TrinityCollegeChoir

John Fuller

1680-1745. Ironmaster and gun-founder

John Fuller was the eldest son of John Fuller, of Tanners, Waldron, Sussex, and his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of Samuel Fowle of London. He was baptized at Waldron on 28 July 1680. He was admitted as a pensioner to Trinity in 1696, having attended St Paul's School in London.  He won a scholarship in 1699, and graduated BA in 1699/170.

On 20 July 1703 he married Elizabeth Rose, daughter of Fulke Rose, of Jamaica, and his wife, Elizabeth, who later married Hans Sloane. The marriage settlement brought a large fortune from sugar plantations in St Katherine's and St John's parishes in Jamaica, the income from which formed an increasingly significant element in the family's wealth.

In 1705 Fuller took possession of Brightling Park, which he renamed Rose Hill, in honour of his wife. During the ensuing years a substantial amount of property in the Brightling and Burwash areas was purchased. It is likely that he took control of the family's furnace at Heathfield as early as 1703, when the first furnace account book was begun, and thereafter the accounts (at East Sussex Record Office) form a number of series. In 1713 Fuller was elected MP for Sussex, but did not stand for re-election when parliament was dissolved in 1715. In 1716 he purchased Burwash forge from William Western, having worked it since 1700. During the peace of the 1720s and 1730s Fuller kept Heathfield furnace at work supplying Sussex forges with pig iron, returning to large-scale ordnance production at the onset of war in 1739. Fuller favoured a protectionist policy in respect of the importation of iron, seeing the reinvigoration of the English, and not least the wealden, iron industry as a means of providing employment as well as improving the quality of iron produced. In 1734 he unsuccessfully contested one of the Sussex parliamentary seats, espousing the tory anti-excise cause.

Fuller died on 4 August 1745 at Rose Hill, Brightling, and was buried on 10 August at Waldron.  At least three of his seven sons studied at Trinity.  One of his grandsons was the builder of follies, "Mad Jack" Fuller.