- It was in working order. When the Fireman, Alfred Clough, was asked "can it be fired?" he paused. Then he declared "Yes ... Once!"
- It was close to the Gladstone Pottery Museum - about 250 yards away. Communications would be easy.
- It was relatively small and would consume no more than 12 tons of coal fuel
- It was an updraught bottle oven and therefore relatively easy to fire.
The Sutherland Works is a Grade 2 Listed Building. The bottle oven used is known as a skeleton oven. More about oven types here>
The skeleton oven looks, at first sight, very similar to an updraught stack oven. But it is constructed completely differently. This updraught skeleton oven tended to be preferred by pottery owners since it was easier and less expensive to maintain. Work could be carried out on the firing chamber without affecting the chimney.
In an updraught skeleton oven the chimney (hovel) is built from ground level, very close to the firing chamber, with just about a one brick-width gap between the two. The firing chamber was therefore completely separate from the chimney and could be easily maintained or knocked down and rebuilt. This simple graphic shows the differences.
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| Bottle oven - UPDRAUGHT HOVEL OVEN. Cross section diagram and external view of an oven at Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton. Drawing and photo: Terry Woolliscroft Collection |
The two ovens were operated in essentially the same way.
Technical Spec - The oven for the last firing
Diameter - 14 feet (4.25m)Height to shoulder - 14 feet (4.25m)
Rise from shoulder to top of crown - 2.11 feet (0.9m)
Number of firemouths - 8
Number of saggars in the setting - 1174
Anatomy of the Firemouth
The image below shows the various parts of one of the eight firemouths in the bottle oven used at the last firing. |
| Anatomy of a Bottle Oven Firemouth Photo: Terry Woolliscroft Collection |
For definitions of the special words used in this blog please refer to the Potbank Dictionary > https://potbankdictionary.blogspot.com/