The UK's best-known pottery actually comes from Derbyshire.
- May 21
- 5 min read
One of my passions is saving local heritage. Being from the area of Swadlincote T.G. Green pottery was and still is revered by many a local. The factory closed its doors in 2007 after 143 years of business and has remained vacant ever since. It was put on the Heritage at Risk register in 2008 for its four bottle kilns that date back to the 18th and 19th centuries.
I have been working with the Secretary of the local MP Samantha Niblett, Antony Cobley to assess the significance of the site and why it should be saved. This culminated in a couple of pages of historical background for which I am going to be sharing here with you. I do hope you enjoy learning about this fascinating site as much as I did. Since then, work has been progressing and the site has been visited by myself, Antony Cobley, Phil Crow, South Derbyshire District Council, Historic England, and the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust. Hopefully, within the next decade, with things progressing as they are, the site can once again be vibrant and offer the area of Swadlincote a much-needed boost both within Heritage terms but also financial. I have remained in contact with the project, aiding in any research and development of the site.
I have become a collector of T.G. Green over the past few years, my wish is to have my Welsh dresser full of the stuff! Just as people did in the 1930s-1960s.
T.G. Green was a pottery manufacturer situated on John Street, Church Gresley, Swadlincote. The pottery started in 1864 by Thomas Goodwin Green, who made his fortune in the building and engineering trade out in Australia. The factory was the first in the region of South Derbyshire to gain Electricity in 1911. Green wanted to branch away from rustic dark pottery of utilitarian wares to white earthenware.
This led to the creation of Cornishware in the late 1920s. The Famous Blue and White Stripes were an instant hit in the 1930s and still has much following with potteries all over Britain making imitations historically and presently [Stoke, Somerset, Yorkshire and even Bretby Art Pottery]. Cornishware had a history of coloured bands being hand-painted on (which continued into the 1970s in some areas). Frederick Parker, the very same of [Bretby Art Pottery fame] designed the dip and turn method, whereby a biscuit body was dipped into blue slip, allowed to dry slightly and then hand turned on a lathe with strips of the blue slip taken off with a handheld chisel-like tool to reveal the white bands underneath. No other pottery ever undertook this method when producing their own blue and white banded wares. There was a major export business brought out by the popularity of Cornishware and its range and expansion from the 1930s to the 1950s, with exports going to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Europe[1].
A new factory was built by Thomas Goodwin Green himself. He used his experience in Australia to overcome the challenges of the swampy land (Gresley Common). He even fired his own bricks, in his own brick kiln, using his own coal from a little mine he sunk on the land of T.G. Green. Green developed a new type of prefabricated Stressed Timber truss to carry the roof over the factory’s 50-foot width[2]. During the early years of T.G. Green, the premises were also the starting point of Bretby Art Pottery who used the premises from 1883-1885 before they moved to Woodville in the same year[3]. T.G. Green also have links to Denby Pottery, being owned by the same family at one stage the Bourne Family. From the late 18th century, the site that would become T.G. Green was set up in the 1790’s by Mr Leedham. William Bourne of the Belper Works bought the site in 1798. The Bourne family was also connected to Denby Pottery[4].
The T.G. Green site was put up for sale and taken on by Henry Wileman in 1851. Wileman owned the Foley Works in Fenton, Stoke. Henry Wileman then sold the site to Thomas Goodwin Green in 1864[5]. Dr Iain M Hambling, who has established an archive of pottery and documents related to T.G. Green, recently posted 13th March 2026 (on the T.G. Green and Co Ltd Pottery- Church Gresley Archives Facebook page that Thomas Goodwin Green didn’t actually purchase the pottery until 1869 officially, as he managed the pottery before this time (Bath Pottery from 1864-1868) When Henry Wileman suddenly died. Wileman’s wife Mary then sold the pottery to Mr John Hackett Goddard who then divided the lands and sells the majority to Mr Henry Ansell, who in turn Thomas Goodwin Green first leases the land then finally purchases in April 1869. By which time he had also purchases another pottery located in the village of Pool, directly below the pottery works at that time which would become known as Bottom bank during the 19th century. Although he brought this land, it turns out that it was actually in his sister’s name, Rebecca Goodwin Green, who secured all the lands by 1882 at the age of 61. Amazing how T.G. Green was actually mortgaged in his sisters name and great to find out this information during[6].
T.G. Green designed machinery to make lighter work and evolve pottery production in the mid to late 19th century. A lot of his machinery was patented and then cast by Matthew Boultons. The Staffordshire potteries of Stoke-on-Trent soon purchased these new ways of production (the abolishment of the mercury bath) for flats probably saved more lives than we can count all thanks to T.G. Green, and machinery in the older corners of the potteries today, still bear the plates of Patent of Mr Thomas Goodwin Green[7].
"The T.G. Green factory is the most extensive, complete, and important relic of the built environment created by the important local pottery industry in the Swadlincote area. It is one of the few surviving structures that illustrate the former predominance of coal and clay in local culture and the economy. In 1978 the Association for Industrial Archaeology claimed that the T.G. Green factory was the finest potbank outside the Stoke on Trent conurbation, a status which it must still hold since it has scarcely altered since the 1970s. Its history, condition and the relative importance of its various components has recently been carried out in order to better understand the building and so assess any proposals for its future"[8].
The image above shows the floors directly above the Kilns in 2013, when an urban explorer trespassed on the site. In 2026, during my site visit, we were shown this area. Sadly, the whole floor had since collapsed, and the ovens in the picture were hanging above the ground floor. It is imperative that the site be saved and that all efforts be made to work with the community and the landowner to formulate a plan for the future habitation of the pottery works. I wish I could share images from the site visit, but given the level of degradation and attempts by many to trespass, we were advised not to due to the historic fabric that is left and items that remain behind. Anyone reading this, ask your parents or grandparents, and I'm confident they would either have some or have had some.
This has been researched and written by Michael L. Booth, BA, PgDip
[1] Cornishware, Atterbury, 1996, 13
[2]Cornishware, Atterbury, 1996, 6
[3] British Ceramic Art, Bartlett,1993,38
[4] British Ceramic Art, Bartlett,1993,76
[6] T.G.Green & Co Ltd Pottery – Church Gresley Archives, originally posted 21st August 2016
[7] Dr Iain M Hambling- FB, 08/12/2025
[8] Heath, 2007, An Appraisal of the Factory Buildings, 9
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