A HISTORY OF SURREY 



were both for * his new invented method of 

 manufacturing pper from straw, hay, thistles, 

 waste and refuse of hemp and flax, and differ- 

 ent kinds of wood and bark, fit for printing 

 and other useful purposes.' ' The process of 

 utilising old paper and straw as pulp in the 

 making of new paper, which has latterly been 

 very extensively adopted, would seem at that 

 date to have been imperfectly understood, for 

 the mills failed, and the premises were sold in 

 1802 to the Messrs. Bevingtons, who have 

 ever since carried on their leather manufac- 

 ture on this site.* 



About 1840 there seem to have been 

 several paper mills in Bermondsey in the Blue 

 Anchor Road and Bermondsey Wall.' A 

 large paper mill, where much heavy brown 

 paper was manufactured, existed also at some 

 time on the east side of Mill Street. The 

 water wheel, which was very large, could 

 only be worked after high water by the flow- 

 ing back to the river of the water which had 

 been admitted at flood tide.* Amongst the 

 many inventions of Bryan Donkin, the Ber- 

 mondsey engineer, was one for the making 

 of paper by machinery or hand, which was 

 patented by him in 1839.* John Donkin, 

 a civil engineer, established in Grange Road, 

 Bermondsey, had previously in 1834 patented 

 machinery for making paper ;' and later, in 

 1846, when he had removed to the Blue 

 Anchor Road, took out a further patent 

 for machinery for the same purpose, and for 

 the bleaching of paper and other materials in 

 which chloride of lime was employed.^ 



Although at the present day there is only 

 one paper mill within the county of London, 

 and that at Wandsworth, of which shortly, 

 mention may be made of the recently erected 

 and large factory of Messrs. Spicer Brothers, 

 Limited, in Southwark, for the preparation 

 of every description of stationery. Messrs. 

 Millington & Sons, Limited, manufacturing 

 stationers, have also their principal works in 

 Southwark and Great Guildford Streets, 



Paper mills have been established on the 

 busy little Wandle for upwards of a century. 

 In 1792 there were two such mills at Car- 

 shalton, occupied by Mr. Curtis and Mr. 

 Patch.*' By 1 8 1 1 these had passed into the 

 hands of Messrs. Charles and James Ansel!,' 



' Ibid. Nos. 2433, 2481. 



" Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surr. i. 229 ; 

 Lysons, Etizirons of London (ed. 2), i. 47. 



> G. W. Phillips, Bermondsey (1841), 107, 108. 



• Mrs. E. Boger, Bygone Southwark, 237. 

 « Pat. of Inventions, No. 8212. 



• Ibid. No. 6725. 7 Ibid. \o. 1 141 7. 

 8 Lvsons, Environs (ed. l), i. 123. 



» Ibid. (ed. 2), i. 91. 



from whom the present firm, styled the C. 

 Ansell Paper Company, Limited, has de- 

 scended. The business now consists of the 

 manufacture of the finest hand-made paper, 

 well known in the trade with the water mark 

 ' C. Ansell,' and ledger papers, writing, draw- 

 ing, and loan papers are made. There are 

 five vats in use on the premises, and the Car- 

 shalton mills are now the only ones in the 

 county for hand-made papers.*" 



Messrs. Albert E. Reed & Co., who are 

 the owners also of paper mills at Maidstone and 

 South Darenth in Kent, and at High Wy- 

 combe, Bucks, are the proprietors of the Merton 

 Abbey Mills, where they use one machine of 

 80 inches for the manufacture of super calen- 

 dered printings and fine newspapers.*' 



The mills at Wandsworth are of consider- 

 able importance, and were owned some time 

 previously to 1850 by Mr. Thomas Creswick, 

 when they supplied a large portion of the Lon- 

 don trade with cards, Bristol boards, drawing 

 papers, tinted papers, and the like.*' Paper is 

 now made at Wandsworth by McMurray's 

 Royal Paper Mills, Limited, the materials used 

 being Esparto and Tripoli grass. The grass 

 is first cleaned by beating, and then boiled in 

 caustic soda, after which processes it is passed 

 into washers and breakers, and the resultant 

 brown pulp is bleached and strained, when it 

 resembles blotting paper, and is termed ' half 

 made.' It is then again washed and broken 

 and passed into the vats in the form of a thin 

 milky fluid. From the vats it passes through 

 the paper-making machine to emerge as rolled 

 up paper ready for the printers. The rolls of 

 paper are in lengths from five to eight miles, 

 and weigh from half a ton to fifteen hundred- 

 weight. Other machines are in use for 

 calendering and sizing the various descriptions 

 of paper made at these mills.*' 



From the foregoing account it will not 

 appear that paper making is an industry that 

 has ever been very extensively pursued in 

 Surrey, although the county affords one or 

 two examples of some interest in the general 

 history of the manufacture. It was pointed 

 out in 1850 that while Surrey then retained 

 a large portion of the parchment manufacture, 

 it did not, like Middlesex and Kent, fully 

 participate in the increased production of 

 paper,** So far at least as the latter of these 

 two counties is concerned very much the 

 same may be said at the present day. 



i» Ex inf. C. Ansell Paper Co. Ltd. 

 " Paper Trade Directory (1903). 

 " Brayley and Britten, W«/. tf/Sa/T. v. App. 34. 

 " C. T. Davis, Industries of Wandsworth, pp. 

 29, 30. 



'* Brayley and Britton, loc. cit. 



420 



