A very large early Victorian sterling silver salver London 1842 By James Charles Edington

Of shaped circular form with a shaped cavetto edge and an acanthus scroll rim, all upon four acanthus scroll bracket feet. The field with flat chased decoration to the outer edge of rocaille C scroll cartouches reserved with lattice work adjoined by foliage. The centre with an engraved impaled coat of arms above the motto Cassis Tutissima Virtus, all surmounted by a helm and foliate mantling with a crest of on a mount, a demi-dragon, holding in the dexter claw a cross crosslet fitchée, and supporting with the sinister an escutcheon, charged with an esquire's helmet. The reverse engraved “T & S. E. Helme, 14^th October 1841”. Fully marked to the reverse cavetto, also stamped GREEN & WARD.

Diameter – 56.5 cm / 22.25 inches

Weight – 4222 grams / 135.74 ozt

The crest is for Helme

The arms are for Heme impaling Coope

For Thomas Mashiter née Helme (1804-1896) who married on the 14^th of October1841 Susan Emily Coope (1819–78), the second daughter of John William Coope (1766–1845) and Anna Maria Doorman (1781–1861) whose great grandfather was Director, South-Sea Company Richard Cope (d.1765).

A firm of Nail Merchants Mashiter & Helme was listed in Lowndes’s London Directory (1794) as based at Irongate Wharf. Thomas Mashiter (1779-1862) from his complicated will decreed that if his elder brother William (1777-1814) had no issue, then the Helmes were to inherit the Mashiters’ estate if they adopted the surname of Mashiter. Thomas Mashiter née Helme (1804–96), his eldest son Edward Mashiter née Helme (1842–1921) and his second son Colonel Sir George Coope Mashiter (1843-1927) were the only three members of the Helme family who accepted this stipulation and acquired the requisite Royal licences, in 1884, 1899 and 1922 respectively (London Gazette, no. 25,365, 17 June 1884, p. 2,645; no. 27,060, 7 March 1899, p. 1,587; no. 32,576, 13 January 1922, p. 369).

Thomas Mashiter (1804–96), had been a brewer, probably in Surrey from some time in the 1850s until his death where he and his family had lived in the Manor House at Little Bookham, Surrey, some four miles south of the village of Cobham, where his third son Herbert would reside with his family after he had left the East India Company and settled in England during the 1880s. Thomas moved to Essex in 1862 on the death of Thomas Mashiter (1779-1862) having inherited Hornchurch Lodge, a sixteenth-century building on Church Hill, Hornchurch, just over two miles south-east of Romford, where, according to Whitwood, Thomas Mashiter (1779-1862) and his family had lived between c.1820 and Thomas’s death. Once in Essex, Thomas Mashiter (1804–96) became prominent in the county’s agricultural affairs for many years and was an active member of the Essex Agricultural Society. A part of Thomas Mashiter (1804–96)’s move to Essex was that he became involved in the running of the Ind Coope & Co. Brewery in South Street, Romford, Essex. The Ind Coope brewery had developed out of the Star Inn, South Street, Romford, which had been founded by George Cardon in 1708 and was equipped with its own micro-brewery.

At some point, Thomas Mashiter (1804–96) served as a member of the new company’s Board of Directors, and when Ind Coope & Co. became a Limited Liability Company on 13 November 1886, his son Edward Thomas (1842–1921) became one its first Directors and, eventually, the Chairman of its Board of Directors.

The retail goldsmiths and jewellers Green & Ward opened business at 1 Ludgate St. in 1789 and continued with minor name changes at 20 Cockspur St., Pall Mall, until 1848. Among many important items they sold were the silver-gilt Wellington Shield designed by Thomas Stothart in 1816 and a pair of candelabra of 1822 from the workshop of Benjamin Smith, preserved in the Wellington Museum at Apsley House (John Culme, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Vol. 1, pp.194-5).