May is Local and Community History Month which aims to increase awareness of local history and encourage members of the community to embrace the history of their local area.
Sometimes our local history here in Surrey actually has a much wider reach. In this guest Marvel, Andrew Lorey, a PhD student in History at the University of Otago (Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka), Dunedin, New Zealand, who has been using the collections at Surrey History Centre, explains how the technology and innovation of the wireworking and ornamental ironworking industry in Hersham in the nineteenth century transferred across the other side of the world.
The Faulkner family of Hersham
In June 1799, William Faulkner and his sons William and John, all of Hersham, became parties to ‘Articles of Agreement’ with James Pilton, a wireworker based in Piccadilly, London. The indenture apprenticed brothers, William and John, ‘to learn [Pilton’s] Art Trade or Business of Wire Fence Making’ for seven years. For his part, Pilton agreed to provide 'Respectfully good and sufficient Board Lodging Wearing Apparel and Washing' as well as a payment to their father the sum of twelve shillings per week for each of his sons for the duration of the apprenticeship.
A newspaper account published in the 'Morning Post', 29 June 1807, reports that Pilton’s work had royal patronage, noting that Queen Charlotte and a large retinue visited Pilton’s ‘Menagerie and Wire Manufactory’ and ‘Her Majesty was much pleased’ by the iron fences for inclosing pleasure grounds. Historical adverts at the British Museum dated 1808, confirm this high regard, one citing hot houses, conservatories, awnings, venison larders, and wrought iron gates (British Museum references D,2.329 and D,2.311). This is around the period that the Faulkner brothers served as Pilton’s apprentices and their apprenticeships soon enabled them to learn from and contribute to the work of a master wireworker.
Multiple generations of the Faulkner family lived and worked as wireworkers in the vicinity of Hersham and Walton on Thames, until at least 1882. In January that year The 'London Gazette' announced the dissolving of a partnership between Laura Faulkner (widow of second-generation wireworker David), her son David Faulkner, and William T. Faulkner. Examples of ironwork in the immediate area and further afield in London, such as the lamp posts along the Serpentine Bridge, Hyde Park, London, bear the Faulkner name.
Records at Surrey History Centre
The small collection of documents that relate to the Faulkner family (reference 302) offer a brief insight into the lives and work of this family. The family clearly gained valuable skills in the wireworking trade from Pilton. Two other items in the collection show that the apprentices also achieved some success in that industry. Account entries dating to 1844-1845 suggest that the Faulkner family, like Pilton before them, undertook contracts funded by the royal purse, this time for ‘Her Majesty by order of General Wemyss’. Itemised work includes a particularly lucrative fee of £46 17s 6d charged on 21 August 1844 ‘To makeing one pair of 10 feet 6 wide folding Entrance Gates to be fixed in stone with 2 Bridle gates 4 feet wide’ (reference 302/4). A separate letter (reference 302/5) dated 13 October 1846 from ‘HM Commissioners of Wood etc.’ requests that the Faulkner family submit a tender to supply ‘500 Iron Hurdles for the service of the Regents Park’. This further affirms their role as contractors for the royal household and implies the quality of their work.
Wireworking, a world away
The Faulkner family was large. John Faulkner married Hannah Fielder, who gave birth to seven children between 1808 and 1825. Census returns show that four of their sons, John William, James, David, and Robert, seem to have learned their father’s trade as wireworkers living in the vicinity of Walton on Thames, between 1841 and 1881. John and Hannah’s youngest son, Robert, also fathered seven children with his wife, three of which became wireworkers or smiths of some description. In 1874, one of these sons, James William Faulkner, age 22, emigrated to Australia with his wife, Annie Alice (née Benfell). Their first son, James Sydney, was born in Sydney, in August 1875 and a second son, William Henry in July 1877.
However, by September 1887, an advertisement for ‘J. W. Faulkner’ appears in the 'Evening Star' and 'Otago Daily Times' newspapers published in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand’s southernmost urban centre. By early December 1888, J. W. Faulkner is described in a pictorial advertisement as a manufacturer of ‘Iron Grave Rails…Wire Grave Railings…Wire Bordering, Arches, Flower Stands, Garden Seats, Wire Trellis-work for vineries, etc.’ The Dunedin area had benefitted greatly from a gold rush during the 1860s and the city grew drastically between 1861 and 1881, so perhaps the Faulkners saw this as the ideal business opportunity and relocated.
In March 1894, Dunedin’s 'Otago Witness' newspaper ran a lengthy profile of ‘Messrs J. W. Faulkner & Sons’, which identified the firm as being ‘the only makers of wire netting in the colony [of New Zealand]’ and employing 35 people. The quality of their wrought-iron work is emphasised, a skilled craft that previous generations of Faulkners practised in Hersham: ‘Their skill in producing this class of work has been proved by their manufacture of the gates for St. Joseph’s Cathedral, and they have now in hand a very ornamental piece of work in the shape of a presbytery railing for St. Patrick’s Church, South Dunedin.’
The survival of documents at Surrey History Centre, along with research from sources held elsewhere, helps us to appreciate the value and mobility of artisanal skills and craft knowledges during the nineteenth century, and the entrepreneurship of one wireworking family that migrated across the world.
Images
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- Agreement between James Pilton, wireworker of London, and William Faulkner and his sons, William and John, all of Hersham, 26 June 1799 (Surrey History Centre reference 302/1)
- Richard William Silvester, ‘Trade Sheet/Advertisement of James Pilton, Manufacturer of Wire Fences at Kings Rd, Chelsea, Middlesex, and the Warehouse, 204 Piccadilly, near St. James’s Church, London’, 1808 (British Museum reference D,2.311. Copyright: The Trustees of the British Museum under licence)
- Extract from the accounts of William Faulkner of Hersham from ‘Her Majesty by order of General Wemyss’, detailing the lucrative request for a pair of large entrance gates, 21 Aug 1844 (reference 302/4)
- Letter from ‘HM Commissioners of Wood etc.’ to William Faulkner, requesting tender for 500 iron hurdles for Regents Park, 13 Oct 1846 (reference 302/5)
- William Faulkner’s address ‘Wire Worker, Hersham, Walton on Thames’ as it appears on a draft agreement for the lease of four cottages and land fronting onto the High Road at Hersham, dated 9 March 1825 (reference 302/2)
- Advertisement for ‘J. W. Faulkner, Ornamental Iron and Wire Works’, Otago Daily Times (Dunedin), 1 December 1888 (digitised scan provided courtesy of National Library of New Zealand Papers Past website)