Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Halifax, Stansfeld of Bowood
Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Stansfeld of Bowood, Image by StuE, Found by Mick Wells.
Found near Bowood Lane, Halifax, West Yorkshire, 23mm, 14.7g.
STANSFELD / OF / BOWOOD / TWELVE // offset quadrants; top left Y (? ds above), top right 40 1/2, lower left N, lower right blank: all in a border of pellets
Cloth seals are frequently found with the dimensions of the cloth they were attached to recorded on their reverse. The style of this seal is in accordance with those from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Perhaps the suspected ds above the Y is simply an elaboration on the usual Y abbreviation for Yards.
The finder reports that, "whist detecting on my new permission near a 1650 hall (House here from the 1200s then a new addition built to it C1750) I have found a very nice lead cloth seal. The Stansfeld lived here(changed there name to Stansfield prior to WW1) and made a lot of money from cloth from the 1650s and 1750s. The house is called Upperfield House near Bowood Lane, Halifax, West Yorkshire."
There are a number of clothiers from West Yorkshire with the surname Stansfield. The following were taken from History of the family of Stansfeld in the parish of Halifax and its numerous branches, by John Stansfeld 1885:-
1561 Edward Stansfield of Erringden, 1598 Richard Stansfield of Sowerby, 1601 Henry Stansfield of Heptonstall, 1641 Samuel Stansfield of Halifax (left to his nephew John Stansfield "one pyre of lomes, warping wough, and warping ringe, and all the implempts. to the same."). All the above would appear to be too early to be connected with this seal.
See BSG.CS.01101 for another Stansfeld of Bowood seal stating he was the sole successor to Samuel Hill.
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