Online talk: A Celebration of Alloa Pottery

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Thurs 3rd of December, 6-7pm

A historic talk on A Celebration of Alloa Pottery by Susan Mills, Clackmannanshire Council’s Museum and Heritage Officer from 1999 to 2017, a Director of Clackmannanshire Heritage Trust and a Trustee of Dollar Museum.

A pottery had been founded in Alloa by c1783 in the Kirkgate. The potter William Gardner later took it over and ran it until 1856, when Joseph Bailey took over the lease and employed Gardner and his son as potters. In 1859 Bailey bought the pottery site and, with his sons William and John Asbury Bailey, set about modernising and improving the business to enable it to survive in an increasingly competitive market. In 1862 he handed it over to his sons and by 1866 the firm was trading under the name “W & J A Bailey”. They drove forward its expansion and by 1899 the pottery covered a large site extending across to Coalgate.

Alloa Pottery was awarded medals at international exhibitions, had showrooms in Edinburgh, London and Bristol, held a stock of 100.000 teapots and also made a wide range of other wares, yet by 1904 business had declined. The pottery closed in 1907 and was eventually demolished. Nothing now remains on the ground to show that this amazingly productive pottery ever existed, but some people in the county still have at least one item of Alloa Pottery in their homes and many pieces from the Heritage Collection can be seen in an exhibition in the Speirs Centre.