Stoneware Stout/Porter Bottle

Stoneware stout or porter bottle with wired cork top (the cork would have been secured in the bottle top with a wire wrap and then covered with a lead seal wrapper).

Single tone, vitreous cream salt glaze or Bristol glaze (using zinc-oxide feldspathic glaze).

Oval makers mark near base with the words:
'H. KENNEDY / BARROWFIELD POTTERY / GLASGOW / 4'
The number '4' on the mark would be the mould number.

In the 1870s, stout, porter, ales and beer were imported into the colony of Queensland from overseas, particularly Britain. Merchants like Rawley & Co. of London, and Richardson's & Co. imported cases, casks or barrels of bottled beer, either pints or quarts, in glass and stone bottles. The bottles were packed in cases, either 6, 12 or 24 to the case, or 10 dozen bottles were packed in a barrel stuffed with straw.

Popular ales sold for 2/- a bottle and included Marrian's No. 3, Tennants', Bass' Pale Ale, Ind Coope's, Allsopp's, Blood's, Jeffres', Trents', Raeburn's, Flower's, Younger's Edinburgh Ale, and Berry & Co.s' Lion Ale from Sheffield.

Stouts included Pig Brand, Boar's Head, Faulconer Morgan's London Ale and A.M. Greer & Co.s' Lane's Stout. E. & J. Burke & Co. of Dublin, owned by the brothers Edward Frederick Burke and John Burke were the bottlers and sole importers of Arthur Guinness, Son & Co.'s stout.

Henry Kennedy, an Irish native, established his Barrowfield Pottery in the Camlachie district of the east of Glasgow, near the Camlachie clay beds. He started out with just one kiln, but by 1871 had expanded and was employing forty men and six boys. Stoneware bottle production was the mainstay of Barrowfield Pottery, which made "glass-lined stoneware ... including glass-lined bottles and jars for domestic and other purposes, both for home and foreign markets". Henry Kennedy died in 1890 and Barrowfield Pottery was run by his sons, John and Joseph. Disruptions caused by WWI, the Great Depression, US Prohibition, hygiene regulations and a move towards glassware rather than stoneware meant Barrowfield Potteries closed in 1929.1

Advert for Henry Kennedy's Barrowfield Pottery, Glasgow.

• ^1. Information from the Scottish Pottery Society
  https://www.scottishpotterysociety.org.uk ↩