A brief history of lampwork in the British Isles 

As early as around 2300 BC in places like Mesopotamia, beads were being made using a flame or a heat source and melting glass around a mandrel which has had a layer of mud or clay wrapped around it in what is known as 'core forming'.   The core method is still in use today, and is the oldest of the various lampworked glassmaking techniques.  Faience, or fused glass made from melting a paste of silica and quartz was popular with the Egyptians and is the precursor of wound glass beads.  Mosaic beads created by fusing bundles of thinly drawn glass rods appears slightly later, around 1500 BC. 

The Romans refined the method by discovering the concept of using a hollow tube to gather the molten glass from a furnace and blowing it into shapes.  They also developed various means of melting glass in crucibles inside kilns with side openings which made a significant difference in the amount of heat contained in the kiln. 

 At the same time, the Chinese were producing glass beads for export, new research shows that they used lead glass and made beads for export by the traditional method of glass melted and  wound around mandrels at least as early as 900AD and it is believed the practice existed in China significantly earlier than that.  The famous 'Warring States' beads are dated from around 400-200BC and are a style of dotted beads still popular today.

The history of beadmaking in the British Isles is undergoing a revision as more sophisticated methods of dating and examination of chemical composition are developed.  Once it was thought all the faience beads found in British burials were imports but now it is being shown that there was a thriving beadmaking industry here as early as 1900 BC which is only several hundred years later than the finds in places like Mesopotamia.   More interesting reading on the topic can be found in the links below. 

Viking bead manufacture was known in the British Isles, excavations at York and elsewhere show both the Vikings and the Angles re-cycling Roman glass and using it to make beads.  Anglo-Saxon beadmaking seems to be the latest active beadmaking industry in the British Isles until the resurgence of lampworking as a Victorian hobby.

An excellent history of lampwork;  http://beadbugle.com/html/history_of_flameworking.html

An article on British beadmaking and faience:  http://www.britarch.ac.uk/BA/ba70/feat3.shtml