As an important part of the parish of Madeley, still more as a locality
famous on account of its fine castings and other productions,
Coalbrookdale is deserving of a much further notice than has incidentally
been given on previous pages in speaking of the Darbys and Reynoldses.
There are few people perhaps in the kingdom who have not heard or who do
not know something of Coalbrookdale; and there are none, probably, who
pass through it by rail who do not peer through the windows of the
carriage to catch a passing glimpse of its more prominent features.
These may be readily grouped, for the benefit of those who have not seen
them, but who may read this book, as follows. In the trough of the
valley lie the works, stretching along in the direction of the stream,
formerly of more importance to the operations carried on in the various
workshops than it is at present. Upon the slope of the hill on the
south-eastern side the Church, the palatial looking Literary and
Scientific Institute, built for the benefit of the workmen, meet the eye,
and the more humble looking Methodist chapel. On both sides are goodly
looking houses and villa-like residences, where dwell the men of
directing minds; whilst here and there are thin sprinklings of workmen’s
cottages—few in number compared with the hands employed. A few strips of
grass land intervene, whilst above are wooded ridges with pleasant walks,
and to the west some curiously rounded knolls, between which the
Wellington and Craven Arms branch railway runs, sending down a siding for
the accommodation of the works.
These are the chief features which strike the eye, and which would come
out into prominence in photographic views taken to shew what
Coalbrookdale now is. The buildings are comparatively of modern
construction, but quaint half-timbered houses, rejoicing in the whitewash
livery of former times, suggest a phase of Coalbrookdale history much
anterior to that other buildings indicate. It is not difficult indeed to
depict the earlier stages of the progress the little valley has passed
through from its first primitive aspect to the present; there are, for
instance, in some of its many windings green nooks and pleasant corners
where nature yet reigns, and where lovers of a quiet ramble may feast
their eyes and indulge their imaginations, undisturbed by the hammering,
and whirl of wheels, lower down. Such a spot is that to which the
visitor is led by following the stream above the pool, crossed by a
footbridge. To the left of the path is Dale House, Sunnyside, the
Friends Meeting House, and the road to Little Wenlock. Little is seen of
the brook on the right of the path, but its presence on the margin of the
slope is made known beneath over-hanging bushes by prattlings over
stones, and a waterfall from some ledges of rock. Following it higher up
it is found to be partially fed by droppings from rocks dyed by mineral
colours of varying hue, and to present curious petrifactions, rarely
permitted however to attain any great proportions. The place is
variously called _La Mole_ and Lum Hole, and speculations have been
indulged in as to each derivation. The former would, of course, suggest
a French origin. Lum is Welsh, and signifies a point, as in Pumlummon,
now ordinarily called Plinlimmon, or the hill with five points. It is
quite certain that the valley here terminates in a point, but whether
this has anything to do with it or not we cannot say. All we say of it
is that it is a quiet little sylvan retreat, with wooded heights, green
slopes, and precipitous yellow rocks, at the foot of which the stream is
treasured up and forms a glassy lakelet. But this stream, in which six
centuries since “Lovekin” the fisherman set his baited lines, long ago
was made to do other service than that of soothing the listening ear, or
paying tribute of its trout to the abbot of Wenlock. The choice of the
situation for manufacturing operations was no doubt due to woods like
these, which supplied the needed fuel; but much more to the motive power
furnished by the stream, for turning the great wheels required to produce
the blast, and work the ponderous hammers which shaped the metal.
Brave and strong as these Dale men were, their muscles were too weak for
the work demanded. As Vulcan found he needed stronger journeymen than
those of flesh and blood to forge the thunderbolts of Jove, so an
imperative necessity, a growing demand, led men here to seek a more
compelling force to blow their leathern bellows, to lift their huge forge
hammers, than animal force could supply. Woods were no longer estimated
by _pannage_ yielded for swine, but by the fuel supplied for reducing the
stubborn ore to pigs of another kind. Brooks were pounded up, streams
were turned back upon themselves, and their treasured waters husbanded as
a capital of force to be disposed of as occasion required. Dryads now
fled the woods and Naiads the streams,—as beams and shafts and cranks
were reared or creaked beneath the labours they performed.
The presence of coal and iron ore could not have been inducements for the
first ironworkers to settle here; neither tradition nor facts warrant the
supposition that either were ever found in the valley. The first
syllable of the name is deceptive, and the probability is that it was
neither _Coal_ nor _Cole_-brook originally, although coal appears to have
been brought here for use more than five centuries ago from places just
outside. Wood fuel seems to have been growing scarce as far back as the
first quarter of the fourteenth century, judging from an application on
the part of a Walter de Caldbrook to the Prior of Wenlock, to whom the
manor belonged, for a license to have a man to dig coals in “Le
Brockholes” for one year. It is not unlikely that this Walter de
Caldbrook had a forge or smithy in the Dale; a situation chosen on
account of the stream, which served to furnish him with motive power for
his machinery. This seems all the more probable from the fact that
distinct mention of such smithy is made in Henry the Eighth’s time, and
that it is called “Smithy Place,” and “Caldbrooke Smithy,” {277} in the
deed or grant by which the manor was conveyed by the King to Robert
Brook, signed at Westminster and dated July 23, 1544. (See page 59).
The fact too that this smithy was still called Caldbrook Smithy
strengthens the suppositious, both as to the name and as to the fact that
the Caldbrookes used the Brockholes coal for their smithy in the Dale.
For smith’s work coal has always been preferred to wood; but the word
smithy did not then strictly mean what it now does; that is a smith’s
shop; but a place where iron was made in blooms. Thus the “Smithies,”
near Willey, at present so called, was a place where there were small
iron-making forges, as heaps of slag there now testify; which forges were
blown with leathern bellows, by means of water power, a man having to
tread them to increase the pressure.
Again, the word “Place,” which is a Saxon term for locality, situation,
or a particular portion of space, itself indicates an establishment on a
scale greater than a modern smithy. The words in the deed are “Smithy
Place and New House.” And again, “the rights and privileges attached to
the whole of the place and buildings that go under the name of The Smithy
Place, and Newhouse, called Caldbrooke Smithy, with its privileges” &c.
This Newhouse long ago, no doubt, had become an old house. At any rate
we know of no house answering to this description at present, unless it
is the half-timbered house near the Lower Forge; and if so this house
must be about 100 years older than the one which has the date upon it at
the forge higher up, shewing it to have been built a century later, or in
1642: and both forges no doubt were then in existence. The latter would
be about the period when the flame of Civil War was bursting forth in
various parts of the kingdom, and when Richard Baxter, whose old house
still stands at Eaton Constantine, was witnessing the battle of Edgehill
and others. This old house is such a fair specimen of the half-timbered
structures of two centuries and a half or three centuries ago that we add
a representation.
There are a number of square iron plates at the Lower Forge supposed to
have been hearth-plates, with the following dates and initials:—
I. H. T. K. W. I. E. R.
1602. 1609. 1627.
T. A. I. A. B. S.
1653. 1654. 1693.
T. E.
1706.
The one with the date 1609 has a head cast upon it, and the ‘W’ was for
the surname of one of the early proprietors or partners named Wolfe, a
member of the same family that gave shelter to King Charles at Madeley:
and ‘B’ may have signified Brooke, the family who resided at the Court
House, Madeley, and to whom the manor belonged at that time. There is
too a beam with the date 1658, being a bearer in an old blast furnace,
which is known to have been renewed by Abraham Darby in 1777. This is
supposed to have been brought from Leighton, where there was a furnace in
blast in 1707. Thus for long periods, during deadly feuds and troubled
times, absorbed in the simple arts of industry, these men appear to have
toiled on. During the Civil Wars, when Cromwell and his Ironsides were
preparing for the pages of history one of its most striking passages,
they worked their bloomeries, taking no part, save that a clerk in the
Shropshire Ironworks was found to bear to the Protector news of the
successes of his troops.
[Picture: Baxter’s House as it is, slightly renovated]
It may therefore be supposed that when the first Abraham Darby came to
the Dale he found works already in existence. Mr. Smiles says “he took
the lease of a little furnace which had existed at the place for over a
century”; and, fortunately, since his time, the commencement of the 18th
century, (1709), records of the proceedings have been carefully kept, so
that there is little difficulty in tracing the progress of the art, or in
giving prominence to important points which may serve to mark such
progress. On page 60 are enumerated some of these discoveries, one being
the successful use of coal in iron-making, another the adaptability of
iron in bridge making, and a third to railroads. To these three starting
points in the history of the iron trade was added that of the discovery
of puddling by means of pit coal, by the Craneges; a discovery which
preceded that of Henry Cort by seventeen years. It will be seen also
from what has been already stated, that whilst Richard Reynolds laid down
the first iron rails his son William and the Coalbrookdale Co. as early
as 1800 were engaged upon locomotives to run on railways.
These stages in the history of the works down to the commencement of the
present century have been enumerated thus:—
“Abraham Darby. 1707. Letters patent for a new way of casting iron
pots, and other iron ware, in sand only, without loam or clay.”
“Ditto. 1712. First successfully superseded the use of charcoal by
that of coke in the blast furnace.”
“Abraham Darby (son of above). 1737. First used coal instead of
charcoal for converting pig iron into bar iron at the forge.”
“Ditto. 1760–63. First laid down rails of cast iron, with carriages
having axles with fixed wheels.”
“Abraham Darby (the third). The first _iron_ bridge erected over the
Severn in 1777.”
“Richard Reynolds. Letters patent to Thomas and George Cranage, for a
method of puddling, 1766.”
William, son of Richard Reynolds, invented a locomotive, upon the plans
for which the Coalbrookdale Company were engaged in 1800. This was a
_locomotive_ for _railroads_, as we have shewn on page 179. We have also
on a previous page spoken of Mr. W. Reynolds as a chemist, a fact which
is borne out by an original letter of James Watt to his friend William
Reynolds, a copy of which, being too long to insert here, will be given
on a subsequent page. Facts like these, recorded in various
publications, added to the intrinsic merits of the high class productions
of the works, naturally served to give to the establishment in the Dale a
very high position in the trade. To these too were to be added the high
integrity of the proprietors and managers of the works, a guarantee of
which was to be found in the fact that they were Quakers. In our
“History of Broseley” page 219, we have shewn that the Friends had
established themselves there as early as 1673; that a Meeting house was
erected there in 1692; and that the Darbys, the Roses, the Reynoldses,
the Fords, the Hortons and others were buried there, prior to the Meeting
house at Sunnyside being built. The fact of a man being a Quaker was a
tolerable guarantee of his being a fair dealer; and the utterance of the
name of Darby or Reynolds was sufficient to command respect.
Speaking of these works at an early stage, Mr. Smiles in his “Industrial
Biography” says:—
“By the exertions and enterprise of the Darbys, the Coalbrookdale
Works had become greatly enlarged, giving remunerative employment to
a large and increasing population. The firm had extended their
operations far beyond the boundaries of the Dale: they had
established foundries at London, Bristol, and Liverpool, and agencies
at Newcastle and Truro for the disposal of steam-engines and other
iron machinery used in the deep mines of those districts. Watt had
not yet perfected his steam-engine; but there was considerable demand
for pumping-engines of Newcomen’s construction, many of which were
made at the Coalbrookdale Works.”
One of these engines having the date 1747 was seen at Bilston in 1812.
Castings for Watt’s engines also were made here; but the first use to
which the steam-engine itself was put was the undignified one of pumping
the water which had once gone over the water-wheel back, that it may go
over it a second time.
It is not our intention to give a detailed description of the present
productions of the Coalbrookdale Works; modern castings like those of the
Albert Edward bridge, and those high art ornamental ones of a lighter
kind with which the public are familiar by means of various international
exhibitions, afford sufficient evidence that the firm occupy a position
not unworthy of their ancient renown.
It will be seen from what has been said that the religious no less than
the inventive element seems to have distinguished these men, who, so far
as we have gone were Quakers; but the brothers Cranege, who anticipated
Cort in the discovery of puddling were Wesleyans. Little seems to be
known of these men or of their families; but Dr. Edward Cranage, of the
Old Hall, Wellington is, we believe, of the same family. Another
descendant of the family writes us to say that—
“George Cranage, one of the patentees, and Thomas his brother, the
other, both married daughters of John Ward, of Eye Manor Farm, near
Leighton; the writer’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Thomas and
his wife died without issue, but George Cranage who married Ann Ward,
left two sons and five daughters; William, the elder of the sons, was
manager or in some such position at Coalbrookdale, and was concerned
in the construction of the Iron Bridge. From a small manuscript
volume of religious verses and paraphrases into verse of the Psalms
composed by him, and now in my possession, he appears to have had
some taste for literature. I have his copy of _Coke and Moore’s life
of Wesley_, _and Paradise Lost_, the latter containing his autograph.
He was, I have heard, a Wesleyan of the true type; worshipping at his
chapel regularly, but always communicating at Madeley Parish Church
on Sacrament Sundays. He lived in the house where Mr. Moses now
lives, opposite the church, which house, we believe was built for
him. He died in 1823, one son having died previously. The following
notice appeared in a Shrewsbury paper of his death:
“Suddenly, at Coalbrookdale, aged 63, Mr. Wm. Cranage, a man whose
truly benevolent nature and friendly disposition secured him the
respect and esteem of all who knew him, and whose loss as a member of
society will be much felt by his neighbours. In him the poor man
recognised a friend, the world an honest man, and the church a steady
and useful member.”
John the younger, and only other son of George, died in infancy, while
the five daughters all married in Bridgnorth or the neighbourhood.
Whilst upon the subject of old workmen at the Dale it may be well here to
introduce a notice of the Luccucks, some of whom were Quakers, but two of
whom, Benjamin and Thomas, became clergymen of the church of England.
Benjamin was apprenticed at Coalport, where he painted a set of china,
which whilst breakfasting with an English prelate he was surprised to see
produced at table. When a lad he was of a daring disposition. He would
lie down, for instance, between the rails of the Incline Plane and allow
the carriage and a boat with five tons of iron in it to pass over him,
notwithstanding the risk run of being caught and drawn over the rollers
by the hook dangling at the end of the carriage. The mother of Mr. W. G.
Norris, the present manager, and one of the proprietors, was a Luccock;
and other members of the same family are still employed in the works.
The grandfather of the former was apprenticed to the first Abraham Darby
soon after he came to the Dale. A copy of the indenture or agreement
between the parties may not be without interest at the present day. It
commences thus:
“Abraham Darby and Thomas Luccuck, concluded and made this 13 day of
June, 1714, between Abraham Darby, of the city of Bristol, Smith, in
behalf of himself and rest of his co-partners in the ironworks of
Coalbrookdale, in the County of Salop, on the one part; and Thomas
Luccuck, of the parish of Norfield, in the County of Worcester, who
agrees to serve in the art and mystery of making or casting of iron
pots and kettles, &c.”