Stuart firebacks – Firebacks

In his pioneering 1898 paper, ‘Iron Casting in the Weald’, John Starkie Gardner noted that his collaborator, Mr Edward Hughes of Heathfield, had suggested that the birds depicted on this fireback might have been the rebus of the Fowle family. This was not an unreasonable supposition given that the Fowles were noted ironmasters in Sussex in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that punning, i.e. using a heraldic charge homonymous with a family name, was an established practice. It was not so, however.

*Nicholas Fowle’s 1600 graveslab in Wadhurst church*

This note begins, instead, with some iron graveslabs. The recent work to install underfloor heating in the parish church at Wadhurst in Sussex caused the lifting and reinstatement of the 30 iron memorials that lay there. In particular, the iron plate thought to commemorate Nicholas Fowle of Riverhall was revealed, having been partly obscured by a wooden screen. Fowle began to make his will on the 24th of October 1599 and initially stated a desire to be buried in the churchyard at Rotherfield but by the time he signed it six days later he had changed his mind and instructed his son William to bury him at Wadhurst. The registers of Wadhurst have not survived before 1604 but Fowle’s executors were granted probate on the 18th of November 1600, suggesting that he died earlier that year. The iron plate has the shield of the Fowles in the four corners, with two more shields down the centre bearing, within a frame, the Fowle crest of a bent arm holding a battleaxe issuing from a ducal coronet, above a pair of initials. These, alas, are indistinct although at least one pair could be interpreted as NF. In all probability this slab is that of Nicholas Fowle, and thus the oldest of the plates in Wadhurst church.

*The Fowle graveslab in Maidstone Museum* (click to enlarge)

A shorter but wider iron slab is in Maidstone Museum, although the museum’s records give no origin for it. It too has the same Fowle shield on the top corners and the same crest and initials at the bottom. This time, the initials NF are clearer suggesting that this plate may have marked the grave of two children of Nicholas Fowle. He lived at Lightlands in Frant before building Riverhall in 1591.The register of the church at Frant recorded the deaths of two children of Nicholas: Francis [sic] his daughter on 13 February 1567[/8]; and Thomas ‘a little child of Nicholas Fowle’ on 21 January 1570[/1]. Could this slab have originally marked their graves, perhaps in Frant churchyard, and was displaced when St Alban’s church was rebuilt between 1819 and 1822?

Elizabeth Fowle’s *1606* *graveslab in Frant church* (click to enlarge)

William Fowle lived at both Riverhall and Lightlands and, like his father, owned and operated the iron furnace and forge nearby. He married three times and each of his wives was buried in Frant church under iron slabs decorated with the Fowle heraldry. The first was Elizabeth Pankhurst, who was buried on 25 October 1606. Her slab is almost identical to Nicholas Fowle’s in Wadhurst church, with the exception that the initials below the crests are EF. The following January he married a widow, Mary Whitton, who was buried on 31 August 1612. Her slab is different, instead having a large shield of Fowle impaling the quartered arms of Whitton with the initials MF below. William Fowle’s third wife was also a widow, Sybil Graye, whom he married in June 1614. She was buried on 22 January 1631[/2] and her graveslab reverted to a design similar to Nicholas and Elizabeth Fowle’s, but with five shields – one in each corner and one in the centre – all bearing the Fowle crest above the initials SF, with 1631 below, and all enclosed within a frame.

*The Fowle crest on Sybil Fowle’s graveslab in Frant church*

*The arms of Fowle impaling Whitton on Mary Fowle’s 1612 graveslab in Frant church*

In each instance where the Fowle arms have been used on the these plates (except on the graveslab of Mary Fowle), comparison shows that it is the same shield, and this applies to the following four firebacks.

Only one of them is dated, to 1603, and was part of the collection of firebacks donated to Hastings Museum by the Ade family of Hellingly, Sussex, in 1952. Aside from the central Fowle shield of a lion passant guardant between three roses, the family crest is displayed this time upon a helm and enclosed within a frame, with the date above and the initials WF below. This would have been formed of a single stamp on a rectangular or shield-shaped backing block, although this cannot be seen, unlike the central shield where the faint outline of the rectangular backing is visible as it is on Elizabeth Fowle’s graveslab and the one in Maidstone. Unusual are the two horizontal prism shapes on the lower part of the fireback, which may have had the dual purpose of retaining the heat and preventing the fireback from cracking.

*William Fowle fireback, dated 1603; Hastings Museum*

*William Fowle fireback at Lamberhurst, Kent*

This feature is repeated on an example from Lamberhurst, where there are three prisms. The Fowle shields are the same, and the crest, this time with WF below, is also as seen on the slabs in Wadhurst and Maidstone and Elizabeth Fowle’s in Frant. The prisms are a peculiarity of firebacks made by William Fowle (1568-1634).

The last firebacks are two variants of the same design. The first example is in a house in Frant formerly associated with the Fowles, and my immediate reaction when I first saw it was that the bottom of the casting had broken off, the width of the back being uncharacteristically disproportionate to the height. The shields and crest stamps are familiar but I have been unable to identify the two pairs of initials. The assumption might be that they relate to the marriage of a couple. A clear casting, the edging is ovolo-moulded, although the detail on the shields is poor compared with that on the Hastings fireback, where the petals on the roses and the lion’s mane are evident.

*William Fowle fireback at Frant, Sussex*

My assumption about the proportions suggesting that the bottom of the fireback was missing were proved wrong when I recorded the second variant in a house in Minster, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Quite evidently the proportions were as intended, although the Frant casting is 10cm taller. And clearly one is not a copy of the other, for the shields had been repositioned and the edging could be different, possibly astragal-moulded on the Minster casting.

*William Fowle fireback at Minster, Kent*

The stamps associated with the Fowle family are distinct but the use of the same heraldic devices on both graveslabs and firebacks is surprisingly uncommon.

Sir Thomas Pelham (1597-1654) owned the iron furnace at Waldron in Sussex and it had been in his family since his grandfather’s time. Sir Thomas was a hands-on owner although he left the day-to-day running of the works to his founder and to a clerk who kept the accounts. Most of the iron made there was pig iron that was sent to the family’s two forges to be converted into wrought iron and sold to blacksmiths and ironmongers. But periodically other pieces of ironwork were cast, with firebacks among them.

In 1642, for what reason we do not know, a distinctive fireback began to be produced at Waldron. Of simple ‘Palladian’ shape, it bore the date, together with Thomas Pelham’s initials, and two straps each with a buckle at the top end. The buckle was the Pelham family’s badge, earned, it was said, by one of Sir Thomas’s ancestors at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 when he played an important role in the capture of the French king, John II. The buckle was subsequently incorporated into the family’s coat of arms.

*A Pelham fireback in the collection of Brighton Museum*

The pattern for the fireback would have been formed from two boards battened together, the top one shaped with a central arch, and the two parts edged with ovolo moulding. It can be seen from the casting on the left and from the faint outlines surrounding their images that the date was separately carved and fixed to the top board, as were the initials. The straps with buckles were also carved from wood in imitation of leather and metal and fixed across the two boards. In this form the pattern could be used over and over again producing as many identical firebacks as were needed. And in that basic form a number of examples still exist.

The lower parts of firebacks were often left undecorated because when situated at the back of a fireplace it was that part that was most affected by the heat from the fire and was often hidden by the inevitable accumulation of ash. However, customers who turned up at Waldron Furnace wishing to purchase a fireback and offered the standard pattern from which they could have a casting made, might have wanted something that differed a little from the plain original. In this example a larger fireback has been made by impressing the original pattern into a wider bed of casting sand and adding two extra initials. The basic pattern need not have been damaged despite the apparent removal of the edging from three sides, as all the founder needed to do was to fill in where the edging had indented the sand bed and smooth it over.

*The fireback with extra stamps, in the collection at Hastings Museum*

As well as having extra letters available, the furnace evidently had a stock of small carved stamps that could be used to decorate firebacks to their purchasers’ choosing. This heavily worn and cracked casting had a stamp of a small bird impressed four times along the top and a stamp of what appears to be a deer added a couple of times below Sir Thomas’s initials.

In the late-19th century a Mr Edward Hughes of Heathfield in Sussex sketched this fireback at a farmhouse in Waldron, less than half a mile from where the furnace had stood. Obviously of the same type, it had been decorated enthusiastically with the deer stamps as well at least two other different stamps, which were repeated several times. Alas, an enquiry at the farm where it had been recorded by Mr Hughes revealed that it was no longer there.

*The photograph in the auction catalogue*

A chance email from a fellow fireback enthusiast led me to an auction where this fireback was going under the hammer. Its sorry state was reflected in the estimated price of £5 but clearly some of the stamps with which it had been decorated were those on the example Mr Hughes had seen and sketched. The only way I was going to be able to record it properly was for me to buy it and as the only bidder I paid the estimate plus the usual buyer’s premium. A friend generously fitted the two parts together by screwing two steel plates onto the back and, cleaned up and with stove polish applied, its detail can be seen in its full glory.

The deer stamps and small bird stamps are the same as those on the casting in the collection at Hastings Museum, although the birds were not on the Hughes sketch. In addition, however, are a dog stamp and a circular stamp resembling a fleur-de-lys, which may have been a recycled butter mould; both of these were recorded by Mr Hughes. Finally there is another round stamp but with a symmetrical arrangement of a square and four small fleurs-de-lys, not seen on any of the other 1642 firebacks but which was something like one I had seen on another fireback. Could they be the same and, if so, would that indicate that the other fireback had also been made at Waldron Furnace?

*The fireback in the Victoria and Albert Museum*

The fireback in question is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is of an altogether earlier style, more typical of the 16th century and has an ‘M’ or two inverted ‘V’ shapes formed by impressed lengths of twisted rope; these are likely to be an apotropaic, or evil-averting, symbol associated with the Virgin Mary. The circular stamp is in its clearest form at the top of the fireback. Its diameter is 10.5cm. This compares with 10.2cm for the equivalent stamp on the 1642 fireback, a matter of a mere 1.5mm on each side, which can easily be accounted for by the condition. Although not as well-defined on the 1642 back the decorative pattern on the stamp is the same on both firebacks, which leads me to believe that the V&A casting was made at Waldron and that this circular stamp had been part of a stock of stamps available for the decoration of firebacks made there.

*Barry Lucas’s sketch of the fireback in Catsfield Place* (Sussex County Magazine XXIV, no. 11, Nov 1950, p. 515)

By way of a postscript, Barry Lucas, an old friend of my father, made sketches of three firebacks he had seen at Catsfield Place in Sussex and in 1950 published them in a short note in the, now sadly defunct, Sussex County Magazine. Catsfield Place had been the home of Sir Nicholas Pelham, Sir Thomas Pelham’s youngest son. One of the firebacks he sketched, seen here, has nine round stamps and I wonder if they might be the same stamps that are on the V&A fireback. One day I hope to obtain permission to verify this.

Tag: Stuart firebacks

46. When ways be Fowle

32. Some firebacks from Waldron