The munificent Mrs Coade and her 650 stones

The name of the stone merchant Eleanor Coade (1733–1821) is known today to few beyond the circle of architectural historians.

But in her day, hers was a name that bespoke excellence. Eleanor owned a highly-successful, artificial stone factory in Lambeth, London, which bore her name.

Eleanor was born on 3 June 1733 in Exeter, Devon, to George Coade, a wealthy merchant, and his wife, also named Eleanor. However, the wool trade that employed George went into decline and in 1759, the family were forced to relocate to London due to bankruptcy. George went bankrupt a second time in 1769 and it might have been this second bankruptcy that prompted Eleanor to set up her own business, hoping to shore up the family fortunes.

That same year Eleanor took over a stone business, for which she seemed to possess an innate business sense. She became known as ‘Mrs Coade’ (businesses were almost never run by single women) and, after a somewhat tenuous beginning for the business, Eleanor became a highly successful stone merchant.

Coade’s factory

The industrial revolution was in full swing and it was an ideal time to launch out into such a venture. By 1771 she had brought on a sculptor by the name of John Bacon – ‘the first great British sculptor of the Industrial Revolution’ – to produce and execute designs, and she exhibited works in what was now called ‘Coade stone’ at the Society of Artists of Great Britain seven times between 1773 and 1780.

Although Eleanor employed a range of designers, craftsmen, mechanics and managers at her firm, there is clear evidence that she herself was personally proficient in the manufacturing process and occasionally participated in the physical production of Coade stone. To advertise her products, Eleanor issued catalogues and established an exhibition gallery and later a showroom.

Making Coade stone

The precise formula for her stone was never patented or recorded. Most probably it consisted of different measures of clay— which had already been fired and ground into a powder—flint, fine sand, glass, and bits of pre-fired material known as ‘grog’.

The particular type of clay used was white in colour and specially sourced from Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, where Eleanor’s family came from. The addition of glass gave the stone its weatherproof quality, and it was this that made Coade stone so popular, especially for outdoor decoration.

A ‘ransomed sinner’

What is not known even to architectural historians, though, is that Eleanor was a firm Evangelical. This is seen clearly in her will, where she stated that ‘through the aboundings of his [that is God’s] Grace in Christ he has enabled me as a chief sinner to hope’ for a place in Christ’s kingdom.

She went on to specify that she was leaving various monies to a number of Evangelical churches and charities. She asked her relatives to understand her distribution of her wealth:

I entreat those of my relatives who will share less than others not to impute the difference to want of affection but to their own different situations and other existing circumstances which give some of them a claim to more special notice and as none of them do rank with the absolutely poor of the land. The Lord’s poor and the spread of his Gospel will be allowed by those who know the worth of it so have a powerful demand on the heart of a ransomed sinner.

It is noteworthy that numerous 18th-century Evangelicals, from Jonathan Edwards to Andrew Fuller, regarded such care for the poor as a mark of true faith.

Whether an indoor or an outdoor piece, Eleanor’s stone designs were always stamped with COADE. English Heritage has thus been able to identify over 650 surviving Coade stone examples around the world. But the words that have just been quoted from her will speak of an even more permanent memorial and treasure.