In the late-17th-century Petworth House there is a fine fireback dated 1608. It may have been one of the 21 backs noted in an inventory of the earlier house on the site that was drawn up in 1632 on the death of Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland. It is not an uncommon fireback as many copies exist, but it is a curious one nevertheless and interpretation of the various elements of its design is open to debate. In the centre, between two classical pilasters, is a cabled anchor. This is traditionally associated with the office of Lord High Admiral. Prior to his death in 2021 the post was held by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. In 1608, though, it was Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, who had been commander of the fleet when the Spanish Armada was sent packing. And from 1638 the post was held by Henry Percy’s son, Algernon, the 10th Earl of Northumberland.
A symbol of rebirth, resurrection or revival, the phoenix rising from the flames above the anchor cable has no known significance for Howard but may have done for Henry Percy. In 1605 he had been sent to the Tower of London for his somewhat tenuous association with the Gunpowder Plot, so perhaps the phoenix symbolises his hope for release. It did not work, if that was its purpose, for the Earl remained in the Tower until 1621, although in comfortable confinement.
On each side of the anchor is a faun – half human, half goat – disgorging a vine. Fauns were mythological, woodland creatures and symbolic of peace and fertility, hence perhaps the vine. What prompted their inclusion in the design, who can say. Whatever its meaning, the original wooden pattern, with which the mould was formed, had been executed with great skill and precision, for the casting is very fine, with all the elements crisply detailed and suggesting that it is in all probability original.
A curiosity is the 4-foot-wide fireback, below, of 1633, which was discovered in the 1960s walled up behind a later grate in a farmhouse in Dunsfold, Surrey. It is a pastiche of the Petworth back. Executed in an altogether more, dare one say, ‘modernistic’, style, but characteristic of strapwork designs in the Jacobean period, it has all of the same elements but deliberately more crudely modelled. Some of the elements, such as the pilasters, have been changed and the phoenix no longer has flames beneath it. Was it intended as a satire on the 1608 fireback? for even then it would probably have been easy enough to obtain a casting from its pattern. It is, nevertheless, a fine casting and also likely to be original.
The two pairs of initials in the spandrels above the anchor are presumably for a husband and wife. Below are the recessed initials, IM, which are themselves of interest because several other firebacks in the next decade were also the work of someone with the same initials, some of whose earlier work, although largely unsigned, demonstrates a similarly naïve style.
Firebacks that ape the basic designs of other backs are not uncommon, such as early-18th century English versions of late-17th century ‘Dutch’ ones, but to go to the trouble of copying a distinctive fireback, three-quarters of its width, in a different style a quarter of a century later is puzzling and begs the question, why?
*This article first appeared in the Newsletter of the Wealden Iron Research Group in Spring 2026