Bullen, Henry

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; upholder, cabinet maker and mortgager (fl.1768–d. 1796)

Trading in Butter Mkt, 1784. Advertised sales of furniture and estates in Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, June 1760, 24 June 1769, and 26 May 1770. Listed as an upholder, same paper, 9 October 1784, and named as a member of the Common Council, 10 August 1782. Signed lease for property in Cook Row on 1 July 1789. Took out Sun Insurance policies in 1777 and 1781 for £300 on houses. [GL, Sun MS vol. 261, p. 253; vol. 297, p. 495] Norwich Chronicle, 27 November 1783, announced that ‘at Mr. Henry Bullen's, Upholder’ may be seen a specimen of ‘Cast-Iron Covering for Houses invented by Ransomes and Co., Founders, in Norwich’. Named in the accounts for Ickworth, Suffolk, from April 1778 to April 1779, receiving a total of £22 10s. Messrs. Lanchester & Bullen appraised the stock at Ickworth, charging £21 6s. Bullen is named in the Essex Estate accounts on 4 March 1780, receiving £10 9s.] On 11 May 1791, Henry Bullen presented the Headmaster of King Edward VI School at Bury St Edmunds, Rev. Michael Becher, with a mahogany tambour cylinder writing desk, as an act of gratitude for the education of his son. Letter of thanks, dated 12 May 1791, survives. He died in 1796.

On 18 October 1806 Henry Bullen, perhaps his son, advertised in newspapers that he needed two or three journeymen cabinet makers and was willing to pay the rates agreed in the 1801 Norwich Price Book. See also Thomas, and Thomas George Bullen.

Source: DEFM; Williams, ‘An Introduction to the 1801 Cabinet & Chair Makers' Norwich Book of Prices’, Regional Furniture (2016).