INDUSTRIES building was turned into a whiting factory. It was a hideous building and occupied a prominent position in the village, and when Sir R. Sutton bought the property from the Dundas family in 1876 he caused it to be pulled down. At Newbury Thomas Harker had silk works in the London Road, and silk ribbons were made at Thatcham by James Nesbitt. Greenham, always an active little suburb of Newbury, had some silk mills owned in 1830 by Thomas Hibell, where silk-throwing was carried on, and the same trade found a home in West Mills under the management of Charles Lewes. No other traces of the industry, which has long been extinct in the county, can now be found, and it is now entirely obsolete in the county of Berks. TANNING Tanning is one of the oldest industries in this county and still maintains its importance amongst the trades of Berkshire. The name of Alan le Tanur appears at Wallingford in the reign of Henry III. as an important person and witness to several deeds. The name of Richard le Tannur occurs in a deed dated 20 Edward II. ; that of Nicholas Tannere a few years later. 1 At Reading also in the fifteenth century we find the trade firmly established. In 1444 the name of Thomas Web be, tanner, appears in the records of the town. He was a person of some position, and was one of the chief burgesses. 2 There were also several skinners, allied traders to the tanners, and many workers in leather, glovers, cordwainers, saddlers, bottle-makers, etc. The cause of the excellence of the trade in this county is the plentifulness of oak trees in Berkshire. In early times the bark of the common oak (quercus robur), was almost the only tanning material used by British tanners, and it is still the substance from which the highest quality of heavy tanned leather is prepared, although with it the process is naturally tedious. 3 Throughout the country there are still a few tanners who boast that they use nothing in their trade but oak bark. The woods of Berkshire and the neighbour- ing forests of Oxfordshire supplied this substance in plenty, and helped to make the reputation of the Berkshire tanners. Oak bark imparts firmness and solidity to leather, while other agents give softness, and the Berkshire product has not lost its good quality. During the sixteenth century the trade in Reading does not seem to have made much progress. Few tanners are mentioned in the lists of burgesses. The special trades carried on by the burgesses are not infrequently omitted in the records, and it is not there- fore safe to conclude that this industry was languishing. A munificent tanner, Robert Boyer, seems to have been very prosperous during this century, and left all his lands and tenements at Burghfield in trust for the poor of Reading. If Deloney's Pleasant and Delect- able Historie of John Wincbcomb may be taken as evidence of the condition of the trade, tanning prospered at Wallingford in the time of Henry VIII., inasmuch as the first suitor of the rich widow of Jack's master was a tanner, ' a man of good wealth ' dwelling in that town. While much dependence cannot, of course, be placed upon this romance, it serves to show that in Deloney's time (the latter part of the sixteenth century) tanning was a well estab- lished and flourishing trade in this district. In the seventeenth century it appears to have been flourishing at Reading. In 1624 Edward Baker was the chief of the tanners, and he and other freemen complained of strangers who sold leather in the market to the great hurt of the freemen, and to their buying hides contrary to the government of the town. 4 Sealers of leather were appointed and were warned that they should seal no foreign leather bought and sold in the country and brought into the town, except on fair days. 5 It appears in 1623 there was a tannery at Mortimer, for one Richard Boles brought some hides thence to Reading market. The searchers examined these hides and found them insufficiently tanned, and sundry fines were levied. The seizers, triers, and the poor received certain benefits from the proceeds of the sale. Searchers of leather regularly appear among the other officers of the town, and their names are recorded. In 1628 William Sedburye and John Hughes were sworn searchers and sealers of leather, 8 and a month after their appointment seized five hides of leather of Matthew Turnoer, because they had not been examined, nor sealed, nor registered ; and three hides of John Joseph insufficiently tanned. The method of judg- 1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vi., App. p. 581. 3 Rec. of Reading, i. 19. 3 Encycl. Brit. xiv. 381. Rec. of Reading, ii. 168. Ibid. p. 402. Ibid. 397
