Old Lancashire Glasshouses

JSGT 1929_ V13 T229-T242

During the eighteenth century glass-making in Lancashire was centred at Liverpool, Prescot, and Warrington. Manchester also became a centre of glass-making, but permanence as such did not occur until nearly 1830. Until the foundation of the celebrated Plate Glass Works at St. Helens, it is doubtful whether the glass industry in Lancashire was designed to supply much more than the local market. This market extended all over Lancashire and Cheshire and into the northern parts of Wales. The great glass works about Stourbridge were rather inaccessible before canals were made; the Yorkshire glass works were hedged off by the barrier of the Pennine Chain. It was natural, therefore, for the Lancashire folk to undertake their own ordinary glass supply. A greater opening for overseas trade was, however, presented later on, when the Bristol glassworks were closed down through lack of dock accommodation, and after the Glass Excise Acts had been extended to Ireland. These events, besides the general flow of trade from south to north, may account for the greater prosperity of the Lancashire glass trade in the nineteenth century.

Francis Buckley