CHAFFORD AND ROUGHWAY PAPER MILLS REVISITED

Introduction

An earlier article published in The Transvaal Philatelist: Chafford and Roughway Paper Mills, the Turners and the Transvaal, Vol.39, No.3 (151), August 2004, pp.63-77 included much about the history and paper production of Chafford Mills, Fordcomb, in the county of Kent and the transfer of the production of some papers and management to Roughway Mills, sited near the village of Plaxtol, Kent; coupled with an examination of the papers used for the Queens Head stamps issued during the First British Occupation of the South African Republic. The idea here is to add recent research, amend a few dates and record the involvement of Chafford Mills in production of other papers used for stamps during the mid-Victorian period.

Pre-Victorian period

William Turner was living in Maidstone when he came into money on the death of his Father and in 1796 moved to the parish of Penshurst. In an Excise General Letter of 8^th October, 1816¹ he is noted as the Master Papermaker at Chafford Mills. Letters written by Jane Austin (died 1817)² have been found with a William Turner & Son watermark.

The watermark R TURNER / CHAFFORD MILLS found in papers made at Chafford is that of Richard Turner, who was baptised in Maidstone, Kent, in 1796. An Excise General Letter of October 1817 refers to G.W. & R. Turner, who from that date paid the rates at Chafford.³ A local census of 1821 records William Turner’s household as including three males age 20-30, one of whom could have been Richard Turner and the others his older brothers William and George William.

A notice in The London Gazette (18^th June 1830) links George William Turner and Richard Turner in business as G & R Turner at Chafford and at Fountain Mills, Bermondsey Wall. This partnership was dissolved on 11^th June 1830 with all debts paid by Richard who continued at Chafford. George William is mentioned in an Excise General Letter as the sole occupier of Bermondsey Mill but was bankrupt by May 1835.⁴ Manufacture of good quality hand-made and machine-made paper continued at Chafford Mills, until the early twentieth century.

Mid-Victorian period

The mill was making hand-made paper intended for the first letterpress stamps designed and printed for Great Britain. This paper is the celebrated ‘single’ small garter watermarked used by the printers de la Rue for the 1855 four pence postage duty of Great Britain in shades of carmine. Easton records.⁵

The first typographed [letterpress] Fourpence of 1855 [for Great Britain] was printed by de la Rue on a handmade paper watermarked with a Small Garter. … manufactured for Somerset House by Turner & Co., Chafford Mill, … it was intended that the Queen’s head on the design should fit into the oval framework of the Garter. Even … Somerset House had to agree that a garter should be elastic, and it twice changed size until it became sufficiently large for the Queen’s head to be fitted into it without causing huge difficulties or register when the stamps were being printed.

The Turners were hands-on mill owners. The following is an extract from a letter on the subject of problems in the manufacture of papers for revenue stamps of Great Britain following criticism of the quality.⁶ The Post Office’s obsession with prevention of forgery resulted in the rejection of the blue safety paper on which the 4d revenue duty stamps were to be printed. Warren de la Rue writes to Ormond Hill on 7^th February, 1859.⁷

… Mr Turner is so far right when he says that the prussiate of potash is the cause of the blueness in the paper, ... As far as the blue spots are concerned we may readily dismiss them, for they are unquestionably due to the presence of small particles of iron in the paper, which ought not to exist therein, for more than one reason. … The V.R. paper is always white, but in this Mr. Turner puts no prussiate of potash, although he was originally instructed to do so: but, as he made a great trouble of having to do this, we put prussiate of potash into the white colour we use in preparing the paper, and thus obtain the requisite security against the reissue of the stamp. ... Now prussiate of potash is a very stable salt … and I feel justified in stating that its decomposition in some of the paper manufactured by Mr Turner is the result of want of the necessary precautions. ... Both the V.R. and the Anchor paper are good, as regards texture and surface.

Two days later a letter from Richard Turner of Turner & Co, Chafford Mills, Fordcombe, to Ormond Hill with copy to Warren de la Rue,

I am making V.R. paper which has the prussiate of potash in it, and which is free from spots, and has a slight shade (blue) in it, less than the piece you sent me as a sample. The introduction of prussiate of potash was only one of a variety of methods adopted or suggested for protecting stamps and other documents from illicit cleaning. ... and has been used by paper makers since 1817. That it has its drawbacks, however, de la Rue’s letter clearly shows. The problem raised by the particles of iron in the pulp could have been dealt with by one of Dickinson’s inventions, patented in 1835. It consisted of a series of magnets which extracted small pieces of steel or iron from the pulp… .

Richard Turner’s son, Richard David Raines Turner and his brother-in-law Henry Warden were in partnership at Chafford from about the mid-sixties. During 1868 Henry Warden was the owner,⁸ although, R.D.R. Turner was still associated with the business.⁹

Late-Victorian period

The printers Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., of London, used three separate papers watermarked ‘R TURNER / CHAFFORD MILLS’ in various styles, for printing a 4d postage stamp (1879) of the Falkland Islands, a Transvaal half penny postage stamp (1880) and another for some of the Transvaal Revenue stamps from (1879).¹⁰ The intaglio production of these revenue ‘Queen’s Head’ Transvaal stamps has been meticulously researched by Drysdall¹¹ and the Revenue watermark defined by Woolgar.¹²

Roughway Mills

It is possible that a mill at Roughway was manufacturing paper from 1787¹³, although it is not known what type of paper was being produced. A hundred years later during December 1887, R.D.R. Turner went to live at Roughway Mills which was owned by Walter Monckton and the Turner involvement with Chafford Mills ended. A contract between the Inland Revenue and R.D.R. Turner which also mentions de la Rue, suggests that the production of paper for stamp production was moved from Chafford to Roughway Mills circa. 1880.¹⁴

Conclusion

The Turners at Chafford were innovatory papermakers and had supplied security papers for production of postage and revenue stamps of Great Britain, printed by de la Rue during the mid-Victorian period.

Chafford Mills made papers which were used by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. for the small print runs of Transvaal ‘Queens Head’ stamps during the late-Victorian period. No reliable source has yet been found to confirm that they were specially ordered for that purpose. These papers may possibly have been taken from Bradbury, Wilkinson’s previously ordered general stock.

From the 1880s it was Roughway Mills, that produced paper used by de la Rue¹⁵ for stamp production during the late Victorian period and into the twentieth century.

Postscript

The Official Catalogue of the London International Stamp Exhibition 1923 has an advertisement for Roughway Mills on page 34. On page 193 of this catalogue it states that “The special paper prepared for printing the ‘Exhibitor Aero Stamps’ was manufactured at Roughway Mills and examples of this paper, with single and multiple watermarks, are inset with this catalogue." Moreover, The Exhibition stamps were printed on this special paper and could be obtained at 1d each at the J.P.S. stand in the Exhibition”.

A ‘List of Watermarks & Named Papers’, published in 1935 and 1939,¹⁶ reports two papers supplied by Wigins, Teape & Alex., Pirie (Sales), Ltd., of Mansell Street, London E1, watermarked ‘Turner Chafford Mill’ and ‘Turner (R.) Kent’. It is not known which mill(s) produced these papers, but it is pleasant to record that the name of this ‘ancient’ mill and its Master Papermaker were still recognised in connection with quality papers up to the Second World War.

Acknowledgements

I thank Sarah Tanner, Ann Stone and Chris Board for their help during the preparation of this article.

References and Notes

1.      Tanner, (2004).
2.      Austen, (1995) p.471.
3.      Tanner, (2004).
4.      idem, (2004).
5.      Easton, (1948), p.69-70.
6.      ibin, (1948), pp.57-60.
7.      Ormond Hill, son of Edwin Hill (brother of Sir Rowland Hill) were responsible

for the early production and development of postage stamps by the Stamping

Department of the Board of Stamps and Taxes, and after 1849, of the Board of Inland

Revenue. Edwin retired in 1872 when his deputy and son, Ormond, succeeded him.

8.      Tanner, (2004).
9.      Probate Registry, 4^th May 1872.
10.      Woolgar, (2004), pp.63-66.
11.      Drysdall, (2005), pp.1-9.
12.      Woolgar, J, (2004), pp.63-77.
13.      Gurney, (2008).
14.      Tanner, S., (2008).

15.      The name ‘de la Rue’ was used by the firm until the incorporation of limited liability on 1^st July

1896 when capital initial letters were used 'Thomas De La Rue & Company, Limited'.

16.      Shepard, F.G., (1935), p.197 and (1939), p.196.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane, Editor, Le Faye, Deidre, (1995), Jane Austen’s Letters. Oxford.

Drysdall, A., (2005), Bradbury, Wilkinson's and De La Rue's essays for the First British Occupation issues: The Transvaal Philatelist, Vol.40, No 1 (153), February 2005.

Easton, J., (1949), Postage stamps in the making, Faber and Faber Ltd., London.

Gurney, D., (2008) Roughway paper mills, Manufacturers of Watermarked Stamp Paper, London Philatelist, Vol.117, No.1359.

Shepard, F.G., (1935), The Price Book 1935, for printer and allied trades, King & Jarrett Ltd., London, and Shepard, F.G., (1939), The Price Book 1939, for printer and allied trades, King & Jarrett Ltd., London.

Tanner, S., (2004), The Turner Family and Chafford Mill No 389, Fordcombe, Penshurst, Tunbridge Wells, Kent: The Quarterly, no.52, September 2004. [The Quarterly is the Journal of the British Association of Paper Historians].

Tanner, S., (2008), http://www.stanner.net/paper%20mills/Chafford%20Historial%20Notes%20.htm

Woolgar, J., (2004), Chafford and Roughway Mills, the Turners and the Transvaal, The Transvaal Philatelist, Vol.39, No 3 (151), August 2004. (Copies of this article are held by two public libraries in Kent: The Kent History Library, Maidstone, and Tunbridge Wells Public Library.)