 |
|
|
 | | |  |
Red House Cone |
 |
The glaziers who first brought their skills to Wordsley were not from the local neighbourhood but from Lorraine in France, bearing alien names like Tyzack, Lisko and Henzey.
Workers apply the finishing touches
© Royal Brierley Collection |
By 1696 there were said to be seventeen glasshouses in the area, mostly owned by Lorrainer families. Ironically, it was only the heavy tax on glass (levied to pay for regular wars with France) that kept the numbers down.
Excise duty, on what was considered by the government to be a luxury, remained a constant thorn in the side of the glaziers and was only fully removed in 1845.
And since the duty was levied by weight of production, it had the effect of driving the manufacturers towards lighter and thinner forms of glass. We can - literally - see through the changes between flint and bottle, crown and plate glass.
Glass blower
© Supplied from the originals held at Dudley Archives & Local History Service |
With the arrival of the glaziers came that extraordinary change to the Wordsley skyline. The glasshouse cone, similar to the bottle kiln of the Potteries, was the 17th Century design solution to supplying the furnace in the centre with enough heat.
Air was drawn through a series of tunnels into the heart of the fire and then upwards into the cone. But unlike in the bottle kiln the workers sweated out their days in the same building, pushing the melting pots into place and then pulling them out and decanting and blowing the molten glass.
One group of workers - known as ‘teasers’ - worked directly under the furnace, regulating the fuel and the temperature above them. It was hot, thirsty work and most employers incorporated a drink allowance into the wages.
Words: Chris Upton
Your comments
| |
 Print this page |
|
Archive
Look back into the past using the Legacies' archives. Find nearly 200 tales from around the country in our collection.
Read more > |
| | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| The 成人快手 is not responsible for the content of external Web sites. |
| | | |
| | |
| |
|
