A HISTORY OF SURREY 



fuel in glass-making appear to have been made 

 at Lambeth, and an instance is not wanting 

 where a glasshouse which had been set up on 

 the Middlesex side at Whitechapel had been 

 voted a nuisance by the neighbours.' 



Of dangerous manufactures that of gun- 

 powder occurs most readily to the mind. 

 This, however, as more connected with the 

 rural parts of the county we have already con- 

 sidered. It was clearly an industry that was 

 impossible within the City of London, but we 

 may again note the early existence of a mill 

 at Rotherhithe, and also remark that the 

 principal saltpetre storehouse for the realm 

 was afterwards in Southwark. It was a 

 matter of utmost moment to the Crown that 

 the manufacture should be carried on within 

 easy access of the Tower of London, at one 

 time its chief repository of ordnance stores. 



The concession which we have noted to 

 Southwark by the city authorities of a timber 

 market was no doubt prompted by motives 

 of safety. The possible results of fire where 

 large quantities of timber were stacked would 

 have been alarming. Afterwards Lambeth 

 became the scene of the great timber wharves 

 in Surrey. Lett's timber wharf is said to have 

 existed at Lambeth from the time of Queen 

 Elizabeth until the beginning of the last 

 century.' In 1810 Messrs. Thomas & John 

 Lett, timber merchants, purchased from the 

 duchy of Cornwall a lease for ninety-nine 

 years of the Prince's meadow at Lambeth 

 with a river frontage of about 1,250 feet, 

 paying a fine of ;C55,000 for the same and 

 agreeing to pay an annual rent of £Si^l^ to 

 be secured by the erection of substantial 

 buildings within twenty years from the com- 

 mencement of the lease ini8i5. By 1826 

 they seemed to have made considerable 

 advance in these buildings.^ A Dutch 

 engraving of the end of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury marks the part next the river at Lam- 

 beth as ' all wood-yards.' * Lysons states 

 that the importation of foreign timber had 

 been a source of prodigious wealth to the 

 parish of Lambeth.* 



We have now set out the chief conditions 

 which will account for the development of 

 Southwark and its neighbourhood into an 

 important manufacturing district. But the 

 later extension of this district, the multiplica- 



1 See the special account of the glass-making 

 industry following. 



2 Brayley and Britton, Hist, of Surrey, v. App. 

 48. 



= Men, Hist, of Lambeth, 312. 



• Ibid. 314. 



= Lysons, Environs of London (ed. 2), i. 228. 



rion of the industries carried on within it, 

 and the various degrees of excellence which 

 many of them ultimately attained, have been 

 largely due to the influence of the foreign 

 workmen who at successive stages of our his- 

 tory came to settle within our county. The 

 influence of the alien immigrations on Eng- 

 lish industries is perhaps the most important 

 feature in our economic history. We have 

 shown that to some extent the industries 

 carried on in the south of the county were 

 affected by the arrival of foreign manufac- 

 turers. But their influence in the suburban 

 and more northerly parts of the county was 

 far more vital to the genesis and growth of 

 the manufactures of those parts, and the 

 results which it produced were of a far more 

 varied character. 



The effects of the introduction of foreign 

 labour upon the more important industries of 

 Surrey will be more fully dealt with in the 

 special sections devoted to those industries. 

 We shall confine ourselves here to some 

 general remarks on the whole character of 

 the alien immigrations into the county. 



The earliest return of all the aliens resi- 

 dent in Surrey in a certain year bears date 

 1440, and is of particular value in that it 

 specializes the operations in which the 

 greater number of them were engaged.' In 

 1439 the first of the subsidies levied at special 

 rates on aliens had been voted by Parliament, 

 and the return in question is the first of the 

 assessments made for the county in accord- 

 ance with the terms of the grant to the 

 Crown. For the purposes of the tax aliens 

 were distinguished as householders or non- 

 householders, the former paying a poll-tax of 

 IS. /^., the latter of 6d. It must be remem- 

 bered that the term alien then included both 

 Scotchmen and Irishmen. The nationalities 

 are not as a rule given, but may be inferred 

 partly from the character of the name, especially 

 in such cases where the usual inability of our 

 countrymen to master the subtleties of foreign 

 nomenclature has led to the appearance in 

 the list of such surnames as Irishman, French- 

 man and the like. In some cases the par- 

 ticular trade has been utilized as a surname, 

 its repetition after the place of residence 

 appearing redundant. 



The return shows the overwhelming pre- 

 ponderance at that date of the alien popula- 

 tion of Southwark over that of the rest of the 

 county. Out of a total of 191 foreign 

 householders for the whole of Surrey there 

 were no less than 1 1 9 in Southwark, and out 

 of 398 non-householders there were in the 



250 



« Lay Subsidy Rolls, clxzxiv. No. 212. 



