Welsh Journals

auction. The only material difference in the description of the mill from the 1814 advertisement printed by Davies6 is the additional detail that the mills are held under a lease from Lord Bulkeley. FLINTSHIRE SARN BRIDGE, WORTHENBURY This mill, held by W. Benjamin Bate(s), was to be auctioned on 29 April 1819 at the Wynnstay Arms, Wrexham.7 Bate(s) worked the mill in 18168 and remained there until the mid-1820s; a sale advertisement published in September 1826 for the mill 'with the Drying and Rag House' and croft and parcel of land, states that it was 'late in the occupation of B. Bate'.9 The advertisement proceeds to claim that 'the stream of water &c. on which the Mill is situate is worthy of a new mill, and is very valuable for the purpose of a Paper Mill'. HOLYWELL (ABBEY MILL) William Hill, who had been granted a licence to erect a Fourdrinier machine in 1821,10 was listed as a bankrupt on 24 November 1824 'late of Greenfield, nr. Holywell, Paper Manufacturer'.11 The business remained in the hands of his partner, Richard Unsworth, who is described in the 1828 edition of Pigot's Directory as being also a 'manufacturer of milled boards by patent machinery'. CAERWYS (AFONWEN) There is some evidence that paper from this mill, one of the few Welsh mills to produce printing papers, was used by Welsh printers. The accounts of the Wesleyan printing office located at Llanfair Caereinion during the mid-1820s note purchases of Afonwen paper: £ 13 16s for demy paper between 28 June 1824 and 1 May 1825, and £ 44 for demy paper during the year 1 May 1825 to 1 May 1826. However, this accounted for only a small proportion of the expenditure on paper £ 44 out of a total bill of almost £ 230 in 1825-6, for example.12 The format of the Afonwen watermark 'AFONWEN 1840' below the Prince of Wales's plume of feathers reproduced in Shorter13 can be traced back as far (at least) as the late 1820s. Paper watermarked 'AFONWEN 1829' and 'AFONWEN PAPER MILL 1829' (both below the Prince of Wales's feathers) was used by Thomas Gee, senior, for An Address, wherein are considered, the relative Duties of the Rich and Poor which he printed for its author, the Revd John Jones of Denbigh, towards the end of 1829. The use of good-quality paper for this work underlines the fact that it was an example of vanity printing rather than a commercial venture.