On the centenary of Sir Charles A. Cameron's death, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences is celebrating his life, work and tireless campaign to improve the health of the city of Dublin and its people. To mark Cameron's birthday on the 16th of July, we are exploring his connections with Belleek, County Fermanagh and its famous pottery.
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| Castle Caldwell, Photograph taken by Canon W.H. Dundas, circa 1900. Image courtesy of Fermanagh & Omagh District Council's Museum Service. |
Cameron recounts in his autobiography how he spent several of his Christmas holidays during the 1850s with Mr and Mrs John Caldwell Bloomfield DL at Castle Caldwell on Lough Erne, County Fermanagh. Cameron, an accomplished geologist, while out shooting with his host noticed a white patch of clay, and took a portion of it to the Castle.
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| John Caldwell Bloomfield DL. © Courtesy Belleek official website. |
"I heated it to redness, and on removing it from the fire and allowing it to cool, I found that it had not lost its white colour; this showed the absence of iron oxide. I then said to John Bloomfield that I believed he had a good porcelain clay on his estate."
Cameron subsequently made an analysis of the clay sample and published his findings:
Cameron records that the Rev Joseph Galbraith FTCD, who was interested in minerology, doubted the existence of a real porcelain clay in County Fermanagh, and wrote a letter saying so to the editor of Saunders’ News-Letter. Cameron, Galbraith and others contended this for days in the letters page, in what became known as the ‘china war’. These letters are now collated in the album Cameron kept of press cuttings in which he featured. His album and diaries are part of the Heritage Collections of RCSI.
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| Press cutting album of Sir Charles A. Cameron, RCSI Heritage Collections. |
"That I was right was proved by a factory being started to work the clay. I have the first article made from it — a saucer, manufactured from a small quantity of the clay sent to Kerr’s Porcelain Factory, in Worcester."
Disputed Discovery
Priority of discovery of the china clay in Belleek may not be Cameron’s to claim, although he had been employed to make several geological surveys for the Mining Company of Ireland in 1858. Bloomfield, however, writing a quarter of a century later on the development of Irish industries states that it was he, Bloomfield, who first found kaolin and feldspar on a hill in Fermanagh, “as an amateur mineralogist dropping upon a raw material on a mountain side". Other accounts state that Bloomfield commissioned a mineral survey of his estate in 1853 which revealed deposits of feldspar and kaolin.
No doubt that first saucer made by William Henry Kerr in Worcester from china clay from Belleek and given to Cameron is long returned to dust. It possibly did have the delicate luminous finish that distinguishes Belleek parian. It is interesting to note, however, that the initial ware produced at Belleek was high quality domestic earthenware – washstands, hospital pans, floor tiles, and tableware. The manufacture of the parian ware with which Belleek is synonymous was developed over time and the earthenware discontinued.
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| Press cutting album of Sir Charles A. Cameron, RCSI Heritage Collections. |