William Reynolds having at his death left a share in the Madeley Wood
works to his nephew, William Anstice (father of the present William
Reynolds Anstice) whom he also appointed one of his executors, and by
whom, in partnership with William Reynolds’s surviving son, the late
Joseph Reynolds, the works were carried on until the decease of Mr.
Anstice in the year 1850.
Mr. Anstice was a young man, not more than twenty-one, when he succeeded
to the management of these works, and although he possessed little
practical knowledge gained in connection with this branch of industry, he
possessed a mind well stored with knowledge. He was a fair amateur
chemist of the school of Dr. Black and his contemporaries, under whom Mr.
Reynolds had previously studied, and the friend of the tale Sir Humphrey
Davy, then a young man, with whom he spent some time with Dr. Beddows, at
one time of Shifnal, but then of Bristol, assisting him in a course of
experiments he was conducting on pneumatic chemistry and galvanism. He
was also a fair amateur geologist, and his early studies led him, on
succeeding to the management of the works, to observe, and to apply his
knowledge to account. The old hearths and “bears,” as accumulations in
the blast-furnaces were called, on occasions of renewal, were carefully
scrutinized and searched by him for metallic substances and salts not
usually known to exist in iron-ores; and we remember him giving us some
remarkably fine cubes of titanium, taken from one he had had blown to
pieces. He inherited the very fine collection of fossils Mr. Reynolds
had collected, and added thereto by encouraging his men to bring anything
they found of a rare character in the clay ironstones. Sir R. Murchison,
Mr. Buckland, and Mr. Prestwich occasionally came down to Madeley Wood
Hall to study this collection, and derived much information. Mr.
Buckland pronounced them at that time the finest collection of fossils of
the coal-measures in the kingdom, and nearly the whole of the figures
found in Mr. Prestwich’s paper, prepared with great care and research, on
the coalfield, were from specimens in this collection.
In consequence of the mines being exhausted on the Madeley Wood side of
the field he had new shafts sunk to the east, the first of importance
being the Hills Lane pits. The Halesfield pair of pits followed, and the
mines having been thus proved on that side, the idea first suggested by
William Reynolds, of removing the works to that place, 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.
The offices of the Madeley Wood Works were at the Lloyds, but a
land-slip, or series of slips rather, which have been going on for years,
bringing down rocks and trees from the high ground, have swept away
these, and also some houses and orchards near them. In these offices on
one occasion an explosion took place, occasioned by recklessness on the
part of a youth entrusted with the task of giving out powder for
blasting, candles, &c., for the pits. A lad named Brown had filled a
horn of powder and was crossing the office to go to play at marbles, when
finding the fire did not burn brightly, he stooped to poke out the ashes
with the horn under his arm, and some grains igniting, he was blown a
black and apparently lifeless mass against the door, whilst the windows
went flying as far as the water-engine. Although shorn of his arms above
the elbows, and with only two short stumps remaining, “Stumpy Brown,” as
the boys still call him, managed to learn to write a good clear hand,
became a schoolmaster, a Sunday-school teacher, a preacher, and a capital
wood-turner of bedsteads and children’s dolls, which at the present
moment are in great request in very many towns in the Midland Counties,
where they are well known as “John Brown’s Dolls.” {175}
Upon the death of Mr. Anstice he was succeeded by his son John, who,
having been brought up under his father, in close proximity to the works,
was in every respect well qualified for the task; and to him his partner,
Joseph Reynolds, at his death left his shares of the works, and the
general residue of his property. John Anstice at once generously
transferred to his brother, William Reynolds Anstice, a share in the
Madeley Wood concern, but retained the sole management of the works
during his life. He entered on no great new enterprise beyond sinking a
new pair of pits to the east of the field, an enterprise on which he
several times consulted the writer long before the men had headed to
prove the mines in that direction. He was a man whose amiable qualities
and generous nature won for him general admiration.
As an employer Mr. Anstice was on good terms with his workpeople. He
aimed at being so, and in bad times he kept his men employed whether
others did or not. He had a fellow-feeling with them, and tried to
understand and to be understood by them; he knew them by their names, and
generally had a joke, a kind word, or a cheerful recognition for each.
We believe he spared no expense to secure the safety of life and limb in
his works; and if by some unforeseen circumstances, or some act of
carelessness on their part, accidents did occur, his grief knew no
bounds, and he would often weep like a child with the bereaved. Equally
liberal with his means and time, he was accessible to all those who
sought aid, counsel, or protection; and his good sense and timely aid
availed in lightening many cares, in drying many tears, and in allaying
many sorrows. The county though benefited by his philanthropy, but
daily-occurring acts of kindness and usefulness less widely known taxed
still more his talents and his means. Nor did his acts partake of
ostentation, or seem selfishly aimed to win the tribute of applause. On
the contrary he dedicated his energies less to the service of his peers
than to those in a condition to require them.
Mr. Anstice was seldom free for long periods from that physical suffering
which fills up so large a space in human experience; but he knew how to
enjoy life, and did so more than most men, but he never quailed before
its sternest duties. His sun may be said to have gone down at noon: he
died in the zenith of his fame, and people mourned as for a father or a
friend; for with that great tenderness and Christian generosity which
distinguished him, he made many his debtors. Others at a riper age, not
less laden with the goods of life, whose cup equally overflowed with
prosperity, have lived and passed away, and as the grave closed over them
the little world in which they moved scarcely missed them or thought of
them after the funeral-bell had ceased to toll; but it was felt that such
a man could not pass away without his memory being perpetuated in some
form, and the present handsome building called the Anstice Memorial
Institute was the result of a deep and wide-spreading feeling to do
honour to his name. A brother ironmaster, the present Mr. W. O. Foster,
who presided at the inauguration, said they had erected that building to
one very much respected and beloved amongst them, but who had been
removed from their midst. He would not attempt to pourtray the many
virtues of his character in the presence of his family, nor dwell upon
his many merits. He enjoyed his acquaintance for many years. He must
say to know him was to love him, and whilst his virtue was fresh in their
recollection it was their high privilege to dedicate that building to his
memory, and to hand down to posterity his name in association with it.
The Madeley Wood works are now carried on by William Reynolds Anstice and
two of John Anstice’s sons, Captain John Arthur Anstice, J.P., and Lieut.
Edmund Anstice.
With regard to William Reynolds, previously alluded to, it may be well to
add the following, together with some interesting notes and additions,
kindly supplied by his nephew, William Reynolds Anstice, Esq., the senior
partner in the Madeley Wood Works.
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 Quakers’ chapel, in the Dale, by a very large concourse of
friends and old neighbours, thousands lining the way and following in the
procession.
It may here be mentioned that the first use to which Watt’s fire engine
as it was called, was put at Bedlam, as at Coalbrookdale, Benthall,
Ketley, and many other places, was not to blow the furnaces direct, but
to pump water to drive the water-wheel, which at Bedlam, worked a pair of
leather-bellows, which themselves supplied the blast. The race in which
the old wheel worked is still observable, as also are the arches which
supported the reservoir into which water was pumped from the Severn.
With regard to the prophetic utterances of Mr. Reynolds, already given,
we have received the following from W. Reynolds Anstice, Esq.
“The exact words, as I have often heard them repeated by my father,
were ‘The time will come, &c: when all our principal towns will be
lighted with Coal Gas—all our main roads will be railroads worked by
steam locomotive engines, and all our _coasting_ navigation will be
performed by steam vessels.’ He had no idea, evidently that steam
navigation would extend beyond this, but steam locomotion was an idea
at that time not unfamiliar to engineers. William Murdock, Watt’s
right-hand man, had made a working model of a road-locomotive as
early as 1784. Trevithick had constructed working models much
resembling modern locomotives in construction, in and before the year
1800. In 1802, the Coalbrookdale Company were building for him a
_railway-locomotive_, the engine of which was tried first in pumping
water, and its performance astonished everyone. In a letter of his
to Mr. D. Giddy, dated from Coalbrookdale, 22nd August, 1802, he
says: ‘The Dale Company have begun a carriage at their own cost _for
the railroads_, and are forcing it with all expedition. There was a
beautifully executed wooden model of this locomotive engine in my
Uncle, William Reynolds’ possession, which was given me by his Widow,
the late Mrs. Reynolds, of Severn House, after his death. I was then
a boy, fond of making model engines of my own, and I broke up the
priceless relic to convert it to my own base purposes, an act which I
now repent, as if it had been a _sin_.’
“The Coalbrookdale engine is, I believe, the first locomotive engine
on record, intended to be used _on a railroad_. The boiler of it is
now to be seen in use as a water tank, at the Lloyds’ Crawstone Pit,
and the fire-tube and a few other portions of it are now in the yard
at the Madeley Wood Works. I never heard how it came to be disused
and broken up.”
Shortly before William Reynolds’s decease, he had had a large pleasure
boat built, which was intended to be propelled by steam, and the
cylinders of the engines intended for it, beautifully executed by the
late James Glazebrook of Ironbridge, are now at the Madeley Wood Offices,
but the engines were not finished at his (W. Reynolds’s) death, in 1804,
and I never saw any drawing or model of them. The boat lay within my
recollection, moored in the river Severn, just above Mr. Brodie’s Boring
Mill, at the Calcutts, in a state of much disrepair, and I believe,
ultimately fell to pieces or was carried away by a flood.
William Reynolds had a very complete private Laboratory at his residence,
at Bank House, which was lighted with gas. William Murdock had, however,
as early as 1794, applied gas to the lighting of his own house, in
Cornwall, and in 1798, a portion of the Soho Works were lit with gas of
his making.—In 1803, the whole of the Works were thus lighted, and from
that time its use gradually extended.
Mr. Miller, of Darswinton, had a steam pleasure boat at work in 1788, and
in 1801, the “Charlotte Dundas” steam boat was built at Glasgow by
Symmington, and this is the first authentic case of steam-boat navigation
on record.