Note 271 — Chapter IV · SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (COUNTRY).

Since writing the above I find my latter conjecture to be confirmed. Miss Meteyard, in her interesting life of Josiah Wedgwood, says: ‘The surname of ‘Tellwright,’ or ‘Tilewright,’ which, variously spelt, fills a considerable portion of the parish register of Burslem down to a late period of the eighteenth century, and is still common, is curious evidence of the antiquity of the tilewright’s craft in this locality.... Every worker in its clays became a tilewright, whether he moulded tiles or formed the homely pipkin or porringer, the slab-like dish or ale-vat for the hall.’ (Vol. i. p. 93.)