Robert Gilmore was a pottery fire man who became a manager and accumulated a substantial estate. Born in Glasgow he moved to Stoke and then to Burlsem. In his will he leaves twenty houses, four in Lyndhurst Street in Burslem, four in nearby Orme Street in Burslem and 12 in Bradwell Street in Longport as well as a ‘piece of land he has lately purchased in Joseph Street in Burslem’. According to the Staffordshire Daily Sentinel, more than 200 people attended his funeral including members of the temperance and overmen’s society. When he retired in 1869 at the age of 58 he was presented with a portrait by the overmen of the potteries. He sat on the Board of Arbitration ‘as a member of which he had won the respect of both employers and workmen by his manly straightforwardness and conciliatory bearing’. ‘A zealous Christian’ He was a member of the New Methodists at Dalehall, the local temperance society and the Burslem Board of Health.