INDUSTRIES 



of coarse red pottery at Frensham, the red earth 

 used in which was obtained from the estate 

 belonging to a Mr. Payne at Tongham.* At 

 Nine Elms Mr. John Brayne carried on in 

 1850 a pottery which had originally been 

 founded at Cupers Bridge about 1730, and 

 had afterwards been removed to High Street, 

 Lambeth. He turned out yearly about ^^4,000 

 worth of every variety of brown and white 

 stoneware." At Battersea, Wandsworth, Croy- 

 don, Norwood and probably at many other 

 places in the county, the earthenware industry 

 has to some extent at one time or another been 

 pursued. In connection with it it may be here 



noted that a mill at Wimbledon for the grind- 

 ing of colours for glazing white ware was 

 purchased in 1 690-1 by William Knight, a 

 potmaker of Aldgate.^ Similarly, of three 

 mills stated to have been in existence at 

 Battersea about the year 1783, one we are 

 told ground the colours for the potters.* At 

 the present time firms for the manufacture ot 

 drain-pipes and the commoner sorts of earthen- 

 ware are established at Charlwood, Cranleigh, 

 Crowhurst, Dorking, Godstone, Kingston, 

 Letherhead and Redhill, in addition to those 

 better known centres of the industry which 

 have been dealt with above. 



GLASS 



A very special interest attaches to the history 

 of the manufacture of glass in Surrey. It is 

 not only that to a parish in Surrey belongs the 

 earliest known record in post-Conquest times 

 of the existence of the art in this country, but 

 that throughout the later medieval period, 

 until towards the close of Tudor times, two or 

 three places in the south-western portion of 

 the county were within the chief glass-pro- 

 ducing district in England. Circumstances 

 which will be duly noted led in Tudor times 

 to changes in the conditions of the manufac- 

 ture. But it was still within the borders of the 

 county, although at its most opposite ex- 

 tremity, that some of the principal experiments 

 were made and some of the chief improve- 

 ments attained that were ultimately to revolu- 

 tionize the whole art. 



Although the removal from Southwark 

 about 1877 of the Falcon Glass Works, one 

 of the most important manufactories of flint 

 glass in the kingdom, has deprived our county 

 (as anciently constituted) of a great part of its 

 former consequence in the trade, there yet 

 remain in some of those districts south of the 

 Thames which have now been absorbed into 

 the county of London a number of firms by 

 which one or more branches ot the industry 

 are carried on. 



The history of glass-making in Surrey is 

 very sharply to be divided into two distinct 

 periods. This distinction is due to the change 

 insisted upon by the government in the fiiel 

 consumed in the manufacture. This change 

 of fuel had for result that the centres of the 

 industry during the two periods were widely 

 apart. During the first period charcoal was 

 the only fuel in use, and the centre of the 



1 Hist, of Surrey, iti. 167. 



^ Brayley and Britten, Hist, of Surrey, v. App. 



39- 



industry was in the Weald, where timber was 

 abundant. The second period begins with 

 the absolute prohibition of this fuel in the 

 manufacture, and with the experiments with 

 what we are now accustomed to term coal. 

 The complete success of these experiments 

 led to the development of the industry upon 

 new lines. The Weald with its bad roads 

 was naturally inaccessible to the supply of coal 

 in any large quantities, and Lambeth, where 

 such fuel might readily be brought by water, 

 and some others of the London districts 

 became the centres or the industry in the 

 county. 



I 



The earliest references to the manufacture 

 of glass in Surrey occur in some deeds which 

 relate to the parish of Chiddingfold.^ The 

 date of the first of these deeds cannot be later 

 than 1230, and may possibly be twenty years 

 earlier. It records a grant by Simon de 

 Stocha, who was living in 1226, to Lawrence 

 * V itrarius ' (i.e. the glass-maker) of twenty 

 acres of land in Chiddingfold. In another 

 deed of about the year 1280 ' le Ovenhusveld,' 

 that is the oven or furnace house field, occurs 

 as a boundary. The site of this field has been 

 identified, and on it have been found some 

 remains of glass and of a large crucible used in 

 the glass trade." A third deed of the year 



' Jewett, Ceramic Art, i. 157. 



* Ducarel, Hist, of Croydon (Bibliotheca Topog. 

 Brit, xii.), App. 227. 



^ Information as to these deeds, most of them in 

 the hands of private owners, and as to many of the 

 facts which are here related of the Chiddingfold 

 industry, has been kindly supplied by the Rev. T. 

 S. Cooper, M.A., F.S.A. 



® These remains are now in the museum of the 

 Surr. Arch. Soc. at Guildford. The original 

 dimensions of the crucible were approximately as 



295 



