Can you imagine having to work 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 7 days a week, in sweltering heat, with rats threatening to run up your trouser legs? It sounds like a horror movie but that’s exactly what the ‘teasers’ at the Red House Glass Cone glasshouse had to endure. These were the men that stoked the furnaces using coal brought to the glass works by canal. The right temperature had to be maintained at all times to melt the glass while the glassmakers were at work. Believe it or not, at one period, the furnace at Red House Glass Cone was kept alight continuously for 15 years.
Glass making first started in the Stourbridge area in early 1600s. The glass cone, which housed the furnace and where the glassmakers worked, was a particular feature of the industry in this country. As well as providing the working area it was in effect a huge chimney that created the draught needed to get the furnace up to the high temperatures needed to melt the glass. The Red House Glass Cone is one of only four that survive in the UK, and of these, it is the best preserved.
The factory is in remarkable condition and apart from going under the furnace and inside the cone, you can see the lehr, where the glass was allowed to cool slowly. Walk around it, imagine the heat and smoky atmosphere and wonder at the skills of the workers whose reputation won them orders like the one to make all the glass for the Titanic.