The early history of this glass house is unclear, but it was probably built by Benjamin Perrott about 1690. The fact that there was more than one branch of the Perrott family making glass in Bristol and that they were there for a number of generations, makes research difficult. It has been suggested that Red Lane was a broad glass house, but this does not fit with Houghton's list of the glass houses working in 1696, and this list appears to have been accurate in other places. Houghton does not list any specialist window glass houses in Bristol, but, if Red Lane is ignored, there is one glass house making flint and ordinary glass short. Also the Little family probably worked here and members of this family went on to have links with the flint glass house at Bedminster.
One derivation of the surname Perrot is an Anglicized form of the Italian name Perrotti, but the name was surprisingly common in Soth West England in this period, so there are probably other roots. Benjamin Perrott is first recorded as owning a glass house in St Mary Redcliffe Parish in 1691. The same year D.R Guttery in his book From Broad Glass to cut crystal, notes that a Stourbridge glass maker John Little was working in Bristol. In 1696 Benjamin was recorded as living in Pile Street, with wife Jane, daughter Jane and son John. Pile Street is adjacent to Red Lane and in the same street a John Little was recorded living with wife Margaret and John Little junior and his wife. In 1703 John Little's son was apprenticed to a John Perrott. Benjamin was assessed for a higher war tax contribution because of his annual income exceeded £50 p.a. So, although he was doing well, he was not yet worth the £600 of some of the other surtax payers, such as Charles Stubbs of Redcliffe Backs glass house. In the early eighteenth century maps show a cone glass house at Red Lane, but it is likely that this was built in about 1698 close to a more conventional existing glass house building. There is a reference to a glass house in Tomlinson's close, which appears to have been the name of the land between Pile Street and Red Lane. This land adjoined the cone glass house and was in the possession of Benjamin Perrott the elder in 1725. Tomlinson's Close could have been an alternative name for the Red Lane glass house or an indication that there were two for a period about the turn of the century.