John Robert Lucas was born in 1754. After his father
Robert Lucas died in 1774, he took over his beer and cider works in Bristol and
his shares in a glass making business in Limekiln Lane, Bristol. In 1781 John Robert married Anna Adams and
they had a son and two daughters. In 1787 he leased a glassworks at Stanton Wick.
John Robert
Lucas established a glass works at Nailsea
in 1788. He chose Nailsea as the site
for his new glassworks because of the abundance of coal produced by the mines
around the town and local supplies of sand and limestone. He may also have been influenced by plans for
the Grand Western Canal, which would have linked the English and Bristol
Channels with a branch to Nailsea.
However only the section from Tiverton to Taunton was ever built.
Lucas’s company
was called Nailsea Crown Glass and Glass
Bottle Manufacturers. Initially one
cone shaped kiln and a furnace were built at Nailsea. A second glass furnace was
built there in 1790. In 1793 John Robert Lucas went into
partnership with William Chance, Edward Homer and William Coathupe. In 1788 William Chance had married John
Robert’s sister Sarah and Edward Homer had married John Robert’s sister Mary.
In addition to
window glass and bottles, the Nailsea Glassworks also produced domestic ware
and novelty items such as flasks, rolling pins, pipes, jugs and walking sticks,
which were sometimes decorated with flecks, loops or bands of white or coloured
enamel. Most of these items were
produced by workers at the end of their shifts using leftover pieces of glass.
In 1811 William
and Sarah Chance’s son, Robert Lucas Chance, took over the management of the
Nailsea works and married his cousin Louisa, the daughter of Mary and Edward
Homer. In 1812 he persuaded John
Hartley, the leading crown glass expert in the country, to come and work at
Nailsea.
The partnership
of Lucas, Chance, Homer and Coathupe
lasted until 1821 when William Chance sold all of his shares and Edward Homer
sold part of his to William Coathupe.
Edward Homer’s son James Edward Homer was taken into the partnership at
this time and the company traded as Lucas,
Coathupe and Homer.
John Robert
Lucas died in 1828 and was buried at Backwell.
Most of his estate passed to his grandsons John Rodbard Bean and Henry Lucas
Bean.
The New House
Cone was built at Nailsea c1828. Experienced
sheet glass blowers were recruited from France and Belgium from the 1830s, due
a shortage of skilled British glass blowers. By 1835 Nailsea was the fourth
largest glassworks in Britain. Bottle
making ceased at Nailsea in the 1830s in favour of plate, crown and sheet
window glass.
In 1835 a
partnership called Lucas, Coathupes,
Homer and Cliffe was formed to run the business. In 1844 the company became
Coathupes & Co with Charles and
Oliver Coathupe, John and Henry Bean and James Edward Homer as shareholders. In
the 1840s a new cone known as the Lilly or Lily Cone was built.
In 1848 Charles
Coathupe retired and Oliver Coathupe became manager at the Nailsea works. Over the next 25 years there were various
changes in the partnership and shareholdings.
In 1861 the Nailsea works were closed for a while and the following year
they were leased to Samuel Bowen, a glass merchant from West Bromwich, and John
Powis of London. They traded as Nailsea Glass Company and made patented
ventilating glass, cut glass and coloured glass for stained glass windows. Samuel Bowen became bankrupt in 1869 and he
and Powis surrendered their lease. In
1870 the Nailsea works were sold to Chance Bros of Smethwick, together with a
coal mine on the same site.
Glass production
ceased at Nailsea in 1873, due to competition from cheap Belgian imports and
the decline in production from the Nailsea Coalfield, and the works were closed
in 1874. The New House Cone was
demolished in 1905. Some of the rubble
from it was supposedly used to build the extension to the runway at Filton in
the late 1940s.
Extensive archaeological
excavations began on the glassworks site in 1983 and continued for several
years. In 2002 a supermarket was built
on part of the site. The only surviving
building is one which housed the French kilns, and gas-fired furnaces. This was later converted into the Royal Oak
Garage.
A collection of
Nailsea Glass items can be seen at the National Trust’s Clevedon Court. However much
of what is today described as Nailsea Glass was not made at Nailsea but was
made in the same style elsewhere in England e.g. Stourbridge.
Glassworks Cauldron, High Street, Nailsea
This would have
been filled with cold water into which surplus molten glass would have been
ladled. Once the glass had cooled and
solidified it was broken up and used to speed up the melt of the next batch of
sand, limestone and soda.
The Glassblower Sculpture, High Street, Nailsea
This was sculpted
by Vanessa Marston and unveiled in 2008
Former Glassworks building, later the Royal Oak Garage, High Street, Nailsea
Two glazed
ceramic tile panels illustrating the glassworks and its various manufacturing
processes. The panels were designed and produced by Ned Heywood of the Workshop Gallery in Chepstow. They incorporate fragments of glass excavated
from the site. They are on display on
the outside wall of Tesco’s Supermarket.
Drawing showing the layout of Nailsea
Glassworks c1873
