Page 6 - Alan Blakeman Collection catalogue

my Early Years...
Stoke born and bred... and extremely proud of my pottery roots, despite having lived in sunny South Yorkshire for nearly five decades now!
I was actually born in Longton hospital, my dad the youngest of 17 children from Cheddleton, Nr Leek. The Blakeman family tree is the Potteries through and through, with a direct link to the
wooden seats, the pot banks belching out thick black smoke. Pictures above feature no less than 65 bottle ovens in a
Father Ron worked on the Harecastle railway tunnels but became a farm labourer at Saverley Green, just outside Longton, Blyth Bridge, Cresswell.
We rarely went into Longton, our nearest town, shopping.
Dad worked most every day, or tended our own one acre garden, replete with chickens.
I do recall vividly the very thick black smoke from the bottle ovens if we ever travelled “into town” on a Beresfords bus - with
Above: Betley village has several black and white Tudor buildings, some of which produced a few dug discoveries. Whilst working with my father one day we unearthed a shed load of tiles which, for some reason, had been buried about twelve inches below the surface. I didn’t keep one! Another of the main road houses revealed a giant Ludford Street ginger beer, steam train pictorial, from behind a fireplace.
the famous Johnsons Ointment
pot featuring the Summer House pictorial. Little did I initially realise what was made
c.1895 Longton landscape, renowned as the most polluted of all the famous North Staffs towns.
My mum worked in a factory where they made the oxides for the pottery companies.
Above L: Station House Wrinehill - well one mile up from the village on the main Crewe to London railway line. Now demolished. Above R: Johnsons Summer House used for the pictorial on the Johnsons, Wrinehill, Ointment pot - where secondary school age AB stood each morning to catch the school bus. Below: Aerial view of Betley Agricultrual Show (village just down the hill from Wrinehill) where I moved shortly after starting Nantwich Grammar School. To the right of the Show area is Betley Mere where I accidently found the broken neck of a codd bottle which led to my first ever dig on the village dump... from small acorns?
Wedgewood family and also with Ralph Wood, he of Toby jug fame. Having studied ceramics and taught pottery I think there could well be clay in my blood.
Skip forward a few years and by the age of 11 we had moved North to a small
I was not a good scholar. but aged 14 a Geography teacher made me see light and
village called Wrinehill which today all collectors know as the source of
in that now dilapidated tudor oak framed building just below it - see the full tale under the pot lid in this catalogue.
with some determination I managed to stay out of Saturday morning detention and go on a trip to Snowdonia. Aged 14 I was introduced
into the world of rock climbing and my entire life changed - I was hooked upon a new found passion and scaled the sheer walls of a local quarry most every night available, achieving (unknowingly) a very high competence.
I joined a band, as a poor drummer and got a job at Keele Services
(3 nights a week after school and 2 shifts at w/e) to save up to buy a motorbike - to go rock climbing further afield.
Aged 16 I fell for a girl called Gill and one day walking round Betley Mere together we uncovered a broken codd bottle neck, took it home, dad told me of the village dump (20ft beneath a modern capping of beds and other household rubbish - and the second passion in my life was kindled.
To this day the climbing and the bottles are devotions that seem not to have diminished one bit.
But, the next chapter was to begin as I won a place, aged 18, to Manchester Art College