THE
NEW FACTORY
Joseph
Pickford, architect from Derby, designed the new factory in consultation with
Josiah Wedgwood. Correspondence between Josiah Wedgwood and his partner,
Thomas Bentley, provides us with a detailed account of the building of the
factory. The front of the works facing the Trent and Mersey Canal was a
symmetrical composition with a three story central range surmounted by a
cupola containing a bell and two lower wings on either side two stones in
height.
There
was a roundhouse at each end of the main façade. The original use of these
two buildings is unknown but they may have been used as storerooms. The
illustration at the bottom shows the factory from the canal bridge at
Etruria Road in 1794. Towering over the front range was the windmill
designed by Erasmus Darwin for grinding colours. Between 1782 and 1784 this
was superseded by a Boulton and Watt steam engine installed for driving the
clay, flint and colour mills.
The
factory behind the front ranges was divided into the Useful and Ornamental
Works each laid out around its own square (see the 1877 Ordnance Survey map of
the works). Although the factory was opened in 1769 construction on the site
continued for many years afterwards.
In
the early 19th century china works were added to the north of the Ornamental
Works and there are payments in the Wedgwood collection to John Pepper, the
architect from Newcastle-under-Lyme, for work at the factory.
The
site was bounded on the east by the canal from which two branches were taken
into the works. The previous illustration shows the
entrance to the branch canal under the canal bridge on the right. Production
on the site lasted until 1940 when the earthenware department was transferred
to the new factory at Barlaston. The last of the factory buildings were
demolished in the mid 1960s and all that remains of the original works is the northern
“roundhouse” now part of the premises occupied by the Sentinel
newspaper.
(1760 onwards)Wedgwood's factory
