charged to Mr John Fowler, Prestonpans, we find the following
items taxed, and the amount of taxation charged upon them
:—
AGRICULTURAL SHOW AT PRESTONGRANGE.
June 16th 1880 was a real "red letter day" in a very wide
surrounding district. The Agricultural Show on that day was
being held for the first time within the Prestongrange policies,
and work in every shape and form, and all around, was brought
to a stand for that day.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ANCIENT POTTERIES.
Ancient Potteries -Dr Struthers, etc. —Lord Lovat's Story—Prestonpans
China—Sugar Refinery—Vitriol Works—The Pressgang—A Distillery
—A Flour Mill—Gordon's Pottery—Thomson & Fowler's Potteries—
Rombach & Cubie's Potteries, etc. —Can, Tile, and Brick
Works—Chemical Works—French Invasion Scare—The Pykemen—The
Soap Works—Belfield's Pottery—Magnesia Works.
THE late Dr Struthers, who read much, sought much, wrote much,
and whose papers ought to have been invaluable for a work
of this sort had they not been so ruthlessly destroyed at
his decease, thus wrote on 9th July 1874 concerning the old
potteries of the district: —
" There were potteries, with glassworks adjoining them, at
or near Morison's Haven, during the last quarter of the 17th
century.
" At a subsequent date a large pottery work, with a stone
set in the outer circle of a kiln and the date 1762 inscribed
thereon, was removed twenty years ago. Its site was a little
west of where the Police Station stands. I am inclined to
think it had been built on the ruins of an earlier erection
of the same sort. At all events another near it was in active
operation previous to 1741, when the Lord Lovat of Carlyle's
autobiography fame brought his second son, Alexander, to be
educated at the Grammar School of Prestonpans.
" The present Lord Lovat has in his possession what is believed
by competent judges to be the earliest specimen of china made
in Scotland. And his lordship's account to me of its history,
during a conversation with him at Beaufort, was that it was
specially ordered by his young relative while at Prestonpans,
and that the glaze applied to it was formed out of flints
collected by him on Strichen Hill, the seat of his ancestry
in those days, during the vacations.
" His lordship, who is seventy years of age, says that the
|
