A HISTORY OF SURREY 



of the Chiddingfold glass-makers, occurring as 

 they do from the first half of the thirteenth 

 century and onwards, are the earliest in the 

 kingdom after the settlement of the country 

 by the Norman invaders. In some of the 

 sandy tracts which are to be found in the 

 neighbourhood of Chiddingfold no doubt the 

 first glass-makers found the chief ingredient for 

 their manufacture, but it was more probably 

 the great abundance of fuel which the ex- 

 ceptionally well-wooded country hereabouts 

 could supply for their furnaces that determined 

 the existence of the industry. Similarly the 

 ironworks of Surrey, when once set up, could 

 thrive on the great plenty of charcoal fuel 

 ready at hand. The question of fuel, as we 

 shall see, was an important one in deciding 

 the fate of some of the principal Surrey 

 industries. 



The date of the first working of the iron 

 ore of the Surrey Weald is late indeed in 

 comparison with the extreme antiquity of the 

 industry in Sussex and Kent. Probably not 

 a single iron mill was at work in Surrey much 

 before the middle of the sixteenth century. 

 This lateness of origin is readily accounted for 

 by the serious obstacle offered to the transport 

 of the produce of the works by the badness 

 of the roads over the Wealden clay and by 

 the absence of suitable waterways in the 

 immediate neighbourhood along which it 

 could be carried by boat. Only the increas- 

 ing demand for ordnance of Wealden iron 

 could make it at last profitable to extend the 

 industry over the Sussex border. The iron- 

 works of Surrey were due to the extension of 

 the Sussex industry beyond the bounds of the 

 latter county, and as a matter of fact seem to 

 have been mostly worked by Sussex iron- 

 masters. 



Almost simultaneously with the date of our 

 first notices of the existence of ironworks in 

 Surrey, a matter, which was to be of great 

 moment to the economic condition of the 

 county, is brought into prominence. In 1558- 

 9, the first of a series of Acts, which aimed at 

 reducing the destruction of timber for the 

 purposes of the iron manufacture, was passed 

 by Parliament. This Act had its origin in the 

 common opinion then current that the timber 

 resources of the country were in a way to 

 become rapidly exhausted. This opinion had 

 already given effect to a piece of legislation in 

 the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII., 

 but it was to become more strongly accentu- 

 ated during the reigns of Elizabeth and her 

 successors. William Harrison, writing in all 

 probability a little before 1577, complained 

 that Englishmen had then far less timber than 

 their forefathers had had and believed that 



24 



in the previous ten years as much oak had 

 been used as in a hundred years before.* 

 Howes in 1631 speaks of the general use of 

 sea-coal or pit-coal for house fires ' even in the 

 chambers of honourable personages' as a 

 necessary hardship consequent upon the great 

 scarcity of wood fuel, and instances * the 

 extreame wast of wood in making iron ' as 

 one of the chief causes of this scarcity.^ 



The great abundance of her woods had 

 probably been a source of considerable revenue 

 to Surrey from an early time. In 1259, '•"' 

 instance, we find that oak timber in no small 

 quantities was purchased at Kingston for use 

 in the building of the King's Palace at 

 Westminster.^ Little doubt the timber was 

 the produce of the Surrey forests to which 

 Kingston was a convenient place for shipment 

 down the river. In 1343, and again in 1344, 

 it was suspected that timber and boards had 

 been taken from Surrey to foreign parts 'for 

 the succour and solace of the King's enemies.'* 

 In later times the Crown looked more especially 

 to the Surrey forests for its supplies of timber 

 for the navy. Thus on 16 March, 1633-4, 

 two shipwrights who had been sent by the 

 officers of the navy to view the timber of the 

 Lord Montagu at Homewood, reported that 

 they had marked 227 out of 2,260 trees and 

 gave an estimate of the total cost of the felling 

 of the trees and their land carriage to Ham 

 Haw or Weybridge Haw.^ 



To the bulk of the population the preser- 

 vation of the forests of Surrey was a matter 

 of special concern because from them they 

 derived their supply of charcoal at a time when 

 charcoal was the only fuel thought fit for the 

 domestic hearth. The colliers or charcoal- 

 burners of Croydon in particular supplied the 

 citizens of London with ' coals,' and so well 

 known were they that the phrase ' a right 

 Croydon sanguine ' seems to have become a 

 cant expression to denote a reddish brown or 

 sallow complexion.* Grimme or Grimes, the 

 collier of Croydon, was a noted personage 

 living in the reign of Edward VI., and so 

 necessary was his calling held to be that he 

 was able to assert with success in a court of 

 law his right to follow it against an Archbishop 



' Harrison, Description of England (ed. New 

 Shakespeare See), i. 336. 



' Howes, Annates (163 1), 1024b. 



3 Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, Hen. III. to 

 Hen. VI., 52, 55, 58, 62. 



« Pat. 17 Edw. III.pt. i,m. 9d, and 18 Edw. III. 

 pt. 2, m. 13d. 



" S. P. Dom. Chas. I., cdxiii. 10. 



• See art. by G. Gray on 'The Gilliers of 

 Croydon' in Home Counties Magazine, iv. 203 

 et seq. 



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