INDUSTRIES 



references to the enterprise. To Thomas Bolls 

 he left ' as moche whit paper or other paper as 

 shal extende to the somme of 26s. 8d. . . . owte 

 of my paper myll at Hartford.' But it is 

 perhaps significant that, while the bulk of his 

 estates in Essex and Hertfordshire went to 

 the eldest son, the executors were directed to 

 sell the mill and its appurtenances ' to moste 

 advantage. In itself this direction is not 

 conclusive as to the commercial failure of the 

 business, but in a Discourse of the Common Weal 

 of this Realm of England, pubhshed in 1549, a 

 distinct statement is made that an English 

 adventurer in paper-making, who, though not 

 named, must certainly have been Tate, had 

 given up owing to foreign competition.'^ Thus 

 there seems to be no doubt that to Hertford- 

 shire belongs the honour of having possessed 

 the first EngUsh paper-mill making white paper. 

 But beyond this, the first mill making paper by 

 machinery was also established in the county. 



In the year 1798 Louis Robert, a workman 

 employed in the large mills of Francois Didot, 

 at Essonne, in France, devised a plan for 

 making paper in endless webs, and, having 

 demonstrated his idea experimentally, he 

 obtained a patent in 1799 for fifteen years ; 

 owing, however, to the disturbed state of the 

 country the invention was not then worked 

 in France. In 1801 John Gamble patented 

 Robert's invention for him in England, and, 

 after some improvements on it had been 

 patented, Mr. Bryan Donkin completed a 

 machine at the end of 1803. Messrs. Henry 

 & Sealy Fourdrinier, who had bought an 

 interest in the English patents, got this machine 

 to work at Frogmore Mill, on the River Gade, 

 near Boxmoor, in the year 1804. 



Fourdrinier's machine essentially consisted 

 of an endless web of woven wire cloth, moving 

 forward slowly over a series of small rollers 

 in a horizontal plane, the paper pulp flowing 

 on to one end of the level part of the wire, 

 water being drained ofi from it as the wire 

 moved forward, and the partially-drained 

 pulp, after consoUdation between two rollers, 

 being drawn away from the surface of the wire 

 as a continuous web of paper. Owing to 

 defects of detail, want of experience, and the 

 many difficulties incidental to the establish- 

 ment of a new industry, it was several years 

 before this machine proved successful in 

 practice, though its principle is the one still 

 employed by nearly all paper manufacturers 

 in the world. In the only rival machine the 

 paper web is formed on a revolving cylinder 

 covered with wire cloth. This machine, which 



1 These new facts are brought forward by Mr. Rhys 

 Jenkins in his article ' Early Attempts at Paper-mak- 

 ing in England,' in Library Assoc. Rec. ii (2), 481 

 et seq. 



was invented by Mr. John Dickinson, of Nash 

 Mills in this county, and patented in 1809, was 

 originally devised to obviate some of the diffi- 

 culties experienced with Robert's machine, 

 or, as it is more commonly called, Fourdrinier's 

 machine, and Mr. Dickinson succeeded in 

 making good saleable paper on his machine 

 while Messrs. Fourdrinier were being gradually 

 ruined in trying to perfect that of Robert. 

 The cylinder machine is still in use for certain 

 purposes, more especially for making mill- 

 boards and thick composite papers consisting 

 of several webs of paper superimposed on one 

 another in the course of manufacture. 



The result of the introduction of paper- 

 making machinery has been the concentration 

 of manufacture in a few large mills and the 

 closing down of many small mills scattered over 

 the country ; and, although at one time there 

 were probably at least twenty paper-mills ^ 

 working in Hertfordshire, there are at the pre- 

 sent moment only three firms actually at work. 

 In spite of this large numerical reduction the 

 quantity of paper made in the county is now 

 larger than it ever was. The total weight of 

 paper made in England in 172 1 was about 

 3,600 tons. In 1800 this had increased to 

 8,000 tons, and the quantity now made in 

 Hertfordshire alone is about 20,000 tons 

 annually. 



There is one other development of paper- 

 making in this country which is of some his- 

 torical interest. On the adoption of Rowland 

 Hill's suggestion of the penny post the Govern- 

 ment on 30 April 1840 issued three varieties 

 of stamps — namely, stamped covers, stamped 

 envelopes, and adhesive stamps. The first 

 two of these were the Mulready envelopes and 

 covers, which were printed on a special safety 

 paper, in the body of which very thin silk 

 threads were imbedded at fixed intervals. 

 This paper was invented by Mr. John Dickinson, 

 and was all made by him at Apsley Mills, near 

 Hemel Hempstead. The adhesive stamps were 

 the black id. stamps, practically identical with 

 the red penny stamp in use during the greater 

 part of the reign of the late Queen Victoria, 

 except that they were not perforated. The 

 Mulready design, which was drawn by William 

 Mulready, R.A., and covered the whole face of 

 the envelope, met with a great deal of criticism 

 and ridicule, and was abandoned in the year 

 1 841, but Apsley Mill continued to supply the 

 Government with silk-thread paper for the 



2 Besides the localities mentioned in the text, 

 Harpenden, Rickmansworth, Standon and Sarratt, all 

 possessed paper-mills in the 1 8th or early 1 9th century. 

 Two Waters, Sarratt, Poles Bridge, Mill End, Home 

 Park, Apsley, Loudwater and Rickmansworth mills 

 have all ceased working within the memory of the 

 writer. 



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