Johanna Hill and Johanna Sturdy
Johanna Hill (d. 1441) and Johanna Sturdy (fl. 1459) were English bell-makers. They both ran the same bell-foundry in Aldgate, London in the fifteenth century and produced church bells that were used all over the south of England.
Johanna Hill
[edit]Johanna Hill, who may have been from Surrey, was married to bell-maker Richard Hill.[1] When he died in May 1440, Johanna took over their foundry in the parish of St Botolph, Aldgate. She oversaw four apprentices and a household of twenty people.[2] Seven of the bells she produced survive, bearing her stamp, which is a copy of her husband’s stamp surmounted by a lozenge containing a floret or cross, signalling that it belonged to a woman.[3] Johanna Hill’s stamp is found on bells in Devon, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Sussex.[4]
She died in May 1441, leaving the St Botolph bell-foundry to her daughter, also called Johanna, and Johanna’s husband Henry Jordan.[5]
Johanna Sturdy
[edit]
By the 1450s the St Botolph bell-foundry was owned by bellmaker John Sturdy alias Leicester and his wife Johanna Sturdy.[a] By 1459, John had died and Johanna had taken over the foundry, as shown by her correspondence about the warranty for a bell she was supplying to Faversham, Kent.[3] Ten of her bells survive and, like Johanna Hill’s, bear a stamp which was her husband’s mark surmounted by a lozenge.[2]
Notes
[edit]- ^ Stahlschmidt assumed that the two names belonged to the same Johanna in successive marriages. However, Caroline Barron and Jennifer Ward have established that they are two separate women.
References
[edit]- ^ "The Women who Forged Medieval England | History Today". 2024-09-10. Archived from the original on 2024-09-10. Retrieved 2024-09-10.
- ^ a b Barron, Caroline (1994). Barron, Caroline M.; Sutton, Anne F. (eds.). "Johanna Hill (d. 1441) and Johanna Sturdy (d. c. 1460), Bell-Founders". Medieval London Widows 1300-1500: 99–111. ISBN 978-0-8264-2182-1.
- ^ a b Stahlschmidt, J.C.L. (1884). Surrey Bells and London Bell-founders. p. 83.
- ^ Ward, Jennifer (2006-10-12). Women in England in the Middle Ages. A&C Black. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-8264-1985-9.
- ^ Barron, Caroline (2008). "Women traders and artisans in London". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/52233. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)