Lithgow Pottery was a part of the industrialisation of inland Australia. Author Ian Evans found that it had its origins in 1879 with the arrival in the district of James Silcock. He was an employee of the Colliery that was a thriving sector because of the westward expansion of the railways by the Colonial government. Greg Patmore, a historian of Lithgow and localism has documented the coalminers as being amongst the first to unionise in the area with workers at the Vale of Clywdd forming their own lodge as early as 1875. In 1886 a slightly broader union formation in the Western District Miners' Union was established. As Patmore notes many of the workers into the area in the coal industry and the iron works were potters from Staffordshire and, with the name above in mind, Welsh miners.
The potters then were first put to work in the area when it was determined that the clay was suitable for brick manufacture. Ian Evans, in his beautifully illustrated history of the pottery puts 1876 as the year the brickworks began. Pipe making was ready to go by October 1877 and began under the auspices of the Lithgow Valley Colliery Co with the first pipes not appearing until March 1878, with a distinctive kangaroo emblem. So confident was the area in the quality of its bricks and pipes that it took part in the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879.
No comments:
Post a Comment