Highgate Wood Pottery Kilns
About
Potters dug clay from the gravel terraces of a wooded hilltop north of Londinium and fired at least ten kilns to supply the growing capital with everyday grey cooking pots. Excavations here recovered more than 40,000 pottery fragments from a production run lasting from roughly 50 to 160 CE. One kiln survived so intact that conservators later lifted and restored it for public display.
What happened here
The workshop runs as a production line. Clay is dug locally, weathered over winter, kneaded and thrown, or pressed into moulds for the decorated wares. Vessels are dried under cover, stamped with the potter's name, stacked in the kiln around a central flue and fired for days with the temperature judged by eye and by test pieces pulled from a port in the side. A big firing holds tens of thousands of pots and a bad one loses the lot. Wasters are dumped in heaps beside the works. Some workshops export across half the empire and their stamps turn up thousands of miles away. Fuel is the limit on everything, so kilns sit near woodland and move when it runs out.
Sources
Nearby
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