three-storey brick building on East Quay Road, which housed the original pottery started by James Walker in 1861. It was flanked on its south side by a row of bottle kilns, on a narrow strip of land abutting on to the foreshore. The extension of the East Quay and the construction of a new Fisherman’s Dock in the early 1900s left a triangular area of reclaimed land which was acquired by Carter & Co and piecemeal development of the site took place from this date, with workshops lining the perimeter and bottle kilns of various sizes and styles occupying the centre and west end. A number of changes were made during the inter-war years including the demolition of a number of bottle kilns and improved sanitation, though the rather haphazard arrangement of buildings, some of poor quality, meant that the site was not ideal for a modern pottery. The pottery works were almost derelict during World War II and after the war ambitious plans for redevelopment were drawn up. Post-war building regulations prevented the wholesale demolition of the site, so the redevelopment partially incorporated the old buildings. The redevelopment was started in 1946 and finished in 1948 but it soon became necessary to make extensions an almost the whole of the area was infilled. The pottery continued to grow and in the 1970s East Quay Road was closed to traffic and more adjacent land became available on both sides of this road to allow expansion to give more warehousing facility and making and firing capacity. Modifications and building work continued up into the 1990s.(1)

Record last edited

Feb 21 2012 12:41PM