Firebacks

Description: Rectangular shape; no edging; shield of the 2nd Duke of Montagu surrounded by the Garter and surmounted by a ducal coronet.

Notes: One of six firebacks at Boughton House, Northamptonshire, cast with the ducal arms and the Garter having a diameter of 40cm. Fifty firebacks were cast for the house between 1743 and 1748 by Richard Ford, probably at Nibthwaite Furnace, but also possibly at Newland furnace, both then in north Lancashire. The arms are blazoned: Quarterly, 1st & 4th: Argent, three fusils conjoined in fess gules, a bordure sable (Montagu); 2nd & 3rd: Or an eagle displayed vert beaked and membered gules (Monthermer); on an escutcheon of pretence, Sable a lion rampant Argent a canton Argent charged with a cross Gules (Churchill); John, 2nd Duke of Montagu married Mary, daughter and co-heiress of John, 1st Duke of Marlborough.

Copies of this fireback are known.

Inscription: HONI.SOIT.QUI.MAL.Y.PENSE

Arms: Montagu quartering Monthermer with Churchill in an escutcheon of pretence - John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu, KG

Description: Fragment; rectangular shape; ovolo-moulded edging; image of an iron grate with barred front and integral andiron with iron or brass disc.

Notes: A unique example; it is not certain how the mould was formed, whether by impressing an actual grate or carving a pattern with the image of a grate; the former seems more likely.

Description: Fragment; probably originally arched rectangular shape with twisted rope edging (only the arch and a section below surviving); below arch, band of repeated short stamps with undulating vine decoration, randomly impressed so that the undulations do not join consistently; above the band, line of ?crowned cross stamps repeated five times; above them, the date (the 3 uncertain) between two vertically-aligned stamps formed of a double figure-of-eight between opposed concave curves; above, a rose stamp between two vertical rectangular stamps of indeterminate design, with a ?crowned rose stamp above; below the band, a line of alternate rose and ?crowned cross stamps, three of each; below, a ?crowned cross stamp and a rectangular stamp.

Notes: Most of the stamps have been seen on a small group of firebacks of the 1590s concentrated in the western Weald.

Inscription: 1593[?]