This West Yorkshire Glass House was listed by Houghton in 1696 as making Flint Green and ordinary glass. It was owned by William Clifton, who was party to a petition to Parliament against the glass tax the same year. It was in use by 1691, and was visited in 1697 by the diarist Celia Fiennes, who wrote: " A Glass House - we saw them blowing white glass and neale in a large oven by the heat of the furnace; all the country is full of coal and pitts are so thick in the road that it is hazardous to travel for strangers". The glass house survived until well into the eighteenth century.
The Pilmay family (John and Peter) founded this South Yorkshire glass house after moving from Haughton Green near Manchester in about 1653. The site was owned by William Scott and John Pilmay junior married his son's widow Abigail in 1658. The glass house was still there in 1718. Abigail's will of 1698 survives and it shows that there were two furnaces operating, one producing common bottle and window glass and the other white (lead) glass. She had ashes from burnt vegetation (rape) worth £20, Salte peter, Red lead, Breeley sand, Manganeese, 'blew powder',moulds, 11 Greenhouse pipes (blowing irons), 10 white house pipes, tools belonging to both houses, stocks of glass 'both finte, Green ware and ordinary' and 'Fretting clay' for cruicibles. On her death the glass houses passed to John Scott and by his death in 1707, only the lead glass house was open. The site was located near the mill SE/293058. A Francis Morton was a glass maker on this site. Houghton only records the bottle works in his 1696 list. Denis Ashurst mentions a record in the Memorandum book of Henry Power of New Hall, Elland, near Huddersfield for November 1659 "...pays John Wilson his man 2s vid for fetching glasses from the glasse house at Silkstone".
|
|
This South Yorkshire glass house was operated by the Fox family. There is some doubt over which of the family were first involved, John or George. It seems more likely to be George, sometime before his death in 1692. A Richard Dixon came from Worcester to manage the glass house in the late 17th Century, but left in 1702 to found his own glass house, in the same year that Mary Fox, George's widow married Robert Blackburn. Houghton does not appear to mention this glass house, and there was no evidence that Mary was involved in petitions aginst the glass tax, unlike neighbouring glass makers. It is the only one of these Midland glass houses that have been excavated, and part of the Glass House still stands. The finds include vessel window and bottle glass, but none appears much earlier than the last decade of the seventeenth century and may in any case be cullet (glass collected for remelting).
This Nottinghamshire glass house and another near-by were mentioned by Houghton in 1696 as making flint green and ordinary glass.
Ashurst, 1987 & c1993.