Thomas Wright, printer and paper merchant

After qualifying as Master Stationer Thomas Wright and his brother-in-law William Gill opened a shop in the chapel of St Thomas à Becket in the centre of the old 12th century London Bridge. It had a lower cellar at (or under) water level which they used as a warehouse and an upper room at bridge level that served as a shop. From here they supplied paper to government departments such as the Board of Longitude which had been set up to solve the problem of finding longitude at sea.

Wright & Gill's first business premises

Bill for the supply of paper by Wright & Gill to the Board of Longitude, 1775. Source: Cambridge Digital Library

Thomas Wright’s success also stemmed from bidding for monopolies for the printing of books. He secured the right to print and sell almanacs, a highly profitable franchise. More financially rewarding still was the printing of bibles and prayer books. In 1765 he bought the monopoly to print religious works for Oxford University after the previous printer, the Baskett family, had produced books riddled with mistakes. One book had been called the ‘vinegar bible’ because the parable of the vineyard was misprinted as the parable of the vinegar. Baskett employed ‘idle and drunken staff’ and things got so bad the university had to buy their religious books from Cambridge. Thomas Wright cleverly agreed to protect the risk-averse university against any loss brought by the notoriously litigious Baskett and this helped him win the lease. 

Since Oxford held the right to print the King James Authorised Version, this proved highly lucrative to Thomas’s firm until the American War of Independence affected their overseas market and an increase in paper costs caused them to withdraw from the lease. Many of their books survive in libraries around the world such as the British Library and the Royal Collection. Wright & Gill were the last leaseholders as the University took the work inhouse and started what became the Oxford University Press.

The Wordsmiths at Bell House

One of the tenets of Bell House is to offer children the opportunity to unleash their creativity and on 25 May 2017 a group of boys from a creative writing club at Dulwich College visited the house to be inspired by some of its many stories. 

As they turned into the Bell House drive and before they had even entered the house they were greeted with ‘Welcome to the eighteenth century!’, as house historian Sharon O’Connor told them about poor James Simpson, sentenced in 1769 to transportation to America for the theft of a coat worth 20 shillings, stolen from the front seat of the Bell House carriage. The coach had been standing exactly where they were now hearing the story and they were able to look down and see some of the very cobblestones over which the coach was driven.

The group moved through Bell House’s elegant rooms, learning about past residents such as Thomas Wright, the paper merchant who built the house in 1767 as a rural retreat from city life. They were excited to handle an original 1794 almanac, of the type printed by Thomas. They learnt that Anthony Harding, the house’s second resident, opened the world’s first department store in Pall Mall in 1796, and they studied engravings of his shop. The boys were fascinated to hear about John Wissmann, who like them had been at school at Dulwich College and who later became Dulwich’s first casualty of World War One.

The boys asked many fascinating questions about Bell House, ranging from whether servants would have slept in the cellar to what might be the total cost spent on the house since it was built and they all made careful notes in their creative writing notebooks. On the top floor they rang the house’s eponymous bell, installed to assemble people for local firefighting.

Out in the beautiful garden they saw original hand-coloured drawings of the garden beds and paths and heard about an out-of-control firework party held in the 1950s when Bell House was a school boarding house. They also saw the Georgian ‘ha-ha’, the sunken wall designed to keep sheep out of the garden while at the same time being invisible from the house.

The stories inspired by the time spent at Bell House will be available on our website.

Is this the face of Thomas Wright?

Front doors are often an eye-catching feature of a Georgian house and Bell House is no exception. The handsome doorcase, six-panelled door and intricate fanlight are decorative enough to hold their own, even against the octagonal panes of the beautiful Venetian window above. 

Listed Grade II* and one of the top 8% of listed buildings nationally, Bell House is of particular historic importance and any restoration work must be expertly done. Rick is restoring the front door at the moment and as he painstakingly removes the accumulated paint and dirt of 250 years the exquisite detail of this Georgian gem is coming into focus.

Speaking architecturally, Heritage England refer to ‘the open modillioned pediment supported on carved consoles, alternate block sides and archivolt with masked keystone’. For me, that ‘masked keystone’ is the most intriguing feature. The face, placed centrally above the front door, has long been thought to be Thomas Wright himself, the man who built Bell House in 1767.

We know what Thomas Wright looked like as there are two surviving portraits of him: Thomas Wright miniature (LMA) and portrait (Stationers' Company) So, is the face presiding over the front door of Bell House its first resident? Comparing it with these portraits I think we can agree it’s probably not. So, who was it? Was it a memorial to Thomas Wright’s father, who died when Thomas was just four years old? Was it the builder? Or is it just a generic face chosen from a ‘pattern-book’, those widely-used style guides that gave detailed instructions on how to get the Georgian look. Whoever it was, his newly-restored features are nearly ready to preside over the house for the next 250 years.

As an aside, this is not the only masked keystone in Dulwich as North Dulwich station, built a century after Bell House, has one over each of its three entrance arches.

Faces above the three entrance arches of North Dulwich station

London Almanac for the year of Christ 1794

Almanacs began to be published annually in London from the 1600s but became wildly popular in the following century, were still produced into Victorian times and survive today in the form of Old Moore’s or Whitaker’s Almanack. However, the very first almanacs were produced in the second millennium BC in the Near East, providing information such as favourable and unfavourable days and how to deal with each of them.

London Almanack 1794 recently acquired for Bell House collection.

Early English almanacs were sold either as a broadsheet, the precursor of the modern calendar, or as a pocket almanac like this one. They contained astronomical data such as the number of days of the full moon (useful for travelling in the days before street lighting) and used that data to produce weather forecasts which were vital for both agriculture and commerce (aiding decisions such as the movement of ships). They then began to be aimed at different groups such as farmers who got planting data, or Londoners who received municipal information such as lists of City officials and public holidays, and so they became very important to the economy.

Our example is tiny, at 3cm square it is smaller even than a matchbox. It has a burgundy leather cover with a metal clasp, although the leather flap fastener is missing. There is a metal plate under the fastener with enough space for someone’s initials, though ours is not engraved. Inside there are twenty gilt-edged leaves plus text pasted to the reverse of the front and rear marble endpapers. There is a tiny pocket inside the upper cover. 

Engraved throughout, the title page contains the arms of the livery company of Stationers with a second coat of arms on the reverse of the second leaf with a handwritten note: ‘T.W for E.W’.

The tiny almanac measuring just 3cm square.

The data inside includes a month by month summary of 1794 with festivals and sun/moon rising/setting times. Following this is a fascinating table of kings and queens which describes the Tudor line as ‘The families united’ and the Stuart line as ‘The union of the two crowns’. 

Details of past Lord Mayors and sheriffs follow and here Thomas Wright is represented in both lists. 

Finally we have a list of annual holidays and a table of current coins by weight. It is possible Thomas Wright printed this almanac as Wright and Gill derived a large part of their income from printing almanacs and he was an eminent member of the Stationers’ Company, for whom this almanac was printed, having been their first lord mayor for over thirty years when he was inaugurated in 1785.

Railings at Bell House and the ha-ha

Everyone seems very happy about the opening up of the front of Bell House which has exposed the ha-ha.  As Wikipedia explains, a ha-ha is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond.  This is probably the only ha-ha in Dulwich and was originally intended to keep out animals while giving a view from the house across fields towards what is now College Gardens and, beyond that, to Belair Park. Clearing out the depression in front of the ha-ha has been a major task - we have found vast quantities of bottles, cans, old bits of cars and general litter but we have now removed all that rubbish, much of it half-buried, and strimmed down the brambles . Our plan for this outside area is to increase the number of bluebells and wild flowers.  

Railings being installed behind the the ha-ha.

This clearance at the front of Bell House has of course left a security gap between the gates so we have erected a long set of railings which have just been completed.  We used a local welding company, run by Ian Cullingford, who put up railings that minimised any damage to the original wall. The railings may look as if they are drilled into the wall but in fact they are supported from behind the wall and just rest on the wall.  Ian has also protected the limestone curves at each end by making a curved frame for the railings. Ian mostly specialises in fire escapes but we knew he would do our railings brilliantly as he has been taking on these engineering challenges for over 30 years - http://www.fireescape.co.uk

The railings discreetly supported from behind so as not to damage the original wall.

At either side of the railings there are gateways where we plan to install matching gates but before we can do that the leaning wall on the left will have to be rebuilt - that work is planned for later in the summer but certainly before the end of 2017 - the 250th anniversary of the wall and of Bell House itself.