Who was Warde of Chertsey, tileman?
page researched by David Barker of Addlestone Historical Society
and Peter Tipton of The Yateley Society 23 Jan 2008
The Ashley House (Walton-on-Thames) Building Accounts (1602-1607) were published in 1977 as Vol XXIX by the Surrey Record Society edited by M.E Blackman. This is an invaluable text for historians wanting to know the prices of building materials at the beginning of the reign of James I. It is available on the open shelves at Surrey Record Centre in Woking.
The book is also an excellent source for local historians wanting to trace the names and origins of local brickmakers, and suppliers of other building materials. Of interest to us is an entry in f11v headed paveinge tile:
Chertsey paveing tile R from Warde of Chertsey 8 July 1604 of greene and yellow tyle 8 inche square to pave the hall &c at 4s 10d the hundred delivered at the killne......800 (tiles)
The following entries record the purchase from Warde of further quantities of green & yellow tile at the same price, plus two deliveries of red tile "for paveinge thentrye to the kitchen &c at 2s 8d the hundred." Between July 1604 and 26 Mar 1605 five tile orders were purchased "at the kiln" with a sixth order of 2,000 green & yellow tiles purchased some after that date to finish paving the walk under the gallery. Warde of Chertsey was paid a total of £17 15s 4d over about nine months.
The Surrey Record Society volume explains:
Paving tiles, 8 inches square, came from Chertsey, a total of 7,800 being supplied by Warde the tileman of Chertsey. The majority (6,800) were green and yellow, price 4s 10d per hundred at the kiln, and were mainly used to pave the hall, porch and walk under the gallery. The remainder were red, price 2s 8d per hundred at the kiln, and were used to pave the pantry and kitchen entry (f.93v). The carriage of the paving tiles from Chertsey to Ashley cost 2s a load of 500 tiles (f.90Bv). The cost of laying the paving tiles appears under day-work: payments to to workmen on 22nd September and 7th October 1604 at 18d a day were for work which included paving the skullery, hall, Etc (f.114r). A small quantity of gallie tiles, costing £2 6s, was purchasedin London, and these were apparently used for paving chimney hearths (f.11v).
The Ashley House building accounts give the price of the many deliveries of roofing times at around 10s per 1,000 - about the same price as brick. The green and yellow tiles bought from Warde the tileman were five times more expensive than roofing tile and double the price of red tiles used in the kitchen. We are therefore reasonably certain the the green and yellow tiles were glazed - similarly to Borderware pottery.
So who was Warde the Tileman?
The earliest will for a member of the Ward family is that for John Warde of Chertsey, tilemaker, written 19 May 1624 and proved five years later on 26 Jun 1629. This John Ward could well be the tileman who sold the tiles to Ashley House. West Surrey FHS CD-4, covering burials to 1865, records the burials of several other male Wards between 1605 and 1629, but we have no wills for them. We therefore have no way of knowing whether these other burials are of adult tilemen or children. Unfortunately we have no records of John Ward‘s marriage to Margaret, nor the births of their five children. We can therefore surmise, since we do have a will proved in 1629 for a tilemaker of Chertsey, and no other previous Ward wills, that we do have the right man. We can be even more sure that the John Ward who died in 1629 will have been of a tilemaker in the same family as the person who supplied Ashley House.
We can trace the Ward tilemakers in Chertsey for the next 100 years, and this may help local historians to pinpoint their property and their tilemaking kilns. John‘s two eldest sons were Richard and Edward. Richard Ward died in 1664 leaving a will mentioning his brother Edward, and his sons Richard, John and Henry. Richard left a New Barn in Chertsey to his son John. Henry Ward, a brewer, died in 1714, and left his tilekiln near Chilsey Green to his grandson Richard Atlee. John Ward made his will in 1710, when Henry Ward was one of the witnesses. John died in 1719 and left a barn near Chilsey Green to his two daughters Ann and Sarah.
A tilekiln on Chilsey Green Road, Chertsey does not help us trace the origins of the kiln excavated in Victory Park, Addlestone. The Victory Park kiln may have changed hands several times from 1629 to 1714. We need to investigate the existence of more probate inventories. There are only two tilemakers indexed in The Surrey Probate Inventories transcribed by Marion Herridge: John Lee of Chertsey and Oliver Vanner of Frensham (1561). The best way of tracing the property of these tilemakers will be to use the admissions and surrenders recorded in the manorial courts. Amateurs will need professional help reading the Latin text. Perhaps this would be a suitable project for a new volume in the Surrey Record Society series
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