Damnable Inventions, by Glenys and Alan Cocker

Damnable Inventions, by Glenys and Alan Cocker

Damnable Inventions, by Glenys and Alan Cocker, subtitled 'Chilworth Gunpowder and the Paper Mills of the Tillingbourne'

Published by the Surrey Industrial History Group in 2000, 144 pages. Paperback (N5246)

From the rear side cover: 'Damnable inventions' were the words used by William Cobbett, when he visited the Tillingbourne valley in Surrey in 1822, to describe the industries of Chilworth and Albury - the manufacture of gunpowder and of paper for printing banknotes.

The Chilworth gunpowder mills were established in 1626 and worked almost continuously until 1920. At times, in the late seventeenth. century and again in their final years, the works stretched along the Tillingbourne from Chilworth to Postford. For much of the powder mills' 300-year history, from 1704 to 1875, paper mills operated alongside, and the stories of the two industries are brought together in this book.

It is a book of local history against a background of events in the wider world: the East India Company, the Civil War, the Dutch Wars, Huguenot refugees, the South Sea Bubble, the slave trade, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War.....

The story is illuminated (and sometimes confused) by eminent writers of the past - John Aubrey, John Evelyn and Cobbett - and revealed by the observations of more ordinary men and women and a wealth of archive material in record offices around the country.

The condition of the book is generally good. The cover has one or two minor scuffs, and some light nibbling along the edges and corners, but the spine is tight and intact, and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound.

Condition New