The Clews name has a long association with the potteries, and there are records of family members working in and managing pottery manufacturing companies from the middle of the eighteenth century. However, it was the sons of John Clews (b1753 in Newcastle-under-Lyme) who bucked the trend and moved into ownership. John had married Ann Stevenson in about 1780, and the Stevensons were pottery manufacturers of long standing, having started around 1710 with John Stevenson’s works at Sneyd Green in Burslem. Throughout the nineteenth, and into the 20th century, there were Stevensons making china in Stoke, and the name held high rank when Ralph Clews (b1788) and his brother James (b1789) decided to move into production.
Ralph, as the older of the two brothers, had been the first to go into business. He’d joined his father in trade, and by 1810 was assisting with the two diverse businesses that John had established in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
On the one hand, there was a long-established hat-making enterprise based at the family’s Merril Street address, and on the other, John was a maltster. Indeed, he had gone into a two-thirds partnership with William Malkin to establish the company of Malkin & Clews on what became the site of the Shelton Brewery in Sun Street, opposite The White Jug public house, as well taking on a number of ‘tied’ houses.
John was a well-respected member of the community by the close of the eighteenth century, having risen to become an Alderman of the town and a landowner, and his interests were diversifying to include an extensive property portfolio alongside his millinery and brewing businesses.
John’s younger son, James, would have been about twenty when he started working as a Clerk to Andrew Stevenson at the family’s works in Cobridge. It must have given the younger brother a keen insight into how to manage a pottery business, and as later evidence was to suggest, he and Ralph had adventurous spirits and entrepreneurial inclinations. Just two years later they saw their opportunity when Peter Warburton (of another long-established family of potters) tragically died young, at the age of just 40. His widow, Mary, was keen to sell his two-oven Bleak Hill factory, or perhaps let it out, and the Clews brothers signed the lease in 1813.
It seems likely that John, as the boys’ father, came up with the initial financing for the project. Despite the factory’s dismal-sounding name, they appear to have done well, and in 1817 they took on a second factory in Cobridge; the Globe Works. It was largely from here that they established a world-wide reputation for making top-quality wares, principally in the traditional blue and white “transfer” style. Much of this was exported to America, where they enjoyed an eminent reputation as pottery manufacturers.
In November 1819 John Clews died, and his sons stepped in to take over a number of his businesses. Ralph was already an up-and-coming member of the civic community, and had risen from being a member of the Old Corporation of Newcastle-under-Lyme to be elected Mayor. Aged 31, It was a post he would occupy for just two years, but sufficient for responsibility to fall upon his shoulders when the town marked the passing of King George III in March 1820.
It seems the sons gave up on hat-making, but in 1823 they bought-out William Malkin to become sole owners of the brewery. With their pottery business growing, they purchased a flint mill in Tunstall (where calcined flint was crushed to create a fine white powder to enhance the quality of their earthenwares) and then a coal mine. The Jackfields Colliery in Burslem wasn’t huge, but it satisfied the needs of their kilns and, as a by-product, produced good ironstone suitable for calcining and supply to the foundries, further supplementing their income.
In late 1827, with fifteen years of growth to their credit, they expanded again, leaving the Bleak Hill site and taking on the lease for Stevenson’s much larger factory (of three biscuit and six glost ovens) in Cobridge when Andrew, their cousin by marriage, retired. The older-established company was almost adjacent to the brothers’ existing Globe Works site, and was well known for its Blue & White wares. They appear to have adopted much of Stevenson’s own designs and production. Indeed, they were often, perhaps unjustly, accused of “plagiarism” by producing transfer patterns that were almost identical to those being manufactured by other potteries. In truth, this was actually commonplace at this time, since the concept of copyright was something of a novelty. It’s worth bearing in mind that over 70 companies produced Willow Pattern alone, and the Copyright Act didn’t come into effect until 1842. The more stringent International Copyright Act wasn’t passed until 1891, and until then the habit of copying another company’s successful designs was frequently adopted.
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