Excavations at Gawber Glasshouse, near Barnsley, Yorkshire

Abstract

AbstractFrom about 1700 until 1821 clear window glass and clear and coloured bottle glass was being produced at Gawber (N.G.R. SE/327076), two miles north-west of Barnsley, Yorkshire. Knowledge of the early period was limited to a ruined clay furnace, coal fired and probably producing only clear glass. The 18th-/19th-century glasshouse, built during a reconstruction in the 1730s, overlay this furnace and comprised a brick cone on a stone foundation surrounding a central hearth fed by three air intakes which, with the associated lear and raw material store, formed the major part of the works. Detached from the cone and separated by a roadway was a compound containing cullet preparation area and workshops around which waste material had been dumped. Production in the later period concentrated on phials and wine bottles in clear, green and dark brown metal, often incorporating seals. The furnace was coal fired and the metal prepared in open pots. The site was sold in 1821 and the cone demolished. The evidenc...