Even Mrs. Challicom can never hope to make a complete collection of glass vessels, utensils, and ornaments from the Nailsea works; but she has had some unmistakable triumphs. Many pieces of this glass cannot be prized for their beauty, but only for their relative scarcity and characteristic style ; and a large collection of the kind, of course, brings many objects together which are estranged from their proper use and environment. Except at Bristol there was never much glass-making carried on in the south-western counties but there were glaziers and glass-wrights in Gloucester as far back as the thirteenth century. By the end of the sixteenth century it was reported that "in Gloucester-shire, one Hoe, a Frenchman, bath built a glass-house and furnace, and doth make great quantities of glasses." He was condemned in the order issued by the magistrates in 1598 to put down the manufacture of drinking-glasses, for which a patent had been granted to Sir Jerome Bowes. Certain landowners in Kent appear to have had glass-houses at the end of the sixteenth century. (The Antiquarry, Vol xli, p 127) Stow says that Venetian glass-blowers first came to London in Elizabeth's time. In the beginning of the seventeenth century another party of Venetians were established at Lambeth as glass-blowers. Mention of a local glass-grinder occurs in 1683 at Bristol, when a man was admitted a freeman on his undertaking to take a city schoolboy as an apprentice without the usual premium of £7. The first glass-maker does not appear on the roll till 1690. At that date glass windows to shops were a novelty, and they were never seen in the houses of the poor.

Latimer says that the history of the rise and progress of glass-making in Bristol seems to be lost. From an official return among the State Papers, showing the produce of the duty on glass for the year 1695-6, it would appear that the city was one of the chief centres of the industry. The gross receipts of the duty were £17,642 but a "draw-back" was allowed on the glass exported, and this deduction amounted to £2,976 at Bristol, £ 1,020 at Newcastle, and £840 at London.The first Bristol will to mention table-glass is of the date 1715. On the occasion of Queen Anne visiting Bristol in 1702, we read that the Corporation's dinner to the Queen cost a large sum, including £6 145. od. for glasses. In 1728, "A fiscal interference with the glass trade, exciting much local irritation, was resolved upon by the Government during the session. With the object of preventing smuggling, the importation of wine in bottles and small casks was absolutely prohibited. The Bristol glass-makers petitioned against the proposal, asserting that many thousand persons were employed in making bottles for ex-portation, which were re-imported filled with wine, and that the stoppage of the business would cause the entire destruction of the bottle trade but the protest was ineffectual." In September 1754, the Bristol Corporation was called upon to pay £4 I 6s. od. for "a glass put into Mr. Alderman Laroche's coach, in the place of one broken at the gaol delivery." Glass evidently at that time was very costly. Evans recorded, (Evans's History of Bristol, 1824) Next Page