Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: Frank on December 11, 2007, 07:36:02 PM
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Can anyone say which bridge this is, lower picture c.1910? (Possibly Southwark) Or address of the building.
Image link (http://www.grosvenorprints.com/britglas.jpg)
(British Plate Glass warehouse)
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Hi Frank,
The address is: 1, Blackfriars Bridge, London, SE1 9UD (It is now a pub - Doggetts Pub)
This is where I got the info from: http://www.inse1.co.uk/issues/inSE1-50.pdf and then found the address.
Hope this is helpful.
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Well done Della, you just proved that the British Plate Glass company is not the same as the Thames Plate Glass Works or a rename. So the Thames Plate Glass Works established in 1835 were not the only plate glass maker in London. Their warehouse was at Savoy Wharf, nearer Waterloo bridge.
Robert Swinburne 1804-86 was involved with Thames Plate Glass Company, set up to take over the works that were not used by 1876 when the company was formed. History records no further use as a glass works. Now site occupied by Pura Foods.
Intriguingly in the 1830's the US company Missouri-Illinois Mineral & Land Company used the Thames Plate Glass Works for testing sand deposits and that in Crystal City proved sufficiently good to set up a plate glass works. In 1872 American Plate Glass Company set up the Crystal City Works and around that time Thames Plate Glass Works closed down and the glass-workers disappeared with some thinking they went to the USA. Perhaps that would explain the sudden disappearance from London. Certainly worth further study!
(Data from Glass-Study sources)
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Interestingly, there was one common myth that the Thames Plate Glass Works was responsible for glazing the Crystal Palace in 1851, and a rumour it perpetuated, I believe.
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There was some data on that somewhere, Chance provided most but Thames did certain bits....
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It is widely acknowledged that Chance manufactured the 950,000 square foot (heck, let's call it a million!) of plate glass to glaze the Crystal Palace, but I have no records for what Thames Plate contributed.
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They won a prize medal at the Great Exhibition for a piece of plate glass "a large specimen of plate glass, the largest hitherto produced" (Class XXVI furniture)
They were also making insulators 1860/70 period
from http://www.geocities.com/swinburn.geo/notable.html
R. W. Swinburne and Co. commenced business in 1845. The South Shields works occupied the quadrangular space now enclosed by Ferry Street, Station Road, Coronation Street, the Mill Dam and the Tyne river. The firm was successful in dividing with Messrs. Chance of Birmingham, the enormous order for the rolled plate-glass required in the erection of the Crystal Palace in 1850.
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Early in 1858 a great combination of plate glass-makers, controlling practically the whole output of the works in England, was formed. Mr. R. W. Swinburne was appointed Managing Director of the Syndicate.
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Swinburne returned briefly to the plate glass industry in January 1874 as a director of the Thames Plate Glass Company (1874) Limited which was formed to take over the dormant Thames Plate Glass Works at Blackwall, however this was wound up in August 1876.
Still looking for the reference to the part played by Thames Plate Glass Works (Not company) in Crystal Palace, this is a reasonably comprehensive 'looking' report http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46545#s13
Here is a useful but WEIRD site, it downloads pages and displays locally :huh: www.digitalpresence.com/histarch/glass.html
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I got blocked from updating as it took a while so this is mostly a repeat of above with some edits additions....
They won a prize medal at the Great Exhibition for a piece of plate glass "a large specimen of plate glass, the largest hitherto produced" (Class XXVI furniture)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20625/20625-0.txt
The Thames Plate Glass Company exhibit the largest plate of glass in the world; its dimensions are eighteen feet eight inches by ten feet. There is not a blemish on its brilliant surface, and it is as "true" as possible. It is placed in such a position that it reflects the whole length of the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, and the effect produced is superb.
They were also making insulators 1860/70 period
from http://www.geocities.com/swinburn.geo/notable.html
R. W. Swinburne and Co. commenced business in 1845. The South Shields works occupied the quadrangular space now enclosed by Ferry Street, Station Road, Coronation Street, the Mill Dam and the Tyne river. The firm was successful in dividing with Messrs. Chance of Birmingham, the enormous order for the rolled plate-glass required in the erection of the Crystal Palace in 1850.
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Early in 1858 a great combination of plate glass-makers, controlling practically the whole output of the works in England, was formed. Mr. R. W. Swinburne was appointed Managing Director of the Syndicate.
...
Swinburne returned briefly to the plate glass industry in January 1874 as a director of the Thames Plate Glass Company (1874) Limited which was formed to take over the dormant Thames Plate Glass Works at Blackwall, however this was wound up in August 1876.
Still looking for the reference to the part played by Thames Plate Glass Works (Not company) in Crystal Palace, this is a reasonably comprehensive 'looking' report http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=46545#s13
Here is a useful but WEIRD site, it downloads pages and displays locally :huh: www.digitalpresence.com/histarch/glass.html
... the largest plate of glass in the world; its dimensions are eighteen feet eight inches by ten feet
1851 (5.6x3 metres)
Elsewhere 1927. There was in store stock one large piece of plate glass measuring 151 x 258 inches, one-fourth inch thick and weighing approximately 816 pounds. 21 feet 6 ins by 12 feet 7 inches
(6.5x3.8 metres)
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In 1872 American Plate Glass Company set up the Crystal City Works and around that time Thames Plate Glass Works closed down and the glass-workers disappeared with some thinking they went to the USA. Perhaps that would explain the sudden disappearance from London.
According to the British heritage article, the workers did go to Illinois so it seems that as the UK company was in grave difficulty, moving to the USA was probably a wise move.
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Here is a useful but WEIRD site, it downloads pages and displays locally :huh: www.digitalpresence.com/histarch/glass.html
My guess is that this is a server which is not configured to handle html files, Frank. When you set up a webserver like Apache you have to specify which filetypes it should handle, and usually those would be htm and html, but if the server is set to only handle htm files then you'll see the same behaviour as here.
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I see what you mean about the Thames Plate works. Incidentally, Chance was prohibited from gaining medals at the Great Exhibition due to their massive involvement with the construction of the edifice.
Also from the british-history.ac.uk web site:
For the Great Exhibition of 1851 the company manufactured the largest sheets of plate-glass hitherto produced, but the claim, sometimes advanced, that the company also made glass for the Crystal Palace itself is incorrect: this was produced by the Birmingham firm of Chance Brothers
Which echos what I was referring to.
Strange indeed with that web site. Probably worth going back to the root directory:
http://www.digitalpresence.com/histarch/
Who needs menus! >:D Note to web designers: always include an index page in each directory ::)
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I also meant to query this possibly misleading comment:
Cast plate-glass had been invented in France in the seventeenth century. In Britain a factory producing cast plate-glass opened at Ravenhead, near St Helens, in 1773, but the heavy excise duty on glass inhibited the growth of the industry, and by the 1830s there were only two factories, both in the north, at Ravenhead and Newcastle upon Tyne. (ref. 138 - see below)
Ravenhead refers to Pilkingtons (from 1826) although I'm not sure of the Newcastle company. But what about Chance? It was producing plate glass during this time and had even patented a method. The following is from my proposed second volume on the company:
In May 1841 Chance Brothers were producing 4,000 feet of plate glass per week and further extensions to the buildings were undertaken, along with the ordering of forty-eight new grinders in 1842...
I'll check back to see when it started manufacture of plate glass, but perhaps this report refers to cast-plate, as opposed to any other form? Rather specific, if it does.
Ref. 138: A History of Technology, ed. C.Singer et al., vol.IV, 1958, p.368: H.J.Powell, Glass Making in England, 1923, p.123: 13th Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the Excise Establishment...Glass, 1835, pp.40,42: Hentie Louw, 'Window-Glass Making in Britain c.1660—c.1860 and its Architectural Impact', Construction History, vol.7, 1991, pp.47–68.
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Ah, just found this:
The "patent plate" was the invention of Mr. James Chance, and Chance Brothers (of whose works a notice will be found in another part of this book) are the only manufacturers in this country of glass for lighthouse purposes.
James Chance invented this whilst studying at Cambridge, so predating when he started at Chance in 1838.
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I did say about that article
this is a reasonably comprehensive 'looking' report
as I had my doubts about it over-all. The Swinburne piece claims that he filed a patent in 1855, well it was not in Class 56 - Glass - I am currently digitising all the Class 56 abstracts from 1855-1900 for the Glass-Study and Swinburne does not show until 1861, Chance are scattered throughout. I recently hit another patent discrepancy but Sid knew the correct number/date for that one. So always treat such date statements with caution until the original has been located.
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Strange indeed with that web site. Probably worth going back to the root directory:
http://www.digitalpresence.com/histarch/
Who needs menus! >:D Note to web designers: always include an index page in each directory ::)
Again, indicates a poorly set-up webserver, as there is a setting in Apache config which allows or disallows directory listing. If disallowed then you don't even need an index page as the server returns a default blocking page. If allowed and you don't have an index page then you see the directory contents as here.
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Did come across a reference to Thames Glassworks Co. 1865-66 in Connecticut (run by by William Barry and Nathan S. Fish.) which seems a little early for above disappearance or perhaps they had started the business earlier.... but then what happened after 1866? Move to Illinois? Can those names be connected to the London company? http://www.glassmuseum.org/glassworks8.htm