London 1747 by Thomas Gilpin (this mark reg. 2nd July 1739)
A George II sterling silver kettle on burner stand

Of inverted baluster form with a shell capped spout with a double scroll swing handle with shell junctions, clad in leather, a hinged domed lid surmounted by a chased pyriform finial. The burner stand on three shell scroll feet adjoined by cast and chased foliate swags below a pierced scroll border. The body with chased and embossed decoration of rocaille, C scrolls and foliage, a cartouche to each side engraved with a contemporaneous coat of arms within rocaille C scrolls. Fully marked to each section, the lid part-marked, scratch weight underneath 67“14.

Height -38.5 cm / 15.25 inches

Weight – 2037 grams / 65.49 ozt

Thomas Langdale (1714-1790), gin distiller in London. Thence by descent.

The arms are for Langdale

Thomas Langdale was born in Sunderland on 3^rd October 1714. Of his early life, nothing is known, but shortly after the death of his father (on 1^st November 1731) he is noted in the records of the Baker’s Company in London as being bound as an apprentice to a certain Joseph Sperinck for 7 years for the sum of £100. In 1737 he is recorded as being admitted as a freeman of the City of London, effectively bringing his apprenticeship to a premature end, the transcript of the petition to the Court of Aldermen referring to ‘an opportunity offering itself much to the Petitioner’s advantage’. What that advantage is not recorded, but it is reasonable to suppose that he was setting up in business on his own. That business is presumably the gin distillery that was to make him wealthy. Between 1742 and 1748 the Bakers Company records note him as taking on 4 apprentices himself (including one Charles Langdale, son of Jordan Langdale of South Cliff in Yorkshire).

In 1749 he married Dorothy Witham with whom he was to have 15 children, the first, Marmaduke, being born in 1750.

Of the development of his business over the succeeding 30 years we know next to nothing until it achieves much publicity as a consequence of the fate it suffered in the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780. What we do know of the business at that point is derived from ‘An Estimate of the value of several Dwelling houses, Warehouses and other Outhouses Buildings and Premises late belonging to Mr Thomas Langdale, Distiller….’ as destroyed in the riots. These list ‘3 houses, shops and other businesses at 26 Holborn facing Furnival Inn’(1), a large warehouse and other outhouses nearby, 3 dwelling houses in Fetter Lane (2), 3 dwelling houses on the corner of Holborn Bridge and Field Land (3) and ‘Warehouses and other outhouses and buildings situate at 81 Holborn Bridge. Thomas Langdale features on Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens’ historical novel set during the Gordon Riots of 1780.