Page 13 - BBR magazine 140 - 30yrs issue

picture two sizes, both of which are extremely rare,
have extensive text with ‘Directions / One hour before being used / mix with COLD water which has been previously boiled’ to the shoulders with ‘Genuine
Abbey Mustard / (Detailed Abbey trade mark) / Warranted / Prepared from the finest seed at / Richard Gay & Cos / Mustard & Spice Mills / Kirkstall / Near Leeds’. Within the border sometimes is found: ‘Manufd Middlesbro’ Pottery’. The Middlesbrough Pottery Company was founded in 1834 and in production until 1857. Richard Gay had a difficult time of things: according to www.mickymike1.co.uk he began as a labourer first making mustard in Dover between 1848- 50. He was in Kirksall only from 1851-54 before becoming Superintendent of the Mustard and Chocolate Mills of the naval Victualling Yard, Deptford.
Close to Newcastle, Middlesbrough Pottery might have made several other stunners from the North East, although Maling are the other prime candidate. How about the pots of John Ismay a wholesale druggist of Newcastle-upon-tyne. There are at least two, one with a big crude text only print for ‘Extra Strong Double Superfine Mustard’ and another rather spectacular pot with the two seahorses Newcastle crest. John Ismay, part of a clan of them, was at New Road in 1847 and recorded from various sources till the 1870’s. Mathew Parker Ismay registered a photographic patent in 1887 when John Ismay & Son was at Groat Market. Then we have S[oloman] Mease & Sons, shipping agents at Tyne Street, North Shields with a stags head crest. Then we have rather wonderful elaborately bordered pots made for H T Scrivener. The Scriveners seem to have begun in a rather shady way. On the 18th of April 1858 the excise man visited Thomas Scrivener’s Croft Stair shop where he sold both mustard and coffee but was found to be selling coffee adulterated with 50% chicory and mustard, cut with plaster of Paris! Scrivener also sold ‘PD’ an imitation pepper made with mustard. Henry Thomas Scrivener, of Albion Place Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a Mustard and Chicory Manufacturer, Coffee Roaster and Drug Grinder went bankrupt in February, 1862. The pot has ‘Late E Sweet’ and his pot is exactly the same as a jar used by Scrivener - both at Manor Chare. Another little clan mustard manufacturers William Sweet was at 19 Shield Street in 1847 whilst Samuel was at New Pandon Street. Most of these guys sold brown Durham mustard of course.
John and Thomas Wallis, and Hector Drummond Drysdale, traded as mustard and chicory manufacturers, spice merchants, farmers and millers, from Burton Latimer, with farms in Kettering and Rowell (Northamptonshire) from the 1860’s. Pepper was being exported to New Zealand in 1864. The Wallis family ran the Mills. John Wallis retired in 1875, three years later a partnership between the remaining Wallis partners (Thomas, James Aspin and Arthur Thomas) and Hector Drysdale was dissolved. James continued to manage the Burton Latimer Mill and lived at Isebank, the adjacent
Some of the finest UK mustards - all from the North East. Pic below of a past Bowburn display!
Below: All brown salt glaze
jar ‘S Mann/ Wallis & Drysdale/ Hull’, accompanying multi coloured showcard R.
house. Wallis & Drysdale were at No 20 Dock Street, Whitechapel in London in 1883 but were at
131 Upper Thames Street before that. The mustard continued but mostly as export production. Apparently Guernsey in the Channel Islands (mentioned in the advert here) was used to avoid duty on goods manufactured ‘in bond’ (bonded warehouses were the point at which tax was taken on Whisky etc); they were then shipped back to London for onward transmission to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. A possible offshoot of the company are the tin makers Barringer, Wallis and Manners Co of Rock Valley, Mansfield in Nottingham. In the 1860’s Barringer and Brown were packing and selling mustard in tins with paper labels and ones decorated by the Tin Plate Decorating Co. In 1895 it was incorporated as Barringer Wallis and Manners Ltd but Charles Manners sold surplus tins to other manufacturers.
In Hull we have 6ins brown salt glazed, rather crude, pots impressed for 'S. MANN / MUSTARD MANUFACTURER / HULL'. This was Samuel Mann who is listed at Holderness Row in 1829 and later at Summergangs; in 1846 the London Gazette noted the dissolution of S Mann & Co. Hull had quite a few mustard makers.
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