Woodchester Glass, The Huguenots & Religious Persecution
The story of the Huguenots could be a tale of the 21st century as much as it is a story of the 16th and 17th centuries. A group fleeing religious persecution in their homeland sought new homes in new lands. They brought with them skills and a desire to work and whilst in some areas they found acceptance and their contribution to the economy was welcomed, in other areas they found resistance to their presence, problems with co-existence and integration, and the kind of suspicion often levelled at foreigners - that their presence could threaten jobs, public order and morality, and even that they ate strange foods.
The Huguenots’ skills were wide ranging – they are well known for their contributions to the silk and woollen industries, but they were also skilled fan makers, feather workers, leather workers, clockmakers, and glassmakers, and it is this latter area of expertise that this article seeks to explore in the context of Stroud and Gloucestershire.
It is known that Romans and their successors in Britain – the Saxons – had domestic vessels made of glass, and even that some of these glass-wares were made in Britain. However, there is very limited evidence for the use of glass in a domestic context from the 7th century AD to the later 16th centuries in Britain – except in extremely wealthy households. Instead, most drinking vessels were made of horn, metal, wood, pottery or even leather.
It seems that the re-emergence of the use of glass for drinking beakers by ordinary folk is contemporaneous with the arrival of a small number of Venetian glassmakers from Antwerp in the late 1540s, and more commonly the arrival of the first wave of Huguenots from Lorraine, France and Belgium in the mid-1550s. The first of the refugee glassmakers settled in Kent and Sussex, in wooded areas with ready supplies of oak, beech and ash for their furnaces. It is known that the Huguenots moved on regularly - both as they exhausted the wood supplies in a given area, but also due to hostility from the locals. They built a rectangular glass house at Buckholt in Hampshire in the 1570s, and it is thought that they moved on from there to Sussex and later Gloucestershire – settling at the foot of May Hill near Newent and at Collier’s Wood in the Woodchester Valley near Nailsworth.
Arte Vitraria: This book on the art of the glass-maker is by Florentine writer Antoni Neri and was published in Amsterdam in 1686. The book is entirely in Latin, but includes beautiful illustrations such as the one shown here which details the sort of furnace we think was in use at Woodchester. The book formerly belonged to Basil Marmont who excavated the Woodchester glasshouse. (CM.1772)
The Woodchester Glass House was circular – and thought to have been an improvement on the set up at Buckholt. An exact date for its build has not been established but it is estimated that it was in use between c1590 and 1615. The site was excavated between around 1890 and 1920 by Basil P. Marmont, along with Harold and John Daniels, and H.J. Powell. Sadly, no account of these excavations was published until 1950.
Marmont & co. believed that the glassmakers chose Woodchester as its location met all their material needs – they used local Cotswold sand, local lime, potash made from the bracken covering the valley, and beech cut from the woods for fuel.
The amount of glass found at the site was less than might have been expected, though there were sufficient fragments recovered to reconstruct 21 glasses as well as an object described as a linen smoother, and a glass boot. Other fragments gave evidence for the manufacture of bottles, window glass, and painted/coloured glass at the site.
The furnace at Woodchester had been in danger of being closed almost as soon as it was built. In 1591 Sir Jerome Bowes had paid Elizabeth I a good sum for a monopoly on the manufacture of glass vessels for 12 years. In 1598 he petitioned the Queen for powers to suppress illicit glassmakers, stating ‘certaine persons that lately have erected howses and furnaces…for making of Drinking Glasses, namelie in…Gloucester and one Hoe a Frenchman hath built a glass house and furnace and doth make a greate quantitie of glasses.’ Despite this, it seems that the Woodchester glasshouse survived into the 17th century, and only went out of use following a law passed in 1615 which forbade the use of wood for glass-making – this was the death knell for all the small wood furnaces in England, and production of glass moved to Bristol, Stourbridge and Newcastle where coal was abundant to fire the furnaces. Glass houses using Forest of Dean coal were established in 1620 at Newnham on Severn and on the quay at Gloucester.
Some fragments of the glass found at Woodchester survive today in the Museum’s collections – they can be seen in the Archaeology Room. In addition, the museum is lucky to have a small number of reproduction pieces commissioned by Basil Marmont to represent the vessels as they would have appeared when newly made.
2022 is the International Year of Glass; glass has been endorsed by the UN as a material well worth celebrating for its positive contribution to society.
Wine glass: A 20th century replica of a type of wine glass that was made at Woodchester in the late 16th – early 17th century. The Woodchester glass furnace was built by Huguenot refugees and operated between c.1590 and c.1615. This replica was commissioned by Basil Marmont who conducted excavations of the furnace between 1890 - 1920. It was donated to the museum by John Stuart Daniels who assisted in the excavations and later became the chair of the Cowle Trust – the charity who own the museum collections. (2936)