INDUSTRIES 



declined during the course of the last century. 

 Its uses for toilet purposes are well known, 

 but the special demand for it which, as noted 

 in the Geology section in the first volume of 

 the present History, has given a new lease to 

 the industry comes from its recent application 

 in America for the dehydrating of certain 

 vegetable oils to be used in adulterating lard/ 

 The industry at the present day gives em- 

 ployment to two companies at Nutfield, the 

 Fullers' Earth Union, Limited, and the Surrey 

 Fullers' Earth Co., Limited, and to another 

 firm at Redhill. 



The clay soils of Surrey have been and are 

 still used to a very great extent in brick- 

 making. At the beginning of the last cen- 

 tury we are told that this industry was probably 

 carried on to a greater extent at Kennington, 

 Walworth, Camberwell and Battersea than in 

 all the rest of the county united. But the 



soil on the Surrey side of London was only 

 calculated for certain sorts of bricks, which 

 were inferior to those made in Middlesex. 

 The clay possessed too much flinty sand, and 

 was too near the surface to be of that pure 

 medium argillaceous substance which was 

 essential for the making of the perfect brick.^ 

 The brick-making industry in Surrey is at the 

 present day carried on very extensively in the 

 south-eastern districts as well as in other 

 scattered parts, and by a great number of 

 manufacturers, but, so far as we have been 

 able to learn, possesses no special features that 

 call for comment in these pages. 



The more particular purposes which several 

 of the soils to be found in Surrey have been 

 made to serve in the arts of the potter and the 

 glassmaker will be more fitly treated in the 

 sections dealing with the respective industries 

 of those manufacturers. 



POTTERY 



The history of the earthenware industry 

 of Surrey, as that of most other counties, 

 must of necessity in any general account of 

 the industry in England appear of only sec- 

 ondary interest in view of the pre-eminence 

 which the potteries of StaiFordshire with their 

 vast superiority of output have long main- 

 tained. But the fact that tradition, if not 

 actual evidence, has given to Lambeth the 

 credit of being the place where the manu- 

 facture of delft ware was first originated and 

 attained successful development in England, 

 and the great number of potters who at dif- 

 ferent times have exercised their art in and 

 about this locality, assign to Surrey no unim- 

 portant part in the history of English earthen- 

 ware. And although Lambeth has probably 

 always been and is undoubtedly at the present 

 day the principal seat of the industry in our 

 county, there are besides many places scattered 

 over Surrey where pottery was made at com- 

 paratively early dates and in some of them the 

 manufacture is still continued. 



If, moreover, the opinion of a recent writer 

 is well founded that in the medieval tile- 

 maker we must recognize the probable re- 

 viver of ornamental pottery in England,* then 

 we must go back to a considerably earlier 

 period to estimate the true value of the part 

 played by Surrey in the history of the art. 

 For of all that has been preserved to us of the 

 ceramic art of the middle ages, in no de- 



1 r.C.H. Surrey, i. 8. 

 ^ M. L. Solon in the Connoisseur, i. 347. 



281 



partment are there presented such features of 

 high artistic development as in the beautiful 

 encaustic tiles, which were used to cover the 

 floors and perhaps the walls of ecclesiastical 

 buildings. These tiles, found in some early 

 churches and unearthed from the ruins of 

 monastic buildings widely dispersed over the 

 country, are of very varied design and exhibit 

 several different processes of manufacture. 

 But of all the varieties those found at Chert- 

 sey Abbey have by common consent been 

 admitted to be the finest. Now it is the 

 opinion of no less an authority than Professor 

 Church that these tiles were almost invariably 

 made in the great religious houses themselves. 

 When it is considered how much the monks 

 were indebted for their arts to continental 

 sources, he is inclined to see in the manufac- 

 ture of the tiles the influence of foreign, es- 

 pecially Italian, workmen.* In this he is 

 opposed to Mr. Solon, who would seem to 

 claim an exclusively native origin for this 

 kind of earthenware when he says that he 

 has never heard that any example of a tile 

 pavement has been discovered in the medieval 

 buildings of the continent earlier in date than 

 those exhumed from the abbeys of Malvern 

 and Chertsey. Indeed he ventures so far as 

 to put the question whether, as the French 

 pavements of the earliest period have been 



3 Malcolm, Compendium of Modern Husbandry, 



»• 74> 75- 



< Church, English Earthenware (S. K. Hand- 

 books), 1 1-3. 



36 



