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The following article appeared in Bristol Times Issue 184 dated 26 February 2002; this is a weekly supplement in the daily Evening Post newspaper. The references to Nailsea coal may be of interest to list members. Roger GLASS FROM THE PAST IT may not seem much like an industrial centre these days but the large North Somerset village of Nailsea was once the site of a big business enterprise. No, not the scrumpy and Western music business started by the late Adge Cutler of Wurzel fame or even the much-lamented Coates cider factory, but a glassworks. For Nailsea lies at the centre of a small coalfield which has been worked since late medieval times. It once supplied fuel for the Smyth family of Ashton Court, who owned the pits. It was this source of coal, plus plentiful lime, stone, sand and clay that attracted a Bristol cooper and glassmaker, John Lucas, to the area in 1788. He sold his beer and cider works, borrowed £4,000 (an enormous sum in those days), leased six acres of land and constructed two 80 foot high brick cones, one for making window glass and one for making bottles. As there were no skilled glass workers in the area, Lucas was forced to import whole families from other glass works all over the country. In 1792 when the social reformer and bluestocking Hannah More visited the works from her home in Wrington, there were about 200 employees on the site living in a whole row of newly-built cottages. There were eventually 34 homes, all built by Lucas for his workers and families. Labour was mostly highly skilled, but very hot and arduous, and the whole fusion process took anything from 18 to 30 hours non-stop. But it was highly paid, with top employees (gaffers) earning double or triple the average manual wages of the day. They lived well, having meat and vegetables every day. They even ate snails, a great delicacy in those times. Bottles were only manufactured for the first 40 years, from then on the works made only window glass, which was melted and then cut on large tables 50 inches in diameter. It was known as Crown glass, and had a pale greenish tinge to it and a bulls eye in the middle. It is remembered in a Nailsea place name today. Later, as techniques improved, sheet and then plate glass was produced. Lucas became rich, building himself and family a mansion - Backwell Hill House - on the site of an old hunting lodge. By early Victorian times Nailsea was the fourth largest producer of glass in the country, exporting to Ireland, West Indies and the Americas. Transport was always a problem, with the glass having to be carefully packed in straw and then taken by wagon (a dilley) and turnpike road on the ten-mile journey to Bristol's Temple Meads railway station, or the ships in the city docks. This was expensive and plans were made for a canal from Morgan's Pill on the Avon up to the site, but these eventually came to nothing, and up to 10,000 crates of glass a year continued to go to Bristol by cart. Despite this vast output, most of the socalled Nailsea Glass - so desirable today - was not actually made in the village at all! What was made were so-called friggers - bits and pieces made by workers from spare glass left over at the end of a shift. Using all their skills, such items as barley sugar walking sticks, rolling pins, door stops, paperweights and the like were produced and sold locally. In later Victorian times things started to go wrong for the company. The coal supply failed and glass production moved to Birmingham and the north. Despite careful ownership closure came in 1873. In 1905 a brick cone was blown up and later used as hard core for the massive Brabazon runway at Filton. Later other cones were felled and the site became derelict and overgrown, with only a few buildings and workers' houses left standing. Excavations in the 1980s revealed many lost secrets and now new excavations for a Tesco store have revealed yet another unknown coal pit. It is believed to have been part of the Glasshouse Pit, which produced fuel for the town glasworks. Local historians have already listed 27 pits and more than 100 mine shafts in the area. Nailsea desperately needs a museum to display this heritage but until then small collections of Nailsea glass can be seen at both Weston and Bristol museums as well as at Clevedon Court, which is open during the summer months.