Watcombe Clay Pits

Overview

A fine red terracotta clay was discovered around 1865 in the grounds of Watcombe House, St Marychurch, leading in 1869 to the founding of the Watcombe Terra Cotta Clay Company — a genuinely notable Victorian art pottery that won a Royal Warrant after Queen Victoria accepted a gift of its wares in 1873. The clay itself comes from the Permian Watcombe Formation. The company merged with Aller Vale Pottery in 1901 and finally closed in 1962; only a single former sales-office building and a memorial plaque survive at the works site.

History

Fine red clay was found in the grounds of Watcombe House, reportedly while a well was being dug, around 1865 by the estate's owner G. J. Allen; testing showed it well suited to terracotta manufacture. Allen established the Watcombe Terra Cotta Clay Company off Teignmouth Road, St Marychurch, in 1869, recruiting Staffordshire potters — among them Charles Brock, William Samuel Bond, W. C. Lawton and William Higginbottom — to run production and train local labour. The works quickly built an international reputation for unglazed red earthenware busts, figures, vases, jugs and urns, often finished with coloured enamels or gilding, some influenced by the designer Christopher Dresser. In 1873 a gift of Watcombe water bottles was accepted by Queen Victoria as a birthday present, and the pottery went on to secure a Royal Warrant, a mark of favour that helped drive its commercial success. Ownership passed to Evans & Co. in the 1880s, and in 1901 the company was acquired by Hexter, Humpherson & Co., who amalgamated it with the Aller Vale Pottery to form the Royal Aller Vale & Watcombe Company. Sculptural terracotta gave way to glazed red earthenware with coloured slip decoration and painted mottoes, aimed at Devon's growing tourist trade, and after the Second World War the combined firm absorbed its rival Longpark pottery as well. In 1923 the lower pleasure grounds of the Watcombe estate were sold to Torquay Borough Council and became a public park. The pottery itself finally closed in 1962.

Geology

The clay belongs to the Permian Watcombe Formation, present in the northern part of the Torquay district. It occurs as a coarse breccia — clasts of sandstone, slate, limestone and rare quartz porphyry in a poorly sorted sand, silt and clay matrix — resting with marked unconformity on the older Torbay Breccia Formation locally. The specific material dug for terracotta manufacture was a weathered, reddened, fissile mudstone breccia with a clay-rich matrix, sometimes termed a 'shale paste breccia'; the wider formation was also worked more generally for ordinary brick clay, particularly around nearby Hele.

What remains

All that survives of the pottery works itself is a single-storey building, possibly a former sales office, on Teignmouth Road just past the Pavor Road junction, carrying a memorial plaque placed by the Torquay Pottery Collectors Society. The wider Watcombe estate's lower grounds, sold to the borough council in 1923, are now maintained as a public park.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Fine red terracotta clay was discovered in the grounds of Watcombe House around 1865 by owner G. J. Allen, who founded the Watcombe Terra Cotta Clay Company on the site in 1869. ^1,2
• In 1873 Queen Victoria accepted a gift of Watcombe water bottles, and the pottery subsequently secured a Royal Warrant. ²
• In 1901 the company was acquired by Hexter, Humpherson & Co. and amalgamated with Aller Vale Pottery to form the Royal Aller Vale & Watcombe Company, after which sculptural terracotta gave way to glazed slip-decorated earthenware aimed at the tourist trade. ^1,2
• The pottery finally closed in 1962. ^1,2
• The clay belongs to the Permian Watcombe Formation, a breccia resting unconformably on the Torbay Breccia Formation; the material worked for terracotta was a weathered, clay-rich 'shale paste breccia'. ³
• The BGS/Coal Authority mine plans catalogue holds no record for Watcombe — unsurprising for a shallow, surface-worked clay pit rather than a deep mine. ⁴

Sources

1. (secondary) Watcombe Pottery — Torquay Pottery Collectors Society
2. (secondary) The Potteries — Babbacombe & St Marychurch History Society
3. (primary) Torquay district (sheet 350): a brief explanation — British Geological Survey
4. (primary) Watcombe mine plan search (BGS OGC API — no records) — British Geological Survey / Coal Authority mine plans catalogue

Record created: 26 August 2026 · Last researched: 26 August 2026