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Just a stone’s throw away from one of Cardiff’s busiest roads is a quaint and idyllic business that has largely been frozen in time for hundreds of years. Rumney Pottery on Newport Road has been in the same family for 200 years and has recently been taken over by Martyn Giles following the death of his father Robert, who ran it into his 80s.
The eighth generation of the Giles clan to take the reins of the historic business, Martyn said he is having to re-learn much of the trade as he carries on his father’s work. “My father was so passionate about this place,” the 54-year-old said. ” He was like a barnacle as he wouldn’t let go. He was here seven days a week from 8am right up until his 80s. He stopped suddenly when he became ill a few months before his death and now I’ve been thrown in the deep and taken it over.”
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Walking around the showroom and workshops, there are countless nods to the work of Martyn’s father and grandfather Ernie, as well as the many others who worked here before them. There is an old potter’s wheel that hasn’t been touched in decades with a 1960s calendar hanging above it and an old bottle kiln that likely hasn’t been used since the 1930s. There are also umpteen examples of beautifully crafted jugs, crockery and commemorative plates dotted around the place, with many older than Martyn himself.
Although the romantic white stone pottery and attached house likely date back to the 1830s, family legend has it that the site has been used for pottery since Roman times. Martyn said: “My father was told that there is a possibility that its foundations go back to Roman times. Just up on the hill nearby is the remains of an old Roman fortress. In ’80s we had a mains sewer pipe put through the ground and when they dug a 12 feet trench they found an old culvert which looked like a typical Roman drain.
“The pottery was attached to this culvert which went to the river. You can build a pottery anywhere but here was the perfect location. You had the river for importing and exporting and the supply of clay and then to fire the kilns you had access to coal.”
In generations gone by, Martyn said there would have been a large workforce manning the pottery, since the job once required more physical labour than it does today. He explained that there would also have been a higher demand for pottery since supermarkets hadn’t been invented yet. He said: “Mostly family members would work here. The men would make the pots and do a lot of the physical labour and then the women would do decorative work. It needed a big labour force to fill the big bottle kiln, which would fire for a good three days and three nights.”
When you step outside of the building you are met by even more of its
fascinating history, with the remnants of an overgrown Anderson shelter from the Second World War just about still visible. You are immediately confronted with the huge social and economic challenges faced by the business throughout its history, and the efforts made by the Giles family to keep it afloat.
Martyn said: “During the Second World War they had to take the old chimney down because the Germans were trying to bomb the old powerstation, which was located where Sainsbury’s is now. I think the Ministry of Defence didn’t want this place to be used as a landmark [during blackout].
“The pottery became home to four [soldiers] who lived and slept here. They would take it in turns, two at a time, to mount machine guns on the bridge. There is still cotton wool stuffed in the walls here somewhere which the soldiers used to use to clean their guns with. All the windows used to get blown out by the bombs which were dropped nearby. One day my cousins used a metal detector on the front lawn and we found shrapnel from a German bomb.”
The pottery’s vast history shows that this is a trade which has been perfected and adapted over hundreds of years. Although Martyn grew up watching and helping his father at work, he had very limited experience running the place by himself – apart from a short stint in 2015 while his father was unwell. Although pottery is in his blood, he said taking on his father’s work so suddenly has still been a huge challenge.
“Nobody could just come in off the street and pick this up,” Martyn said. “It has taken years and years for my father to perfect it. Over the years I have picked up quite a bit and it’s amazing how just by talking to him while he worked, so much of it sunk in. I know between 80% and 90% of the skills I need, but it’s that last percentage that I’m only going to learn when I get to that problem.
“My father has left little clues everywhere. I will find myself standing there wondering how to do something and all of a sudden I start doing something that feels very familiar. It’s all there in my subconscious and it’s slowly coming back.”
Martyn said the pottery became the centre of his father’s universe. Not only was he born here, but he worked in the business his whole life. Robert built the current workshop and Martyn said his presence can be felt throughout the building.
Although the business has produced beautiful pottery as far back as the Giles family tree has been traced, Martyn said it has also faced huge challenges over the decades that have dramatically influenced the type of goods it has produced.
Martyn explained: “Many years ago this pottery would produce big water jugs and basins because houses didn’t have a supply of running water. Especially because of the mining industry, people would need these jugs and basins to fill up with water so they could wash in it. That was a good business at the time because people relied on it – if they broke one they would come here to replace it.
“Another example is that my grandfather would make lots and lots of terracotta plant pots by hand. Then that was literally knocked on its head overnight I think sometime around the 1960s when Woolworths came along and mass supplied plastic plant pots, which were very light and cheap.”
With the rise of supermarkets and the internet people in Wales have had cheap and easy access to crockery for many decades. Thinking ahead of their time, Martyn said his dad and mum Patricia knew they needed to create a unique product that would stand the test of time in order for the business to survive.
Martyn said: “My father continued the work from my grandfather and he got so much enjoyment out of that, but you had to find a balance. If nobody buys what you make, you don’t survive.
“My parents thought of this new idea with embossed designs and so they went into the trophy or commemorative business. It was still all about being creative. My mum was an artist and her first job was working at the Western Mail and Echo newspapers where she learnt designs and line drawing. She brought everything she learned there to the business and did hand-carved calligraphy.
“We also used to source the clay locally from the banks of the Rhymney River. Today we purchase all our clay from Stoke-on-Trent – my father was the first person to start sourcing clay outside the locality and my grandad was the last to use clay from the banks of the Rhymney River. It used to be brown terracotta clay used on a potter’s wheel but now we use white clay on a jigger jolly. I think my father moved to white clay to try and bring out the colours – and you can’t really use white clay on the potter’s wheel.”
Martyn said “commercialism” can be a dirty word in the arts, but he believes it shouldn’t be. If his father and grandfather hadn’t made vital changes to their business, it wouldn’t have survived. He added: “My dad was never greedy, he was always a believer in making a living rather than a killing and that’s how he survived. His customers always suggested that he should put his prices up, but he didn’t. He made enough to make a profit so he could survive.”
Much of the modern pieces created at the pottery are royal blue commemorative plates. Martyn said the design has almost become a “trademarked” feature of the pottery’s work, with orders coming in from across the UK and as far away as the USA. Martyn said his father signed every single piece of pottery he made, which Martyn can recognise “from a mile off”.
Carrying on the family business wasn’t a financial decision for Martyn, who said it wasn’t bringing in the big bucks. He said it had also been incredibly stressful at times as he is faced with the usual challenges and logistics of running any business. However, as he has built on his existing skills over the last few months, Martyn said the craft has brought him genuine fulfilment and enjoyment, which he feels is rare in most professions.
“I want to try and keep this place going for a number of reasons, but mainly for myself,” he said. “It’s not about making money and it’s not just because it would be a shame to see the place go. It’s not often you find something that you enjoy doing at the same time as work, where you get that sense of pride.”
But what will come of the Rumney Potter in the future, is up to fate, Martyn said. “The big question though is what happens to it after me? I have two daughters and my brother has a son and daughter. We want our children to get out there and get involved with the real world and see what it is all about because you can become too isolated with this place. I’ve had my older daughter here recently helping me and she is very artistic, but we aren’t going to pressure them to take it over. However, maybe one day they will get fed up with their jobs and want to get a bit creative and it will be here for them.”
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