Firebacks

Description: Rectangular; rope edging (top and sides); central Tudor royal shield with encircling garter (motto reversed: HONE SOVT QVEY … PEN), separate greyhound and lion supporters, separate crown; a bird, repeated in each top corner, its wings displayed and inverted and its head facing behind and to the left, standing on a scroll; a fleur de lys repeated in the bottom corners; inside the birds is a repeated stamp, half of one similar to a stamp on a fireback in Hastings Museum.

Notes: The particular form of the Tudor arms and supporters is encountered on other firebacks, as are the distinctive style of fleurs de lys and the birds (probably swans, a Lancastrian icon). The plain scroll upon which the bird is perched suggests that there might have been a painted inscription on it originally and that the stamp had not been made specifically for the decoration of firebacks but was, perhaps, redundant from interior domestic decoration.

Arms: Tudor royal (prob. Henry VIII)

Description: Rectangular shape with twisted rope edging (top and sides); date split between top corners.

Notes: The central button on the number 1 is consistent with a date in the first half of the seventeenth century.

Inscription: 16 37

Description: Canted rectangle; plain edges; broad horizontal fillet dividing the plate in two just above the side angles, with vertical fillets to top corners enclosing date and initials.

Notes: Uncharacteristically crude for the period.

Inscription: IS / 16 60