Finding Old Pottery

Where to Find Old Pottery

Old pottery can be found almost anywhere humans have been - ploughed fields, on beaches, river banks and streams and on waste ground. In the past, before rubbish collection was organised, with formal dumps, every home had their own 'trash heap' where broken pottery and other trash would have been dumped, or buried. There would also have been larger dumps around the countryside which can show up on old maps sometimes as an in-filled area. 

Pottery Finds 

I have found quite a bit of interesting pottery just walking around local fields and crossing the stream, which has bars of pebbles where a lot of pottery seems to build up after flooding. 

The pottery I find can be of all ages, some I suspect to be very old, Iron age and Roman, but this will be scattered amongst more recent patterned and glazed pieces, like the blue and white pottery. 

Bits of really old pottery, anything like this I save to be given to the heritage dept at my local council. They identify and post the finds on a data base. 

This one has a design, the piece in the photo shows what looks like a horses leg, galloping. I bet this pot was really beautiful complete. I have no idea of the age of this pot. I don't think it's extremely old though

A medieval roof tile, if I picked up every medieval roof tile that I found I would actually have enough to tile a roof! How many medieval tiles does one woman need? Lol!

I have found a few pieces of this in the past, at first I thought it was part of a thick, shallow, bowl, but I am wondering if it might be part of a pottery wheel. I will have to do some research into tools that medieval potters used. 

I also find little pieces of blue and white china in the field, it has all kinds of different patterns, there has been no dwelling in that field for a long time, so I wonder why they are there, I suspect that 
people used to go round smashing plates in the middle of  fields for fun in times gone by, or perhaps in those days farm labourers would take their lunch to work on a fancy blue and white plates, and break them by accident.

The fields and river where I found most of these pieces (except 1 which was found on a beach) has not had any buildings or a rubbish dump there for 300 years at least. I find this interesting and perplexing as the fields look as though someone has been on a pottery smashing rampage, was there some point in history that blue and white china was outlawed and it all had to be taken to the fields and smashed? Lol! I joke of course, but how the hell does it get there?

The larger piece is interesting as it has a C worked into the willow pattern, I wonder who C was? The great artist Sydney Cooper had a house pretty near by so maybe it's one of his monogrammed plate, that would be exciting.

My favourite piece of blue and white china is the one in the photo below, found at Folkestone beach, this one has a lovely feel to it, quite fine china, and the pattern is very bright and fresh looking. I love the flowery china pieces.

Soon I will start to research some of these china bits, and try to find pictures of how they would have looked intact.