INDUSTRIES 



John Knight, whose will bears date lo March 

 1778/ describes himself as of Catteshall, 

 paper-maker. On 20 June 1794, Joseph 

 Chandler of Guildford, baker, had a moiety 

 of the water corn mills and paper mills called 

 ' Catshull Mills,' which in his will of that 

 date^ he devised to his sons William and 

 Thomas. Quite early in the nineteenth 

 century the paper mill and corn mill at Cattes- 

 hall are mentioned as the property of George, 

 Earl Onslow.' Of Thomas Sweetapple, 

 who was at this mill in 1838, some notice 

 will be found below. At the present day 

 paper-making is carried on here by the Farne- 

 combe Paper Co., Limited, who have two 

 machines of 85 and 106 inches respectively, 

 use steam power, and manufacture cream-laid 

 paper, fine printings, music, cartridge, tinted 

 and litho papers.* 



Manning and Bray mention two paper 

 mills on the Tillingbourne stream as being in 

 existence at the date of their History.* One 

 of these was at Chilworth, and from the 

 evidence in the trial of Rex v. Tinkler and 

 Mountford in 1 8 1 7, it appears that the lower 

 powder works at that place were converted 

 into paper mills in 1704. Some notice of 

 this trial has been given in our account of the 

 gunpowder industry. The chief instigator of 

 the prosecution of the owners of the Chil- 

 worth powder mills was Mr. Rowland, the 

 then proprietor in conjunction with a Mr. 

 Ryde of the paper mills, which appear from 

 the evidence to have been situated 114 yards 

 from the dusting house of the powder works. 

 Some time previously the paper mills appear 

 to have been damaged by an explosion in the 

 powder mills, but they had been since not 

 only rebuilt but extended. 



The other paper mill on the Tillingbourne 

 was at Albury, near the church, and had been 

 converted from a corn mill some time prior 

 to 1814.* In 1850 this mill is spoken of as 

 the principal one in Surrey. It then be- 

 longed to Sir William Magnay, and contained 

 two machines and nine engines, with a water 

 fall of 12 feet. Within five miles of it 

 were at the same period the paper mills of 

 Messrs. Pewtress, Warren, Sweetapple, Spicer, 

 and others.'' A Mr. Thomas Sweetapple was 

 in partnership with Mr. Thomas Downham 

 in 1823, ** Godalming, as a paper manu- 



1 Prob. Archd. Ct. of Surr. 29 Feb. 1779. 



» Ibid. 6 Oct. 1795. 



3 Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surr. i. 615. 



« Paper Trade Directory (1903) ; Directory of 

 Paper Makers (1903). 



6 Hist, of Surr. ii. 1 1 7. 



• Ibid. ii. 123. 



» Brayley and Britton, Hist, of Surr. v. App. 34. 



41 



facturer, and there was another mill there in 

 that year owned by Messrs. Thomas & 

 William Harrison.® In 1838 Thomas Sweet- 

 apple was of the Cattesliall mill, Godalming, 

 for he is so described when on 6 December 

 of that year he took out a patent for an im- 

 provement in the machinery for making 

 paper. The object of this invention was to 

 improve the texture and strength of paper 

 made in machines such as Fourdrinier's, in 

 which the paper was formed upon a revolving 

 endless web of wove wire. Sweetapple 

 claimed that this improvement would be 

 effected if a greater number of the fibres of 

 the paper could be laid lengthwise in a hori- 

 zontal direction, or nearly parallel with the 

 plane of the sheet of paper, and this he pro- 

 posed to do by means of a series of shallow 

 tanks in which the pulp was kept in flotation 

 for a time as it passed over the web instead of 

 being immediately drained as it left the vat.' 



This concludes our notices of the paper 

 making industry in south-west Surrey. The 

 other districts in the county where the in- 

 dustry has been established, and is still carried 

 on, are in Bermondsey and Southwark, and 

 at several places on the course of the Wandle. 



Although very short lived an especial 

 interest attaches to the attempt which was 

 made at the Neckinger Mills, in Bermondsey, 

 at the commencement of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, to manufacture paper from straw and 

 waste materials. Paper machinery seems to 

 have been made on the little watercourse 

 called the Neckinger, to some extent before 

 this ill-fated attempt if we may judge from the 

 fact that one Elias Carpenter, described as of 

 the Neckinger, took out a patent on 19 

 November 1795, for a method of bleaching 

 paper in the water leaf or sheet, and sizing it 

 without drying, * whereby the manufacture 

 of it will be improved by shortening the pro- 

 cess, lessening the expense, and considerably 

 increasing the value.'" In 1800 or i8oi, 

 however, a steam engine was erected for a 

 mill which seems to have been intended to 

 carry out the inventions of Matthias Koops, 

 for which he took out three successive patents. 

 The first of these was on 28 April 1800, 

 for a method of extracting printing and writing 

 ink from printed and written paper, and con- 

 verting the paper from which the ink was so 

 extracted into pulp." His second and third 

 patents were taken out on 2 August 1 800, 

 and 17 February 1801, respectively, and 



8 Pigot & Co., London and Provincial Commercial 

 Directory. 



» Pat. of Inventions, No. 7897. 

 »» Ibid. No. 2075. " Ibid. No. 2392. 



