Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/236

Rh Beginning at the extremity, we soon came upon a kiln, which, like the others discovered by Mr. Bartlett, only showed its presence by the crumbling red brick earth. An enormous old oak-stump had grown close beside it, and around the bole were heaped the drinking-vessels and oil-flasks, which its now rotten roots had once pierced.

Nothing could better show, as the excavation proceeded, the former state of the works. Here were imbedded in the stiff yellow putty-like clay, of which they were made, masses of earthenware, the charcoal, with which they were fired, still sticking to their sides—pieces of vitreous-looking slag, and a grey line of cinders mixed with the red brick earth of the kiln. The ware remained just as it was cast aside by the potter. You might tell by the bulging of the sides, and the bright metallic glaze of the vessels, how the workman had overheated the kiln;—see, too, by the crookedness of the lines, 218