2025/07/03 by Rowan Patel · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Cultural Heritage Materials Analysis #Historical Architecture and Urbanism #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/00665983.2025.2580763
openalex publication_date 2025/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/12/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Fieldwork in Mobberley, Cheshire, where field-name evidence suggested the forest glass industry, resulted in the significant discovery of an unknown glass furnace site, revealed by an unprecedented surface assemblage of material including glassmaking waste and crucible sherds. This is the fifth wood-fuelled glasshouse site known in northern England. Surface collection resulted in hundreds of artefacts which are described for the first time, revealing much about glassmaking at this location. A gradiometer survey has revealed the likely furnace location. Scientific analysis shows the glass to be of the type produced by French glassmakers, who were active in England from 1567, but were unknown in Cheshire. The glass produced was made to a regional recipe, unknown outside north-west England, where it has been found at two other manufacturing sites. This furnace is unlikely to post-date 1615, when glassmaking was banned using wood fuel. A more specific operational period is indicated by parish register entries, showing glassmaking entrepreneur Francis Bristow was at Mobberley in 1613. This very late forest glass furnace was probably operated by the same French glassmakers who, from 1615, worked a coal-fired glasshouse 18 km away at Haughton Green, to which they probably moved after abandoning the Mobberley furnace.