Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: Paul S. on October 02, 2009, 07:49:37 PM
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Just to illustrate how easy it can be to miss a mark, albeit a smallish one. I was doing a little rearranging this evening and noticed an etched/blasted mark on the top outer rim of a water jug - as shown in the pic. I'm thinking it might refer to the railway company with the same initials (or was that the Great NWR ?). The Rd. No. is 724094, and was first registered in Sept. '26 by Jobling (also has 'British Made') - and the style of the jug is certainly the sort of shorter squat shape used in hotels and railway venues. Anyone have any thoughts, and thanks for looking. Paul S.
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North Western Railways I think Paul. 1846-1871. There's very little about NWR online but Wikipedia has a page about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_North_Western_Railway - it was a small local (to me!) company with lines serving Morecambe, Lancaster and points east into the West Riding of Yorkshire. There are some mentions of it here: http://www.railwayscene.co.uk/showthread.php?thread=138 and my friend Roger Bingham, author of Lost Resort, the flow and ebb of Morecambe (Cicerone Press, 1990) mentions the railway and he says it was usually referred to as the Little North Western to distinguish it from the L&NWR (the much bigger London & North Western Railway) which was a different company. The Little North Western was apparently also the owner of the North Western Hotel in Morecambe, which changed its name to the Midland Hotel in 1871, when NWR became a part of the Midland Railway, and was replaced by a new hotel of the same name on the same spot in the 1930s: the famous, recently restored art deco Midland Hotel.
BUT, that gives a problem with your 1926 date as NWR didn't exist then! However, there was another NWR company in India which started in 1886 and continued until the partition of India and Pakistan, so perhaps your jug refers to that one? There was a lot of trade between British companies and those in India (which was part of the Empire of course) prior to Indian independence (1947), and English glassmakers could probably have been contractors for some of the glassware used on the Indian railways. Is another avenue worth exploring....
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Anne - my thanks for a very comprehensive and interesting reply. In the light of your comments I have looked again at the jug, but it is just as I mentioned, with the letters in double speech marks - I hadn't missed anything else. In view of the C19 date line for the NWR (railway), then I think you are more likely to be correct and that this may well refer to another commercial venture - possibly as you suggest to do with the Indian sub-continent. I shall enjoy looking at the threads you have included - what did we do before we had nostalgia!! What intrigued me tho, was to realize how easy it can be to miss a mark, especially if it is located on a piece somewhere unexpected. Anyway, it is a good jug (numbered and showing 'British Make') and will go with my other upteen dozen!!! ;D Paul S.