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Grinding in the stoppering shop
© Royal Brierley Collection |
Just as the iron and steel industry, which flourished in nearby Brierley Hill and Dudley, had its origins in the local combination of lime, coal and ironstone, so the glass industry needed the chance combination of silica, clay and coal.
This was especially true after 1615, when a royal proclamation banned the use of wood in glass furnaces. England’s once abundant supply of trees was disappearing fast.
So the glassmakers moved to Newcastle and they moved into the Black Country. But the area around Stourbridge had an added advantage. Glassmaking needs not only the raw materials that combine to produce glass, but also the giant clay pots in which to cast it.
Worker rolls glass into shape
© Supplied from the originals held at Dudley Archives & Local History Service |
Not many clays are capable of withstanding the 1,400 degrees centigrade in the middle of a glass furnace and Stourbridge fireclay stands supreme among them. Even then, the skill to make a sufficiently robust melting pot does not come easily, and some firms employed their own specialist pot-makers.
One pot could take a couple of months to build up and in plate glass manufacture might last for only half that time. By the middle of the 19th Century Stourbridge was producing around 12,000 tons of pot clay a year.
The industry that once employed so many workers around Wordsley feels as much a part of the Black Country as a bull terrier or a bag of scratchings, but this was not true in its earliest days.
Words: Chris Upton
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