A HISTORY OF SURREY 



must have been situated at Point Pleasant, 

 for a little creek at the back of the brewery 

 there bears the names of Frying-pan Creek, 

 and in an old lease of land mention is made 

 as the western boundary of the common road 

 called Love Lane (now Putney Bridge Road) 

 leading to the Frying-pan Houses.' 



No accoimt of the various metal works of 

 Surrey would be complete without some men- 

 tion of the important bell foundry of the 

 Eldridges at Chertsey. From this foundry 

 came no small number of the bells that are 

 still hung in Surrey churches. The works 

 were started by Bryan Eldridge, who was the 

 son and grandson of bell founders carrying on 

 their manufacture at Wokingham, Berks, in 

 the latter half of the sixteenth and beginning 

 of the seventeenth centuries. Bryan's Surrey 

 bells extend in date from 1619 to 1638. He 

 died in 1640, leaving in his will dated 14 

 August and proved 8 September of that year, 

 his bell house in Chertsey with all his 

 working tools to his eldest son Bryan. Pro- 

 vision was made for the payment of £^^0 out 

 of the house and tools to his daughter 

 Katherine on attaining the age of twenty-one 

 years or marriage, and the widow was to 

 have the annual rent of ^■^ out of the house 

 during her life. Mention is also made of the 

 testator's house in Gilford Street, Chertsey, 

 which was left to his youngest son William, 

 who was also to pay his mother the rent of 

 it during her life. 



The younger Bryan continued to carry on 

 a large business, and, according to Mr. Stahl- 

 schmidt, there were in 1884 seventeen bells 

 of his still in use in Surrey, whilst two others 

 had been known to have been recast. The 

 entire peal of five bells at Lingfield, dated 

 1648, were made by him. He died in 

 November 1661, when the business passed 

 into his brother William's hands. William 

 carried it on until his death in 1 7 1 6, when the 

 foundry came to an end. Apparently the 

 business declined during William's latter years, 

 for only seven bells in Surrey made at 

 Chertsey are dated in the eighteenth century, 

 and, according to his will, there was a mort- 

 gage on the house. The reputation of the 

 Chertsey bell-foundry probably declined be- 



» Industries of Wandsworth, 6. One of the brass 

 pans made at this manufactory was discovered in 

 Wandsworth in 1902, and is now in the posses- 

 sion of Mr. Davis. It averages lof inches in 

 diameter, is 6 inches deep and has a circumference 

 of 2 ft. 9 in. It is made of a single sheet of metal, 

 the • mystery ' of its manufacture consisting in 

 the process whereby this sheet was hollowed out 

 into the requisite shape. (Ex inf. C. T. Davis 

 Esq.) 



fore the increasing prosperity of some of the 

 London foundries of that time.' 



A few works set up in Surrey for the 

 manufacture of ordnance and instruments of 

 war, other than those produced in the iron- 

 works of the Weald, may be noticed here. 

 That the manufacture in the Tudor period 

 was one to which we were largely indebted 

 to alien immigrants is evidenced by the fact 

 that the office of ' provider of the king's 

 instruments of war ' was held from its first 

 creation by Henry VIIL to the end of the 

 reign of Elizabeth by foreigners.* There 

 were a few foreign gunmakers in South wark 

 in 1571, namely, Arnold Gilles from Liege,* 

 Andrew Mullenbeck from Holland,' and 

 Jasper Barneson from Cologne,* all in St. 

 Olave's parish ; Warner Williamson from 

 Guelderland^ in St. George's and Peter 

 Wellens from Brabant^ in St. Thomas's, 

 whilst the ' stockmaker ' in St. Olave's, Tice 

 Randewe, who was born in Cologne, was 

 presumably a maker of gun-stocks.® Three 

 or four other gunmakers or gunstock-makers 

 appear in the later Southwark returns of 

 1582 and 1583." 



Charles L erected at Vauxhall in Lam- 

 beth a foundry for ordnance, which, to 

 judge from an inventory of its contents taken 

 by order of the Committee of Lords and 

 Commons for the Safety of the Kingdom in 

 1645, must have been of a somewhat exten- 

 sive and varied character.'* A beginning seems 

 to have been made with these works upon 

 the surrender to the Crown on 2 November 

 1629 by one John Abrahall of the messuage 

 called Copped Hall with lands and thirteen 

 cottages in Water Lambeth within the manor 

 of Kennington. Afterwards upon the dis- 

 solution of the Westminster Company of 

 Soapmakers the soaphouse in Vauxhall be- 

 longing to Sir Richard Weston of Guildford, 

 the first governor of that company, was pur- 

 chased with a view to converting it into a 

 founding house for the king's use, which was 

 seemingly extended to include Copped Hall 

 and the grounds which had been Abrahall's. 

 One Colonel Scott was first established in 



' J. C. L. Stahlschmidt, Surrey Bells (1884) 

 1 09-2 1 . 



' W. Page, F.S.A., Denizations and Naturaliza- 

 tions, 1 509-1 603 (Hug. Soc. Publ. viii.), p. xlii. 



* Kirk, Returns of j4 liens dwelling in the City and 

 Suburbs of London (Hug. Soc. Publ. x.), i. 472 ; ii. 

 107. 



^ Ibid. ii. 107. « Ibid. ii. 98. 



' Ibid. i. 466 ; ii. 119. 



' Ibid. i. 463. » Ibid. i. 472. 



" Ibid. ii. 289, 291, 329, 332, 



" Land Rev. Enrolments, cxiii. 41. 

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