In July of 2023, Verey Head Gardener Chris Sharples and the gardening volunteers were clearing some stinging nettles behind the garage by Limnerslease and uncovered something truly special. Chris details their discovery.

Buried amongst the nettles, we uncovered some lumps in the soil which turned out to be made from Plaster of Paris. Once we dug these fragments of plaster up, it became apparent that these were moulds - I had seen a previous Artist in Residence, Ashleigh Fisk, use impression moulds made from Plaster of Paris during her residency.

We did a tentative excavation and found several pieces which we believed were from The Potters’ Arts Guild. We halted any further work to consult our Head of Collections, Laura MacCulloch, who contacted the relevant archaeological authority to make sure we were okay to continue digging up the discovery. We were given the go ahead to continue excavating the site as they appeared to have been disposed of, rather than carefully buried.

A few weeks later, with the help of the “Wednesday volunteer crew” we very carefully finished excavating all the pieces of plaster we could find. What was really surprising was that the moulds, although clearly very old, were in good condition. They were fragments of moulds that appeared to have been deliberately broken. Once we took them out the ground, we could see that some were noticeably Compton pots, possibly the later period of the Compton Pottery. There were things like the Italian box - a window box, and we found the tall Duchess pots, which we have examples of across our site. We also discovered the Tudor pot which has the Tudor rose on it, along with quite a few other iconic pieces of the later garden pottery. We brought this to the attention of Hilary Calvert, co-author of Mary Seton Watts and the Compton Pottery who was delighted to see these fragments.

It became apparent that in the 1950s when the Compton Pottery closed, these moulds were discarded and were deliberately broken and buried. The fragments were cleaned and in September 2023, we held a small exhibition of these pieces in the Artist in Residence studio. The better pieces have been retained and put into storage, and the many smaller pieces will be reburied to stay on the site.