Highhays Ware
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Highhays Ware is a term used for medieval pottery produced at the Highhays pottery site in Kilkenny, Ireland. It was previously referred to as "Kilkenny-type ware". The pottery found during the excavations at the site included jugs, cooking pots, storage jars, money boxes, parts of pottery like spouts and ridge tiles or parts thereof, in total "42 sherds of [...] pottery and 160 ridge-tile fragments" from the kiln alone.[1]
For c. 2,000 years before the Anglo-Norman arrival in Ireland in the late 12th century, there was almost no local pottery activity on the island;[2] people used wood-turned, stave-built and metal vessels instead.[2] Once the Anglo-Normans settled in Ireland, they imported wares from across the Celtic Sea as well as the continent, especially the Bordeaux region in France.[3] However, they needed to produce pottery locally, so they had Anglo-Norman potters settle in Ireland who then produced ceramics on an industrial scale. (At a site in Drogheda, for example, archaeologists discovered 670,000 sherds left in the pottery kilns.[2][4])
The potters left their thumbprints in the pottery when adding strap handles by thumbing and by thumbing the bases of pots. The Highhays potters also left traces in the Kilkenny's legal records of the 14th century under the family name of "Crocker" or "le Crokkere".[5]
This period of ceramics production on the island only lasted for about 200 years spanning the 13th and 14th century, only to be revived in the 18th century.[2]
It is presumed that the Black Death and subsequent changes and challenges in the social structure of urban and suburban areas in Ireland led to the end of the Highhays pottery site as well as other urban pottery sites (Downpatrick, Carrickfergus, Drogheda, Dundalk).[6]