This fireback is in Barbican House, next to the Castle in Lewes. At first glance it seems perfectly respectable with its coat of arms and date. But it is not; the date is spurious, and we know this because of whose arms they are. They are the arms of Baker quartering Farnden. John Baker (1643-1724) was a scion of an extensive family based around Mayfield in Sussex, and in 1668 he had inherited from his father the iron furnace to the north of the village. For reasons that I will come to later, though, it is unlikely that the fireback was cast there. The Bakers had been granted arms which were blazoned as Argent, a tower between three keys erect sable.
© East Sussex Record Office (East Sussex County Council)
In 1663 John Baker married Ruth Farnden (1646-91) who was the youngest of the 11 daughters of Peter Farnden of Sedlescombe, a wealthy Sussex ironmaster who ran ironworks at Crowhurst, Brede, Westfield and Beckley. He had been granted arms in 1634, which were blazoned Purpure, between three leopard’s heads Or a chevron vairy Or and gules. Because Peter Farnden’s four sons had all predeceased him, his surviving daughters were co-heiresses. That led to the distribution of his estate being a very complicated business, but that need not concern us here.
Under the rules laid down by the heralds, following John and Ruth’s marriage the arms of the two families were marshalled so that the Farnden shield was placed as an escutcheon of pretence in front of the Baker shield. This arrangement endured until Ruth Baker, as she had become, died in June 1691, whereupon their families’ arms were quartered as they appear on the fireback. So a date of 1690 on a fireback with arms that did not apply until 1691 is clearly incorrect.
But the date is also spurious for another reason. The fireback is one of a small series of backs bearing a particular design of armorials of families of ironmasters. Undated castings of the Baker fireback are known, as are examples of the arms of the Fuller family of Brightling who operated Heathfield Furnace. And a clear casting of one of the latter reveals a date of 1747 that had been carved onto the original pattern in the four corners of the shield. Another casting, at Brightling Park where the Fullers lived, has the Fuller arms on the same shaped back as the Baker ones. So the strong probability is that this series of firebacks was produced in or around the 1740s and at Heathfield, as the Bakers’ furnace at Mayfield had ceased operation several decades earlier. The arms quartering Baker and Farnden remained unaltered for the next generations, but what occasioned the adding of the date 1690 to a casting of a fireback probably made 50 years later, or who was responsible, is a mystery.