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Figure 51: Kiln at Oyster Street, Portsmouth.


Excavated in 1968-71 by E Lewis for the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works and Portsmouth City Museums. A plan at the scale of 1:30 is included in 'Post-Medieval Britain in 1970' (Moorhouse 1971, 218). A redrawn version of this plan at 1:32 appears in the full excavation report (Fox & Barton 1986, 70). Portsmouth Museums hold the excavation record which includes a quantity of black and white photographs and colour transparencies of the kiln during excavation. There are also, in this authors possession, nine black and white photographs. The figure was produced by reference to all of this material.

Pipes found in context with the kiln, marked IM and WS, have been attributed to John Moth and William Stretchly (ibid, 71). Documentary evidence provides limits for the working life of these pipemakers, 1692-1713 and 1679-1715 respectively (Fox & Hall 1979, 15). Typologically these pipes conform to Oswald's general Types 9, dated 1680-1710 and 19, 1690-1710 respectively (Oswald 1975, 37-41). All of the evidence therefore points to a date for this kiln somewhere in the last decade of the seventeenth or first decade of the eighteenth century. The material found in association with this kiln, group PO2 of the catalogue, includes pipe reinforced muffle material. (Appendix 1)