Firebacks

Description: Armorial within complex ovolo moulded edging on all sides; two plank lines; shield, helm, crest and mantling of the Trevor family; the achievement is distinguished by the elaborately festooned mantling, the whole resting on a boat-shaped compartment.

Notes: The arms, which are of an esquire, are probably those of John Trevor (c1652-1686), the son of Sir John Trevor, one of Charles II’s Secretaries of State. By his marriage in 1679 to Elizabeth (c1656-1693), widow of William Morley, of Glynde, Sussex, the Glynde Place estate passed into the hands of the Trevors. The arms on this fireback have been variously, but incorrectly, attributed to Lord Dacre (a descendant of John Trevor), and Col. Marcus Trevor, 1st Viscount Dungannon (peers' arms have supporters). The distinctive shape is seen in similar form on several other armorial firebacks over the preceding century, suggesting a continuity of pattern making, if not the same pattern maker. Many copies of this fireback exist.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Arms: Trevor family, of Glynde

Description: Cavetto-canted rectangle with arched top; astragal and cavetto edging (top and sides); pictorial; back-to-back figures of a bearded man and a woman in a poke bonnet, both dressed in tunics, their arms raised, respectively left and right; they are chained to a vertical pole; below, flames issue from vertically stacked logs, while smoke rises above them; the physical proportions of the figures are naïve, the man’s eyes being over-large, as are the hands of both.

Notes: The design is a free adaptation of an illustration from The Book of Martyrs by John Foxe (1563), a copy from a back originally noted at Brick Cottage, Burwash, Sussex, in 1871. This may be the design of fireback referred to in an enquiry printed in the St James's Chronicle, or British Evening Post, of 9 August 1788, which described it as 'having two Bishops burning at Stakes thereon' at a house in Warwickshire. At an auction sale in 2017 the same design of fireback was interpreted as the burning of Bishops Latimer and Ridley in 1555. Protestants were burnt to death at several Wealden locations as well as elsewhere in the south-east of England during the reign of Mary I, notably at Canterbury and Lewes. The subject of the fireback should be regarded as symbolic rather than commemorating any individual martyrs.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Description: Rectangular; three birds (probably swans, a Lancastrian badge) turned to the left, their heads facing right, and the front edge of their left wing extended and inverted; vine pattern strips, one horizontal along the top, and 14, of varied length, vertically across the rest of the fireback; seven ‘grape bunch’ shapes with criss-cross markings, arranged in three groups — 3-1-3 — adjacent to the birds.

Notes: The same vine strips are found on several firebacks, including some of the ‘Anne Forster’ series; the birds are also seen on a number of firebacks; the ‘grape bunch’ shapes may be the same as those on the ‘Anne Forster’ graveslab in Crowhurst church, Surrey. John Starkie Gardner and later writers attributed the birds to an association with the Fowle family; this is unlikely to be correct as the Fowles came to prominence in the iron industry towards the end of the sixteenth century and had their own distinctive decorative emblems. Formerly in the collection of Lady Dorothy Nevill.

Description: Arched rectangular central panel, astragal and fillet edge, pictorial, Hercules, sword in hand, preparing to slay the Hydra; Arched rectangular border, fillet edge, ivy leaves and tendrils, monogram at bottom; swirled foliage on top.

Notes: The wooden pattern for this fireback (no. 927), formerly in the custody of William Hobday (d. 1883), last surviving ironworker at Ashburnham furnace, was given to the Sussex Archaeological Society by the Revd. J. Bickersteth. The fireback was previously at a house at Hooe, East Sussex.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Inscription: TAN