The History of Etruria.
The Rise and Decline of
the Factory Dominated
Community Established by
Josiah Wedgwood.
Softback;
20cm x 20cm; 125 pages; 8 colour and 23 black and white
illustrations; main text 25,000 words (31,000 including
appendices).
£15.99.
A new book
published by The Wedgwood Museum Trust deals with the history of
Etruria from its conception in 1766 as the first purpose-built
factory village. The study focuses upon the neighbourhood that
Josiah Wedgwood originally founded, between the canal bridge and
Fowlea Brook, and which helped the community to develop a strong
sense of identity. When King George V and Queen Alexandra visited
the Wedgwood factory in 1913 Her Majesty enquired of one of the
old workmen whether he was a native of the Potteries, to which he
proudly replied ‘No Ma’am, I am an Etruscan.’ Two autobiographical
accounts by ‘Etruscans’, almost eighty years apart, both agree,
one directly and the other indirectly, that Etruria began at the
canal bridge and ended at the railway bridge (near to the Fowlea
Brook).
The book will
appeal not only to those with an interest in Etruria but also any
student of local history. It follows the growth of the community
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and deals with the
division of the estate with the expansion of the iron industry.
The 1881 census returns have been exhaustively used to determine
how the community was structured. Was it a young or old community?
What were the occupations of the residents? Did they live as
small, nucleated families with immediate offspring only or as
extended households with brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews
and grandchildren? Were they born locally or had they immigrated
from further afield? The first of two appendices contains the
statistical tables ready to be compared and contrasted to other
communities.
A separate
chapter deals with the structure of employment at the Wedgwood
factory and the second appendix contains transcriptions of rent
account and employment records with the names and occupations of
those employed at the factory during the nineteenth century. This
will not only be of interest to those studying the development of
different trades within the pottery industry but also those with
ancestors who were employed at the factory.
Yet the book is
not simply a statistical reference work. Life in ‘the village’, as
it was still described during the early twentieth century, has
been gleaned from both research and interviews with former
Etruscans. The decline and demolition during the twentieth
century, firstly of the Wedgwood factory and then the majority of
the residential premises, is told before the redevelopment of the
district as both a thriving retail and residential area once
again.
The book also
contains eight colour pages of illustrations and twelve pages of
black and white. Many of these are from the Wedgwood Museum’s own
archive and published here for the first time. They include pages
from Wedgwood account books mentioning the houses built by Josiah
Wedgwood in the late 18th century, extracts from 18th and 19th
century maps and plans, and general views of Etruria taken from
engravings, watercolours & photographs. Other illustrations make
use of photographs taken by Ernest Warrillow.
This book is a long
overdue study of the lost ‘village’ of ‘The Potteries’ and will be
a valuable addition on the bookshelf of anyone interested both
social history and that of the pottery industry. |
