Secret Cornwall 3 - Tregonning Hill and China Clay
There’s a hole in the ground on a windswept moor in Cornwall where ravens go to be lonely and a few stonechats chirrup, and not a lot else happens at all. Thickets have long since choked the misshapen crater, so you can’t climb into it – you can’t even really see where it begins and where it ends. We’re on the top of Tregonning Hill - a very important place in Cornwall’s history but somewhere that is seldom visited by tourists.
There isn’t much to see except for thickets, but this hole was Europe’s first ever China Clay pit
A strange kind of place. Strange, unless you know something of the hole’s history – then you begin to realise why someone should declare it to be a very special place indeed.
This crater in the lofty airy bosom of Cornwall led to the employment of hundreds of thousands of men. Its story bequeathed the county countless £millions. Its white powdery progeny is to be found everywhere – a large percentage of the man-made things you touch will contain it.
Indeed, you’ve probably touched something containing William Cookworthy’s magic ingredient already this morning. If you live in Cornwall or South Devon, you may also have seen the physical results of his work. No man in the history of the West Country has had such a far-reaching effect on the region as the Kingsbridge weaver’s son who was born just over 300 years ago today.
The war memorial on top of Tregonning Hill
What follows is an article I wrote about Cookworthy many years ago. The China Clay industry in Cornwall has changed a lot since then - in an ever shrinking kind of way, it has to be said. The company mentioned below and some of the facts and figures which were correct 16 years ago when I wrote the piece are probably no longer relevant. But it’s worth repeating anyway - because it is a hell of a story - and so few of those millions of tourists crossing over the Tamar to the west will have any idea that it ever existed…
Not only did Cookworthy’s discoveries change the face of large swathes of the Cornish and Devon landscapes forever, but they provided employment for many, many thousands over the best part of those three centuries.
And it is true to say you will have already benefited from the results of Cookworthy’s work this morning before reading this newspaper. There would have been china clay in the light switch. There’d have been quite a lot of it in the washbasin and the toilet. You could even have found it in your toothpaste.
Someone, sooner or later, would probably have discovered the value of the seemingly worthless West Country clay if Cookworthy hadn’t been inspired by his stroke of genius in the 1740’s – but the fact remains that the humble weaver’s son from South Devon was the man who got their first and he was awarded an all-important patent to prove it.
Mining country… Tregonning Hill looks directly north to Godolphin Hill and its mines
William Cookworthy was born on April 12 1705, the son of a Quaker from Kingsbridge. The Quakers tended to look after one another and in 1719, at the age of 14, young Cookworthy was taken on as an apprentice by Silvanus Bevan, a Quaker chemist and druggist from in London.
The Devon boy had to make the 200 mile journey to the capital on foot as he had no money for the coach fare. But the trip was worth it - he was obviously a bright lad – in addition to his training in dispensary, William also learned Latin, Greek and French, as well as metallurgy.
So bright, in fact, that after seven years Bevan offered him a position in a new wholesale pharmacy business he was setting up in Plymouth. By 1735 they were partners and his influence in the business grew when he took on his late wife’s brother to form “Cookworthy and Company”. This gave William more time to spend on his real interests and he began to experiment in chemistry and metallurgy.
He also found time to read – and it was a chance perusal of a journal written by a Jesuit missionary which first set him on the trail of china clay. The missionary gave an account of porcelain manufacture in China, and this fired William’s imagination.
His thoughts on the subject were further inspired when three Americans visited him with samples of Virginian clay and porcelain in 1745.
By this time the Cookworthy business was really flourishing, supplying merchant ships calling at Plymouth. It’s said that he even fell into disagreement with the Society of Apothecaries when he ignored the monopoly which Queen Anne had granted to them to supply Naval ships.
The Virginian visitors were involved in a business importing clay through the port of Bristol, but at that time English potters were only able to produce types of ‘earthenware’ - real porcelain was imported from China, where the clay used was known as ‘kaolin’.
In 1746 Cookworthy was invited down to Cornwall to visit Great Work Mine at Tregonning Hill, near Helston. As he looked around he was fascinated to observe that miners were repairing furnaces with a local clay, which they called “moorstone” or “growan clay”, noticing that it seemed to survive the high temperatures without cracking. He borrowed a spade and took some samples back to Plymouth where he conducted various experiments.
It soon became apparent that the material was capable of making an excellent porcelain and William lost no time in leasing several of the clay pits in the Tregonning Hill area. But the clay contained large quantities of mica and soon deposits of a superior quality were found on land owned by Thomas Pitt (who became Lord Camelford in 1784) in the parish of St Stephen’s, near St Austell – and this area is still the main site of extraction today.
Pitt put money into Cookworthy’s venture and in December 1766 they set up a small factory called the Plymouth China Works where William continued experimenting to find the best ways of processing, glazing and firing his beloved clay.
On March 17th 1768 Cookworthy obtained a patent for “Making porcelain from Moorstone, Growan and Growan Clay”. It gave him the exclusive right to use china clay for porcelain manufacture.
The Plymouth works produced the UK’s first home-manufactured hard paste porcelain. Jugs, vases and decorated tea services were made, but the venture wasn’t exactly earning big bucks so Cookworthy amalgamated it with a pottery in Bristol. His cousin, Richard Champion, became manager of “William Cookworthy and Company” – and the rest is history.
A history, as we’ve said, that changed the face of Cornwall and Devon.
More and more potteries started using porcelain and demand grew. Many of potteries acquired rights to mine their own clay and mid-Cornwall went through something akin to a kaolin-Klondike.
The craze for clay grew even further in the mid-nineteenth century when it was discovered that the material could also be used in the manufacture of paper industry.
It was all pretty cut-throat out there in the Cornish “Alps” - as the area north of St Austell became known thanks to its white conical heaps of unwanted granite sand. By the early 1900’s more than 70 separate companies were digging away at the hills. There was huge price competition, but there were no set standards on the quality of the material mined. It was a somewhat anarchic market to say the least.
You can see the distant “Cornish Alps” from the eastern edge of Tregonning Hill
Over production was rife and there was little capital investment being made into the industry. The working conditions were said to be pretty poor and wages were low.
However, it was undoubtedly a strongly positioned industry – the West Country china clay pits held a virtual world monopoly over production. And it was good for the British economy, more than three-quarters of the output went abroad to places like the USA and Europe.
The industry desperately needed regulating and, not long after the First World War was over, three of the leading producers amalgamated to form English China Clays (ECC) Limited – a company which oversaw more than half the entire South West capacity.
The multinational minerals company IMERYS eventually bought ECC and is now (in 2004) the world’s largest producer of china clay – with 39 percent of its production coming from Cornwall and four percent from Devon. The company obviously believes there’s a huge future in West Country china clay – it has invested £106 million within the UK over the last five years and is planning go invest a further £27 million in 2005.
At this point I must introduce a man called Ivor Bowditch, who was community public relations manager for IMERYS at the time I wrote the article. I interviewed Ivor several times over the years and learned a great deal about the China Clay industry from him - he was passionate about the industry and knew absolutely everything there was to know about it…
Anyway, to go back to the 2004 article…
Ivor has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the industry, and he told me: “Cookworthy died in 1780 with the knowledge that his patent had been modified to allow the Staffordshire potters to use china clay, but with little knowledge of how the industry would have developed. He would undoubtedly be amazed at the scale of the industry today and the technology we use.
“For 100 years after he’d patented the use of china clay, the industry employed little over 200 people. But as the demand for clay grew from mid-19th century the number of companies, together with those employed, increased dramatically to a point around 1900 when there were probably some 5000 people working in china clay here in the South West.”
Looking north-west from Tregonning Hill
After the two world wars the figure eventually peeked at 6,000, but Mr Bowditch explained how advances in technology and mechanisation had brought the number of people employed in the industry down to 2,500, the present number employed.
“The industry has had a far reaching effect on local employment and commerce,” Mr Bowditch went on. “Over the past 50 years china clay has led the way in developing educational standards by employing large numbers of apprentices who’ve been trained in various technical disciplines. It is a fact that a large number of successful engineering activities within the mid-Cornwall area have been developed on back of the china clay industry’s requirement for skilled people.
“The industry has been at the forefront of technical development and continues to operate a large research and development facility employing 140 scientists who provide a scientific base for IMERYS’ much larger global operations.”
It was Mr Bowditch who came up with the line about how much china clay the average person comes into contact with first thing kin the morning:
“By time readers see this article in the morning they will have used a lot of china clay,” he beamed with obvious pride. “It will have been in the light-switch, in the toothpaste, even in the newspaper. The car you drive will have whole range of components that include china clay - from the electrics to the facia panels, from the paint to materials in the tyres. In a high quality performance engine it may well be that components have been cast in a mould made from china clay based products.
“Rolls Royce use it in their aero engine components – you’ll even find materials supplied by IMERYS in the turbine blades of the latest jet engines.”
The weaver’s son from Kingsbridge could never have realised just how far-reaching – on an global scale - his unearthing of some humble, white, Cornish mud would turn out to be.
Sidebar 1
Excerpt from Parliamentary papers of 1768:
“Patent, dated the 17th March 1768, granted to William Cookworthy, of Plymouth, Chymist, for the sole Use and Exercise of a Discovery of Materials of the same Nature as those of which the Asiatic and Dresden Porcelain are made, were produced to your Committee, and read:
“That he has great Experience in several of the China Manufactures, and has made several Trials upon all of this which have been manufactured in England, and finds that all of them, except that of Bristol, were destroyed in the same Fire that brings Bristol to perfection. And he produced to your Committee several Samples of the said Kinds of China, which showed the Effects upon them severally; and said, that they have not been able to bring the Bristol China to a marketable Commodity,
that they can afford it at a Price equal to Foreign China of equal Goodness, and that they have made some Specimens equal to good Dresden; that he had not seen any Dresden ornamental China equal to the Vases produced to your Committee, nor any Thing in Biscuit equal to the Biscuit in those Vases, and other Ornaments…”
The document goes on at some length, but the “Bristol” referred to was the name given to Cookworthy’s porcelain – his company having been merged with a Bristol pottery to produce chinaware of a high quality.
Sidebar 2
Cookworthy timeline:
1705: April 12, William Cookworthy born at Kingsbridge, South Devon, son of a Quaker weaver.
1719: Cookworthy is taken on as an apprentice chemist in London.
1726: Given a position in a new wholesale pharmacy business in Plymouth.
1735: Becomes partner in company.
1740’s: Reads missionary accounts of special clays – known as kaolin - being used in the manufacture of porcelain in China. Also meets three Americans selling Virginian clays through the port of Bristol.
1746: Cookworthy discovers clays known locally as “moorstone” being used to patch up mine furnaces near Helston. He spends years experimenting with the local clay.
1766: Sets up small factory trial porcelain items are manufactured.
1768: Cookworthy obtains a patent for “Making porcelain from Moorstone, Growan and Growan Clay” - giving him the exclusive right to use china clay for porcelain manufacture.
1773/74: Sells company to cousin, Richard Champion made manager. Cookworthy sells his interests to Richard and retires.
1777: Richard Champion attempts to renew the patent, but Josiah Wedgwood and other Staffordshire potters raise objections. Use of china clay was released to enable the manufacture of other ceramic products provided that the formula was not infringed.
1782: Champion sells formula to the New Hall Porcelain Company, which had been formed by the Staffordshire potters.
1780: October 17th Cookworthy dies and is buried in the family vault in the Westwell Street Burial Ground, Plymouth.
