The father, Richard Reynolds, as will be seen from our sketch, managed to
realize immense wealth at Ketley, and, what is more, to remain superior
to the influence wealth too often has upon its possessor. The finer
feelings of the man never succumbed to the vulgar circumstances of his
position, but maintained their freshness, and graduated to maturity by
the mastering force of a resolute will and a well-disciplined and highly
enlightened mind. Never so completely absorbed in the arts and
intricacies of money-making as to lose sight of higher and worthier aims,
he sought an opportunity earlier than men in his circumstances usually do
of enjoying the well-earned fruits of an active life; of indulging in
that repose and retirement congenial to minds similarly constituted to
his own. Accordingly, his shares in the works were turned over to his
two sons, William and Joseph. William was the more distinguished of the
two in carrying out improvements connected with the works. Like his
father, he possessed an active mind, an elevated taste, and a desire for
knowledge; to which were added a mechanical genius, and an aptitude for
turning to account resources within his reach. He saw the necessity of
uniting science with practice in developing the rich resources of the
district; and that knowledge and discovery must keep pace with aptitude
in their use.
“An equal appreciation of all parts of knowledge,” it was remarked by
Humboldt, “is an especial requirement of an epoch in which the
material wealth and the increasing prosperity of nations are in a
great measure based on a more enlightened employment of natural
products and forces. The most superficial glance at the present
condition of European states shows that those which linger in the
race cannot hope to escape the partial diminution, and perhaps the
final annihilation, of their resources. It is with nations as with
nature, which, according to a happy expression of Goethe, knows no
pause in ever-increasing movement, development, and production—a
curse, still cleaving to a standstill. Nothing but serious
occupation with chemistry and physical and natural science can defend
a state from the consequences of competition. Man can produce no
effect upon nature, or appropriate her powers, unless he is
conversant with her laws, and with their relations to material
objects according to measures and numbers. And in this lies the
power of popular intelligence, which rises or falls as it encourages
or neglects this study. Science and information are the joy and
justification of mankind. They form the spring of a nation’s wealth,
being often indeed substitutes for those material riches which nature
has in many cases distributed with so partial a hand. Those nations
which remain behind in manufacturing activity, by neglecting the
practical application of the mechanical arts, and of industrial
chemistry, to the transmission, growth, or manufacture of raw
materials—those nations amongst whom respect for such activity does
not pervade all classes—must inevitably fall from prosperity they
have attained; and this so much the more certainly and speedily as
neighbouring states, instinct with the power of renovation, in which
science and the arts of industry operate or lend each other mutual
assistance, are seen pressing forward in the race.”
Upon this principle Mr. Reynolds placed himself under the teaching of Dr.
Black, the discoverer of latent heat, a gentleman who by his eminent
ability and teaching did so much to inspire a love for the science in
England during the latter part of the last century. He was thus enabled
to bring the knowledge he possessed of elementary substances and of their
peculiar qualities, gained in the laboratory, to bear upon the
manufacture of iron in the furnace and the forge, and to anticipate some
of the discoveries of later times.
Steel and iron have long been manufactured at Ulverstone, and the quality
or fitness of the ore for the purpose is attributed to the presence of
manganese in the ore, which since the establishment of railways has come
into general use. In Mr. Reynolds’s time we imported large quantities of
iron and steel; and ignorant of what constituted the difference between
our own and that of foreign markets, had with some humiliation to confess
our dependence. In no case had a uniform quality of bar-iron with the
superior marks of Sweden and Russia been produced. A great variety of
processes had been tried, and makers were not wanting who made laudable
efforts for the accomplishment of the object, feeling that in so doing
they devoted their time to the service of their country, and that in a
national as well as a commercial point of view no experiments were
fraught with more important consequences.
Mr. Reynolds thought he saw the solution of the problem how to produce
metal equal to that made from the magnetic and richer ores of the Swedish
and Siberian mines, when Bergman published his analysis of Swedish iron,
showing the large percentage of manganese it contained. The analysis
showed the following results:
CAST IRON.
Parts.
Plumbago 2.20
Manganese 15.25
Silicious Earth 2.25
Iron 80.30
100
STEEL.
Plumbago .50
Manganese 15.25
Silicious Earth .60
Iron 83.65
100
BAR-IRON.
Plumbago .50
Manganese 15.25
Silicious Earth 1.75
Iron 84.78
100
In order to effect a combination corresponding with this analysis of the
French chemist he introduced manganese into the refinery during the
re-smelting process, and succeeded in producing bar-iron capable of
conversion into steel of better quality than had previously been made
from coke-iron. From subsequent experiments the per-centage introduced
of metallic manganese could be traced into bar-iron, the inference being
that the purpose served was the additional supply of oxygen it gave to
burn out the impurities—a result the Bessemer process has since attained
in another way. When it is remembered that the end to be attained in
these processes is to consume the impurities of the metal, and that those
impurities are of such a nature as to unite with oxygen at a high
temperature and form separate compounds, also that this boiling and
bubbling up of the liquid metal was carefully watched and tended
formerly, one can understand how near the iron-kings of a past age were
to the Bessemer discovery of the present.
“The old men,” as they are frequently called in the works, appear to have
had an inkling of the real nature of the process: The rising impurities
and combination of opposite gases indicated by bubbles were called the
“Soldier’s coming.” At any rate the Bessemer invention is an adaptation
of a principle acted upon during the past century in the Shropshire
ironworks. Mr. Reynolds’s patent was obtained December 6, 1799, and was
stated to be for “preparing iron for the conversion thereof into steel.”
In his specification he described his invention to consist in the
employment of oxide of manganese in the conversion of pig-iron into
malleable iron or steel, but did not enter into details as to the method
he employed for carrying his invention into effect.
John Wilkinson obtained a patent January 23, 1801, for making “Pig or
cast metal from ore, which when manufactured into bar-iron will be found
equal in quality to any that is imported from Russia or Sweden.” The
patentee states his invention to consist “in making use of manganese, or
ores containing manganese, in addition to ironstone and other materials
used in making iron, and in certain proportions, to be varied by the
nature of such ironstone and other materials.”
Mr. Reynolds was not only a chemist, but a geologist. He succeeded in
forming a collection of carboniferous fossils to which modern professors
acknowledge their obligations, and which, with the additions made by Mr.
William Anstice, Dean Buckland pronounced one of the finest in Europe.
Other manufacturers, every day dealing with subterranean treasures that
give iron in abundance, were as dwellers amid the ruins of some ancient
city, taking down structures of the builders of which and of the history
of which they were ignorant. With him minerals had an interest beyond
their market value. Coal and ore from the dusky mine, raised at so much
per ton, were not minerals merely, but materials prepared to his hand by
Nature. He detected traces of that venerable dame’s cast-off garments in
one; the others were fabrics, the result of processes as varied as his
own, the produce of machinery more wonderful and powerful than that he
was about to employ in converting them to the general uses and purposes
of mankind. His pit-shafts to him were mere inlets to the deep
storehouse of the globe where Providence had treasured means whereby to
enrich future inhabitants of the surface. Geology as a science, ’tis
true, was but beginning to shed its light on the cosmogony of the world;
endeavours to make out a connected history of the earth from examinations
of the structure itself were deemed strange; and the more intelligent of
his contemporaries, who without hesitation adopted speculations daring
and beyond the province of human intellect, looked coldly upon his
labours. The old workmen to whom he offered premiums for the best
specimens could not for the life of them make out the meaning of his
morning visits to the mines, his constant inquiries respecting fossils,
his frequent hammering at ironstone nodules, his looking inside them and
loading his pockets with them—seeing that he did not confine attention to
those that seemed likely to make good iron. Some considered it to be one
of the good old Quaker’s eccentricities, and did not forget when he
turned his back to point to their heads, intimating that “all was not
right in his upper garrets.” Others, knowing that he sometimes used the
blow-pipe and tried experiments in his laboratory, believed his aim to be
to extract “goold,” as they said, from the stone—a supposition to which
the presence of iron pyrites gave some degree of colouring. One fine
morning, in particular, as flitting gleams of sunshine came down to
brighten young green patches of copse and meadow, telling of returning
spring, a group of his men were seated with bottle and tot, drinking the
cuckoo’s foot-ale, when, “Here comes Measter William, here comes Old
Broadbrim,” it was said, “with his pecker in his pocket, fatch the
curiosities from the crit.” Mr. Reynolds was not very well pleased, for
large orders were in the books unexecuted, and coal and ore could not be
got fast enough. Every engine had its steam up; but not a beam-head or
pulley creaked or stirred. One or two bands of workmen had gone down,
but had come up again. The cuckoo’s voice that morning for the first
time had been heard, and it was more potent than the master’s; for it was
the custom, and had been from time immemorial, to drink his foot-ale, and
to drink it out of doors; and the man was fined, who proposed to deviate
from custom by drinking it in-doors. On May Day too it was the custom,
as it now is, to gather boughs or sprigs of the birch, with its young and
graceful fronds, and mount them on the engines, the pit heads, and
cabins, and on the heads of horses, to proclaim the fact that we had
entered upon the merry, merry month of May.
Mr. Reynolds was generally pleased with meeting his men, and would
readily enter into their whims, and turn such interviews to account. By
such means he often obtained from them a knowledge of their wants, and
received hints and suggestions that aided him in carrying out
improvements in the works. The same disruption of social ties did not
then exist as now; that mutual relation that beautified the olden time,
and gave men and master an interest in each others welfare existed. A
master, then, was more like the chief of a tribe, the father of a family;
he had generally sprung from the ranks, he felt himself to be of the same
flesh and blood, removed only a little by circumstances, and bound by a
community of interest. Money-making had not then been reduced to a
science, nor men to machines. With some degree of pride the men laid
their stony treasures at the master’s feet. There were amongst them what
the colliers call millers’ thumbs, horses’ hoofs, snails’ houses,
“shining scales,” “crucked screws,” “things-like-leaves, and rotten
wood.” “You should have heard,” said an old sage, “Mr. Reynolds give a
description of them, and have seen the effect upon his audience. If I
remember rightly, millers’ thumbs were orthoceratites, shells—as the name
implies—like horns, but not pointed, and having several air-chambers.
Horses’ hoofs, were portions of others, coiled, and spiral—that could
float on the water, sink to the bottom, or rise to the surface, by a
peculiar mechanical apparatus—like the forcing pump of a steam engine.
The shining scales, were scales of fish coated with armour, hard as
flint, and furnished with carvers to cut up the smaller fry on which they
fed.” He showed that the nodules of ironstone contained exact
impressions of leaves and fruits that grew beneath the golden beams of a
tropical sun; that the bits called rotten wood were really wood, showing
the beautiful anatomy of the tree, that it had been water-worn by being
carried down the dancing stream into the soft and yielding mud in which
it ultimately sank and was preserved. Coal, he explained, was nothing
more than the vegetation of former periods, which accumulated where it
grew, or was swept down by rains or streams into beds where it was
hermetically sealed, fermented, and converted into mineral fuel for
future use. “Lord, sir,” said our informant, “you should have seen how
they all stared. Flukey F’lyd, one of the butties of Whimsey pit, said
he little thought they were working in the gutters, or grubbing in the
mud-banks of slimy lakes of a former world; he had seen stems of trees
and trunks in the roof, but he thought they had got there at the Flood,
and turned to stone. Gambler Baugh, of the Sulphur pit, said he thought
the coal had been put there at the creation, and was intended to be used
to burn up the world at the last day; and that he sometimes considered it
a wrong thing to get it, believing they ought to use wood, and concluded
by inviting the Governor to ‘wet,’ as he said, ‘the other eye, by taking
another tot.’ The company drank his health, his long life and happiness,
and exclaimed—’who’d have thought it.’” “Aye, who would have thought
it,” continued Mr. Reynolds, warming with his subject, “when the first
iron mine was tapped that in the slime and mud of those early times, now
hardened into stone lay coiled up a thousand conveniences of mankind;
that in that ore lay concealed the steam-engines, the tramways, the
popular and universal metal that in peace and war should keep pace with
and contribute to the highest triumphs of the world.” Upon such
occasions questions of improvement, invention, adaptation, &c., &c.,
would often be freely discussed, and we have it upon the authority of
some of the old workmen that many of the achievements in engineering we
applaud in the present day, were the result of such suggestions in part.
Nothing, in fact, was known about iron ore, iron making and machinery,
but what he knew or else took steps to acquaint himself with, if he had
the opportunity. We have a number of large foolscap MS. volumes of
experiments and extracts neatly copied, with pen and ink drawings of
machines, parts of machines, &c.; shewing that whilst Smeaton and Watt
were engaged in perfecting the construction of the steam engine, Mr.
Reynolds was endeavouring to apply it to purposes similar to those to
which it is now applied as a locomotive. Thus he constructed a
locomotive with a waggon attached, the cylinder and boiler of which are
still preserved. An accident, we believe a fatal one, which happened to
one of the men upon starting the engine led Mr. Reynolds to abandon the
machine; but he by no means lost faith in the invention. On the
contrary, he was wont to say to his nephew, the late William Anstice,
father of the present Mr. Reynolds Anstice, “I may never live to see the
time, but thee may, William, when towns will be lighted by gas instead of
oil and candles, when vessels will be driven without sails, and when
carriages will travel without horses.”
This was before Trevithic invented a machine which travelled at a slow
rate with heavy loads on a railway at Merthyr. It was prior to 1787,
when Symington exhibited his model steam carriage in Edinburgh, and to
the time when Darwin, (1793), with equal poetry and prophecy, wrote—
“Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.”
Mr. Reynolds indeed contemplated, it is believed, a subterranean tram
road from the banks of the Severn right up into the heart of the iron
districts of Ketley and Donnington Wood, upon which his engine was to
travel, but the prejudice against the scheme was so great, and the jury
empanelled to inquire into the nature of the accident inflicted such an
enormous fine to be enforced every time the engine was used, that it was
abandoned. There are also a pair of partially rotatory brass cylinders
in existence which Mr. Reynolds intended as models for a boat on the
Severn. This was before Shropshire generally, and the iron districts
more particularly, had begun to participate in the advantages of
still-water communication. With the superior advantages of railways, it
is difficult to appreciate the full benefit of such communication for
manufacturing and agricultural purposes at that time in inland counties
like our own. Mr. Reynolds however, with full faith in the future
development of the powers of steam by means of improved machinery, took
great pains to extend and perfect canal navigation, and his name is
associated with every important work of improvement in the district
during the latter end of the last and the beginning of the present
centuries, and especially with a very ingenious contrivance by means of
which the inequalities of surface were overcome, and the old-fashioned
locks were dispensed with.
Mr. Reynolds commenced his canal for the conveyance of minerals from
Oakengates and Ketley in 1788; and shortly after its completion an Act of
Parliament was obtained for one from Donnington Wood which, forming a
junction therewith, was to proceed along the high ground above
Coalbrookdale, on one hand, and Madeley and Coalport on the other. The
difference of level was 73 feet in one case and 207 feet in the other.
Telford, speaking of the difficulties to be encountered from the nature
of the country, says:
“The inequality of the ground and the want of sufficient water seemed
insuperable, and might probably have been so for ages to come had not
Mr. William Reynolds, of Ketley, whose character is too well known to
need any eulogium, discovered the means of overcoming them. Having
occasion to improve the method of conveying ironstone and coals from
the neighbourhood of Oakengates to the ironworks at Ketley, these
materials lying generally about the distance of a mile and a half
from the ironworks, and 73 feet above their level, he made a
navigable canal, and instead of descending in the usual way by locks,
contrived to bring the canal forward to an abrupt part of the bank,
the skirts of which terminated on a level with the ironworks. At the
top of this bank he built a small lock, and from the bottom of the
lock, and down the face of the bank, he constructed an _inclined
plane_, with a double iron railway. He then erected an upright frame
of timber, in which was fixed a large wooden barrel. Round the
latter a rope was passed that led to a moveable frame, the frame
being of a sufficient size to receive a canal boat, resting and
preserved in nearly a horizontal position, by having two large wheels
before and two small ones behind—varying as much in the diameters as
the inclined plane varied from a horizontal plane. This frame being
placed in the lock, the loaded boat was brought to rest upon it. The
lock gates were shut, the water was drawn from the lock into a
side-pond, the boat settled upon a horizontal wooden frame, and—as
the bottom of the lock was formed with nearly the same declivity as
the inclined plane—upon the lower gates being opened, the frame with
the boat passed down the iron railway into the lower canal, which had
been formed on a level with the Ketley ironworks, being a fall of 73
feet. A double railway having been laid upon the inclined plane, the
loaded boat in passing down brought up another boat containing a load
nearly equal to one-third part of that which passed down. The
velocity of the boats was regulated by a break acting upon a large
wheel, placed upon the axis on which the ropes connected with the
carriages were coiled.”
This contrivance has been in use up to the present time. During Mr.
Reynolds’s life a representation of it figured upon copper tokens, one of
the first iron bridge being upon the opposite or obverse side.
Another of these contrivances is still in use near the Hay, in the parish
of Madeley, called the Coalport Incline. This is 207 feet in length, and
the gradient is much greater, being about one in three. So great indeed
that on the chain snapping we have known a canal boat with five tons of
iron pigs on board gain such velocity that on coming in contact with the
water in the lower canal it has broken away from the iron chains which
held it to the carriage, bounded into the air, clearing two other boats
moored on the side, together with the embankment, and alighted in the
Severn, close to the ferry-boat, into which it pitched some of the
iron-pigs it contained. At the foot of this incline Mr. Reynolds drove a
level to the shaft of the Blissers Hill pits, to bring down the coals to
the lower canal for loading into barges on the Severn. This was the
famous Tar Tunnel from which petroleum was formerly exported in large
quantities to all parts of Europe.
William Reynolds removed from Ketley to a large house formerly occupied
by Lord Dundonald, at the Tuckies, where he continued to superintend the
ironworks he had leased at Madeley Wood, familiarly known as Bedlam
Furnaces, and was succeeded by his brother, Mr. Joseph Reynolds, who
continued to carry on the Ketley Works till the recurrence of one of
those fearful revulsions that have marked the history of the trade. For
a quarter of a century we had been carrying on wars, levying troops, and
interfering with everybody’s business but that which properly belonged to
ourselves. We had obtained our object of ambition by bribery, strategy,
and force of arms combined. We had restored the ancient families of
France, reduced that country to its ancient limits, and annihilated its
commerce. With glorious victory came fearful collapse, and the country
awoke to find that a fallacy which it had been taught to regard as
truth—that war brings commercial advantages that compensate for fearful
waste and lavish expenditure. To add to the calamity, a succession of
bad harvests was experienced, and the reduction of the army served to
swell the poor’s-rates upon which working men and their families had been
thrown for a bare support. Iron from £18 had gone down to £7 per ton,
carriage paid from Ketley to Stourport. Mr. Reynolds believed the trade
would never again rally, and resolved to blow out the furnaces at Ketley.
This was in 1817. In 1818, at an immense sacrifice of property,
consisting of the usual apparatus for making and manufacturing iron, he
sold off at an immense loss, and removed to Bristol. Language cannot
paint the deep distress which accompanied and followed this step. Men,
with wives and families dependent upon them, saw their only ground of
hope taken from them. Starving by thousands, and yoked like horses, they
might be seen drawing materials for the repair of the roads, or conveying
coal into Staffordshire. One third of the Shropshire banks failed.
Disturbances were frequent; mobs of men collected in bodies and went
about taking food where they could find it, and the militia had often to
be called out to quell disturbances. Not only ironmasters, but
manufacturers generally were reduced to despair. The parish authorities
of Wellington advertised in the public journals for persons to come
forward and take the Ketley works; and a company, consisting of the
Messrs. Montford, Shakeshaft, Ogle, Williams, Hombersley, and others, was
formed.
From what we have written, it will be seen that Mr. William Reynolds was
on familiar terms with his men. In severe weather and distressed times,
he made soup to give away three times a week, and he generally kept
“open-house” for his workmen and friends; of the latter he had a large
circle. He did not like idleness or indiscriminate almsgiving. A number
of men thrown out of employ came to him in a body for relief during a
deep snow. He set them to clear an entire field, and to make him a
snow-stack; which they did of large proportions, receiving daily wages
for the same. He allowed a house and garden rent-free to “Sniggy Oakes,”
as he was called—heaven knows what his right name was, for in that day it
was seldom known in the mining districts—on condition that the said
Sniggy ferry’d him and his family across the river when they required it.
One evening Sniggy, knowing he was out on the other side, went to bed
instead of sitting up, which he found a deal more comfortable on a cold
wet night, and Mr. Reynolds, after calling him first one name and then
another, ringing the changes upon every alias, and changing it for “boat!
boat!” “ferry! ferry!” had to go round by the bridge. Coming opposite
the cottage where Sniggy was snug in bed, he smashed every window,
shouting “boat” at every blow of his huge stick. Sniggy roared with
fright, and promised better things another time. “On another occasion,”
says our informant, “while having a balcony put up in front of the
Tuckies, he gave strict injunctions that the martins’ nests should not by
any means be disturbed, threatening to shoot the man who violated his
instruction. They all obeyed him but one man, and he—.” “What, you
don’t mean to say he was going to carry out his threat?” said we. “But
he was,” it was replied, “and did.” “What shoot him?” “Yes; shot him,
sir—shot him with a pop-gun!” Being a Quaker, many anecdotes are told of
him not paying church-rates, and what are called Easter offerings,
showing a rich vein of genuine humour running through a warm and generous
nature. Old people too tell with much glee of a grand illumination they
remember to celebrate one of those interludes of war, termed “a peace
rejoicing,” when the bridge across the river, and a large revolving
wheel, were lighted up with lamps, and the manufactory, in which—together
with Messrs. Horton and Rose—he was a shareholder, was illuminated.
“He is a wise son who knows his own father,” it is said, but it is
sometimes more difficult to trace the paternity of an anecdote, and we
tell the following as it was told to us.
“Mr. Reynolds was kind and generous to a fault, but he did not like
to be tricked. Returning late from a party on horseback, he was
requested to pay again at a turnpike gate. Old Roberts, who having
been in the army, looked with contempt upon all but a red uniform,
and hated Quakers’ plain suits in particular, the more so as the
wearers were known to be averse to war, now found himself, as he
imagined, in a position to ‘take the small change,’ out of the
Quaker. Mr. Reynolds disputed the charge, knowing from the time he
left his friend’s house that he must be in the right; but, as the
other insisted upon being paid, he paid him. When the latter had
opened the gate, Mr. Reynolds remarked, ‘Well, friend, having paid, I
suppose I am at liberty to pass through as often as I like?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the old robber—as the juveniles would persist
in calling the old man, adding an additional ‘b’ to his name, and
clipping it of the two terminating letters. Mr. Reynolds had not
travelled far on the home-side of the gate—sufficiently far however
to allow the other to get into bed, before he returned, and called up
the gatekeeper; having occasion, as he said, to go back. By the time
he had again got into bed back came his tormentor at an easy jog-trot
pace; and as he again passed through the gate he begged to be
accommodated with a light. ‘Thou art sure it is past twelve o’clock,
friend?’ said Mr. Reynolds. ‘Quite sure,’ said the other, adding ‘I
thought I had done with you for to-night.’ ‘Thou art mistaken,’ said
Mr. Reynolds, ‘it is a fine night, and I intend to make the most of
it.’ In about ten minutes time the hated sound of ‘Gate, gate,’
brought old Roberts to his post, muttering curses between his teeth.
‘Thou art quite sure it is past twelve, art thou?’ was the question
asked, and asked again, till at last the gatekeeper begged of his
tormentor to take back the toll. ‘It cured him, though,’ said our
informant, ‘and made him civil; but they called him ‘Past Twelve’ for
the rest of his days.’”
When Mr. Reynolds removed from Ketley to Madeley Wood, he also removed
from the former to the latter place some very primitive steam engines,
from the fact that they were constructed by a man named Adam Hyslop, and
differed from the ordinary condensing engines of Boulton and Watt in
having a cylinder at each end of the beam: one a steam cylinder and
condensing box; the other a condensing cylinder only, into which the
steam, having done duty in the steam cylinder is conveyed. They were
invented prior to Boulton and Watt’s final improvements. Three of these
singular looking engines are still used in the field, and work most
economically, with five pounds of steam to the square inch.
Of the early history of the Madeley Wood Works, we have been able to
glean little satisfactory, beyond the fact that Richard Reynolds, who
bought the manor in 1781 or 1782, granted a lease in June 1794 of the
Bedlam or Madeley Wood furnaces to his son William, and Richard Rathbone,
who very shortly after gave up his interest to William Reynolds, who
afterwards carried them on himself. The site was a good one at that
time, being at the base of the outcrop of the lowest seams of coal and
ironstone, which could thus be obtained by levels driven into the hills,
or by shallow shafts, from either of which they were let down inclined
planes to the furnaces, close by which flowed the Severn, to take away
either coal or iron.
It was on the side of this hill on which the Madeley Wood works were
situated, at a place called the Brockholes (_broc_, or badger-holes),
that in 1332 Walter de Caldbrook obtained a license from the prior of
Wenlock to dig for coal. Speaking of coal found in this or similar
situations in Shropshire, we find, too, that quaint old writer, Thomas
Fuller, two centuries ago, as quoted by W. O. Foster Esq., at the meeting
of the Iron and Steel Institute at Coalbrookdale, in 1871, giving his
opinion thus:—
“One may see a three-fold difference in our English coal—(1) the sea
coal brought from Newcastle; (2) the land coal at Mendip, Bedworth,
&c., and carried into other counties; (3) what one may call river and
fresh water coal, digged out in this county at such a distance from
Severn that they are easily ported by boat into other shires. Oh, if
this coal could be so charmed as to make iron melt out of the stone,
as it maketh it in smiths’ forges to be wrought in the bars. But
Rome was not built all in one day; and a new world of experiments is
left to the discovery of posterity.”
It seems probable, therefore, that for five hundred years coal has been
gotten out of the sides of these hills at Madeley Wood, either for use in
local forges or for export by the river Severn, or both; and the more so
that old levels are numerous along their side where coal crops out, and
that wooden shovels, wooden rails, and other primitive implements have
been found in them.
Some of the shafts sunk by Mr. Reynolds came down upon old workings for
smiths, or furnace coal, as at the Lodge Pit, as shown by the section.
This shaft, after passing through five yards of sand, six of brick and
tile clays, thirteen of rough rock, and thirteen of other measures, came
upon the Penneystone, the Sulphur coal, the Vigor coal, the Two-foot
coal, the Ganey coal, the Best coal, and the Middle coal, which, like the
Penney measure, were all entire; but instead of the Clod coal they found
Clod-coal gob (the refuse thrown into the space from which the coal had
been removed).
William Reynolds, the proprietor of these works, died at the Tuckies
House, in 1803, and was followed to his grave in the burial-ground
adjoining the Quaker’s chapel, in the Dale, by a very large concourse of
friends and old neighbours. His son, Joseph Reynolds, and Mr. William
Anstice succeeded to the works, the latter being the managing partner;
and in consequence of the mines being exhausted on the Madeley Wood side
of the field, new shafts were sunk to the east, the first of importance
being the Hill’s Lane pits. The Halesfield, and then the Kemberton,
followed; and the mines having been thus proved on that side, the idea
first suggested by William Reynolds, of removing the works to that side,
was acted upon by Mr. William Anstice, who built his first furnace at
Blisser’s Hill in 1832. A second was built in 1840, and a third in 1844.
Of these and other works we propose to speak in connection with events of
a later period.
EVENTS RELATING TO THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF MADELEY, FROM THE
13TH TO THE 19TH CENTURIES, NOT PREVIOUSLY NOTICED.
We have no means at command for giving anything like such a consecutive
account of Madeley as would show its growth and progress from the feudal
times, when first noticed in the Domesday Survey, to the present time;
and the facts that we have to offer on this head must necessarily appear
disjointed and isolated.
The next notice we find succeeding that in Domesday is one in 1291, when
it was taxed to the _Ninth_, twelve merks, but whether of gold or silver
we cannot say, probably the latter, as one merk of gold was equal to five
of silver—to £3 16s. 8d.
Land was being gradually won from the forests, but it was as yet of small
value. Thus we read, under date of March 28th, 1322, of a man named
Bercar and his wife, who, for the payment (or fine) of three shillings,
bought small parcels of _new_ land in the fields of Madeley and of
Caldbrook (Coalbrookdale), of William, the bailiff, to hold for their
lives.
In the year 1341 the parish was assessed at £2 16s. 0d., but the reason
assigned for the low assessment was that there had been great storms,
want of sheep-stock, and a surrender of the land held by tenants. In
1379 a valuation of the manor is thus mentioned:—“Capital messuage,
nothing (this would be the Court, or manor-house); water-mill (the old
manor or Court mill), ten shillings; fisheries of two vivaries, three
shillings; three caracutes of land (or as much as three teams of oxen
could plough in the year), as averaging £1 18s.” Three acres of meadow
is set down as worth, when carried, three shillings. The verbiage of the
park was valued at three shillings and fourpence. The assized rents of
free tenements amounted to £6 16s. 2d., and the pleas and perquisites of
the Court (held by the prior at the Court-house) at two shillings. In
1390 the rents of Madeley, including a _ferm_ of coals, and the pleas and
fines of the Court, were said to yield £22 18s. 0d. This _ferm_ of coals
was probably that granted by the prior in 1322 to Walter de Caldbrook for
six shillings.
In the sixteenth century the rental of the manor was returned at £39 18s.
8½d. At the same time—that is in 1534–5—the rectorial tithes are set
down at £2, and the vicar’s income at £5 5s. In 1693 an assessment made
for Madeley, by order of the justices of the peace, James Lewis, balf.,
George Weld, and Thos. Crompton, of 4s. 6d. in the £, from sixty-four
persons, produced £149 1s. 4d. In this assessment the name of Sarah
Wolfe occurs sixth on the list. In 1698 an assessment of 3s. 6d. in the
£, by order of Richard Littlehales, balf., and Ralph Browne, from
fifty-two persons, produced £112 5s. 0d. In this assessment the iron,
coal, and lime works paid £55 14s. 0d. of the above sum. In 1704 an
assessment of 4s. 6d. in the £, from forty-six persons, paid £149 to
which the iron, coal, and lime works contributed £84. The sum paid in on
the 27th of March of the same year for 1697, for window-tax, was £8 14s.;
the tax for births, deaths, &c., for the same year, was £4 18s. 4d., for
1698, £4 1s. 7d., and for the following year, £3 5s. 6d. In the same
year the land-tax produced £27 14s. 6d. In 1670 the window-tax was £8
6s. 0d. In 1671 the land-tax produced £55 0s. 0d. In 1672 the
window-tax was £8 0s. 2d. In 1704 the sum realized for windows had risen
to £10 17s. 6d., and that for births, deaths, and marriages to £5 12s.
0d. In 1676 the land-tax paid £36 19s. 4d., for the first quarter, 24th
July; for the second quarter, 23rd October, the same; and for the third
quarter (paid March 27, 1675), the same; the sum for the fourth quarter
was also the same. In 1675 two sums, £31 9s. 8d., and £63 8s. 6d., were
paid in for land-tax, and £16 2s. 2d. the following March. On the 4th of
May, 1706, “John Boden paid in full of ye last year’s land-tax, £36 17s.
0d.” The fourth quarterly payment of the poll for Madeley, made April
15, 1695, was £14 14s. 6d.
We pass over payments for intervening years, and come to 1709. In July
of that year the first and second quarterly payments of the land-tax were
each £36 19s. 4d.; for the third quarter, £37 8s. 4d., and for the last
quarter, £36 10s. 4d. The first and second quarterly payments in full
amounted to £73 18s. 8d. In 1702 a survey of the lordship of Madeley
showed there were twenty-seven tenants, holding 2073 acres; that the
yearly value was £1021 10s. 0d.; also that there were upon the land 3369
trees, and sixteen loads of wood, the value of which by purchase was set
down at £17,366 9s. 4d. In 1725 a case was prepared by the vicar and
churchwardens, after a vestry-meeting had been held, for the opinion of
counsel on the question of the right of the vicar to receive tithe of
wood cut down by the lay impropriator. The case set forth that “the
vicars of the other twenty-two parishes in the franchise of the priory
enjoyed tithes of wood as small tithes, excepting in a few instances, and
that the vicar of Madeley has from time to time received the tithes of
hay, clover, &c., which are usually esteemed great tithes. But hitherto
no tithes of wood have been paid at Madeley within memory of living
witnesses, except that about thirty years since the late vicar received
one shilling as a composition from the tenant of the impropriator.”
Counsel (Thos. Browne, of the Inner Temple), in reply, says Madeley was
appropriated to the priory of Wenlock at the same time as Stoke St.
Milburgh—22nd March, 1343—and yet the vicar of Stoke receives tithe-wood,
and thinks that the smoke-penny to the vicar is strong evidence in favour
of his being entitled to the tithe of wood so used, because that payment
comes in lieu of such wood; but it must be admitted that the impropriator
is entitled to all the tithes of a vicar, unless such vicar shows usage
or endowment to support the demand as to such great tithe.
The counsel’s opinion seems to have left the question pretty much in the
same state as before, and that the vicar and churchwardens did not
establish their claim is shown by subsequent assessments and by the
report of the Tithe Commissioners (1848), who said all woodlands are by
prescription or other lawful means exempt from tithe.
The appropriation of the rent-charge in lieu of tithes in the parish took
effect in 1847, and it may be interesting to add that after various
meetings and inquiries it was found that by prescription or other lawful
means all the woodlands, containing in estimated statute measure 200
acres, well known by metes and bounds, were absolutely free from tithes;
also all gardens annexed to houses.
It was also found that 267 acres of the Court Farm were covered from
render of small tithes in kind by prescriptive or customary payments in
lieu thereof to the vicar, and 233 acres of the Windmill Farm by payment
of 5s. 3½d.; the Broad Meadow, containing twenty-two acres, by payment of
ninepence; the Hales, seventeen acres, by payment of fivepence; the Bough
Park, twenty acres, and Rushton Farm (Park House), twenty-six acres, by
payment of 10½d.; part of Court Farm (J. and F. Yates, proprietors), and
six other acres, by payment of twopence. The quantity subject to tithes
amounted to 2800 acres, 2000 being arable, and 800 as meadow or pasture.
Finding also that the average value of tithes for the seven years
preceding Christmas, 1835, did not represent the sum which ought to be
the basis for a permanent commutation, the Tithe Commissioner awarded as
follows: to Sir Joseph H. Hawley, impropriator, of Leybourn Grange, Kent,
£115 10s., by way of rent-charge; and £226 to the vicar for the time
being, instead of all the remaining unmerged tithes of hay and small
tithes, arising from the lands of the said parish. The valuation was by
William Wyley, upon wheat, barley, and oats, as under:—
Wheat 7s. 0¼d. 32,427,300.
Barley 3s. 11½d. 57,517,590.
Oats 2s. 9d. 82,787,879.
The great-tithes have since been purchased from Sir Joseph Hawley for
Ironbridge church, now a rectory.