The Cole Pottery in Arkley/Barnet

contributed by Lynda Fase

I am grateful to Lynda Fase for the information that there were several Verrinder brothers initially. Their father started the Arkley pottery, or possibly took it over from a family named Field, who were listed as potters in the same general area before the Verrinders arrived.

It looks as if the Verrinders were later joined by other relatives from Gloucestershire, but they seemed to drift away. By 1891 there were two brothers left in Arkley, who were probably the two referred to as the "Verrinder brothers". Henry Verrinder stayed in Arkley and was working as a gardener in 1901.

[The Gloucestershire connection raises questions, as Thomas Cole of the 1805 will came from there. Were they relatives, or friends or was there no connection?  -  webmaster]

There was also a family called Gransby in Arkley (Henry Verrinder was married to one of them). The Gransbys were involved in the related trade of brick and tile making, and the older members of that family had been born in Tottenham in the early nineteenth century.

John Verrinder - the former owner of the Arkley pottery - was living in Tottenham in 1901 and working as a potter, possibly for Coles. Yet the births of his children show him to have been in Tottenham since about 1895, sometime before the Arkley pottery was sold. There seems to have been quite a lot of movement between Arkley and Tottenham!