“Abraham Darby promises to pay the said Thomas Luccuck the _sum of_
6_s._ _per week_ during the said term of the year. Thomas Luccuck
also covenants not to divulge or make known the mystery of the art of
moulding in sand, tools, or utensils, belonging to the said works;
and that if he divulges he will agree to pay the sum of £5 for every
pot or kettle made by another, &c., through him.”
The mystery alluded to, and which it was deemed then so important not to
divulge, was an improvement introduced by one of the Thomases, an
ancestor of the Bristol merchants of that name, which consisted in the
substitution of _green sand_ for the more expensive and laborious method
of using clay and loam in the manufacture of cast pots. By this means,
not only was the article cheapened, and the number multiplied, but a more
suitable and economical form was obtained; the old one being now rarely
seen, except in museums, or as an antiquated heir-loom in some remote
cottage. One of the old pots with a neat border has the date 1717.
These domestic utensils appear to have formed the staple manufacture at
the time that the first Abraham Darby removed here from Bristol, in the
year 1709.
One member of this old family of Dale workmen lived to the extraordinary
age of 103; and an allusion to the venerable patriarch may serve to
introduce at this stage of our history a notice of two local
circumstances: the extreme age of an old Coalbrookdale workman of the
above name, and the “Great Land Flood” of the Dale. An account of the
latter appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the time; but we
prefer following the example of Southey who on an occasion we remember
makes use of an old man’s memory to set forth his views of certain
changes which had taken place; but at the same time with such toning down
as becometh the thoughts of more sober age. Every village has incidents
and events associated with it, which some old inhabitant is usually
privileged to expound.
Beyond the venerable grey-beards and wrinkled grand-dames there is the
village sage—vested with the dignity of a last appeal, and whose version
of matters local is deemed truthful as the current coin. Age as a rule
commands respect; and the wider the span that measures intervening space
between the present and the past the greater the esteem. Coalbrookdale
within our recollection boasted, not an octogenarian merely, or one whose
claim to the honour was weakened by that of half-a-dozen others—but one,
the “oldest inhabitant,” by being a quarter of a century in advance of
the whole of the Coalbrookdale elders. He not only lived to celebrate
the centenary of his natal day but—like a tree blanched by the storms of
ages yet putting forth its leaves afresh—as showing the stamina that
still remained—cut, at a still riper age his second set of wisdom teeth.
Envy never sought to dim the lustre of his fame. At local festivals,
when, unfettered for the day, the members of a club with flags and band
met in gay summer time, he was brought to crown the presidential chair.
Old Adam—such was his name—a name truly suggestive of the past and well
fitted for a village sage—old Adam Luccock was widely known. He was a
specimen of archæology in himself—the solitary link of a patriarchal
chain that had fallen one by one—he the only one remaining. And old
Adam’s cottage—perched upon a rock beneath the Rotunda, quaint, ancient,
and impressed by the storms of passing time,—odorous from a narrow strip
of garden sheltered by a grey limestone pile, catching the last lingering
rays of the setting sun as it mantled with deep shadow the Dale below,
and flooded with mellow light the uplands of the river’s western bank—was
a counterpart of himself. Like the little vine that girdled its frail
and wattled walls—tapping with wiry fingers at the diamond leaded
window-panes—old Adam clung to the place long after his friends began to
fear the two would disappear together. White as were these white-washed
walls, Adam’s locks were whiter, and the accessories of dress and minor
details of person and of place were in perfect keeping. A curious
net-work of wrinkled smiles accompanied the delivery of one of the old
man’s homilies; and amusing enough were the landmarks which memory set up
for giving to each event its place in point of time. Of red-lettered
ever-to-be-remembered occurrences in the village the more prominent were
the phenomena of the land-slip at the Birches, and the land-flood at the
Dale. We still see the old man drawing slowly from his mouth a long
pipe, still more slowly letting out a wreath of fragrant smoke, as
speaking of the latter he would say:—
“I remember well; it was autumn, the berries were ripe on the hedge,
and fruits were mellow in the field; we had a funeral that day at
Madeley, it was on the 6th of September, 1801. The air was close. A
thin steamy vapour swam along the valley, and a dense, fog-looking
cloud hung in the sky. The mist spread, and drops like ripe fruit
when you shake a tree came down suddenly. The leaves on every tree
trembled, we could hear them quake; and the cattle hung down their
heads to their fetlocks. The wind blew by fits and starts in
different directions, and waves of cold air succeeded warm. Dull
rushing sounds, sharp crackling thunderclaps were heard, and streams
of fire could be seen—like molten iron at casting time—running in and
out among the clouds. Up the valley, driving dust and sticks and
stones, came on a roaring wind with pelting rain. Another current
moved in a different direction; they met where the black cloud stood,
and striking it both sides at once, it dropped like a sponge filled
with water, but large as the Wrekin. In a moment houses and fields
and woods were flooded by a deluge, and a rushing torrent from the
hills came driving everything before it with a roar louder than the
great blast or the splash of the great wheel. Lightnings flashed,
thunders roared, and before the echo of one peal died you heard
another—as if it were the crack of doom. Down came the brooks, the
louder where they met, snapping trees, carrying bridges, stones, and
stacks of wood. Houses were inundated in an instant, gardens were
swept away, and women and children were carried from windows through
the boiling flood. Fiercer came the rush and higher swelled the
stream, forcing the dam of the great pool; timber snapped like glass,
stones were tossed like corks, and driven against buildings that in
turn gave way. Steam then came hissing up from the furnace as the
water neared and sought entrance to the works. The elements met; it
was a battle for a time; the water driven with great force from
behind was soon brought into contact with the liquid iron, and then
came the climax! Thunders from below answered to those above; water
converted into gas caused one loud terrific explosion that burst the
strongest bars, shattered the stoutest walls, drove back the furious
flood, and filled the air with heated cinders and red-hot scoria.
The horrid lurid light and heat and noise were dreadful. Many said
‘The day of God’s wrath is come;’ ‘Let us fly to the rocks and to the
hills.’”
After a pause, and re-lighting his pipe, he added:
“I think I forgot to say it was Sunday, and that the Darbys were at
meeting; the Meeting-house was in Tea-kettle-row, it was before the
neat little chapel at Sunnyside was built. It was a silent
meeting,—outside among the elements there was noise enough—I mean
among the members there had been no speaking, and if there had they
may have heard plain enough what was going on outside. Well, when
the furnace blew up they broke up and came down to see what was the
matter. They never appear in a hurry, Quakers don’t, and did not
then, though thousands of pounds of their property were going to rack
every minute. ‘Is any one hurt?’ that was the first question by Miss
Darby; she is now Mrs Rathbone. She was an angel of a woman; indeed,
every one of the Miss Darbys have been. ‘Is there any one hurt,
Adam;’ she said. I said ‘no, ma’am, there’s nobody hurt, but the
furnace, and blowing mill, the pool dam, and the buildings are all
gone.’ ‘Oh, I am so thankful,’ she said; ‘never mind the building,
so no one’s hurt’; and they all looked as pleased—if you’ll
believe—as if they had found a new vein of coal in the Dawley Field,
instead of having lost an estate at Coalbrookdale.”
Old age sat as fittingly on Adam as glory upon the sun, or as autumnal
bloom upon the mellow fruit ripened by the summer’s heat. Nature, in the
old man, had completed her work, religion had not left him without its
blessings; and, while lingering or waiting, rather, upon the verge of
another world, he liked to live again the active past, and to amuse
himself by talking of scenes with which he had been associated. He had
none of the garrulous tendencies of age; and when once upon his favourite
topic, he was all smiles immediately.
“We used,” he said, “to bring the mine for the Dale on pack-horses;
and Horsehay being one of the halting places, was, as I believe,
called Horsehay in consequence. We used, also, to take minerals on
horse-back all the way to Leighton, where there was plenty of wood
and charcoal, and water to blow the bellows. Strings of horses, the
first having a bell to tell of their coming, used to go; they called
them ‘Crickers’—and a very pretty sight it was to see them winding
through upland, wood, and meadow, the little bells tinkling as they
went.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said our ancient friend, “Pedlars and pack-horses
were the means of locomotion and the medium of news in my day; and if
we travelled, it was in the four-wheeled covered waggon, over roads
with three or four feet ruts. Lord, sir, I remember, in good old
George the Third’s time, when turnpike gates were first put up, there
was a great outcry against them. Before that, roads went just where
they liked, and there was a blacksmith’s shop at every corner to
repair the damage done in bumping over the large stones. Why, sir,
in this ere Dale, I can remember when there was no road through it
but the tram-road. The road then was over rocks and along the brow
of the hill—a bridle road only. There never was such a thing as a
one-horse cart seen in the Dale till just before the road was made to
Wellington; and then, as I can remember, the road was so narrow that
every carter carried a mattock to stock the road wider, in order to
pass, if he met another.”
The old man described the construction of those primitive forerunners of
that iron network which now spreads its meshes over the entire kingdom,
one of which, much worn on the one side by the flange of the wheels is
before us. It has a square hole at the end, for the purpose of being
pegged to the sleeper. Down the steep banks that enclose the Dale
inclined planes were laid with rails of plain oblong pieces of wood, six
feet in length, eight inches in width, and four inches in depth, and down
these, by means of ropes, waggons by their superior gravity brought up
the empty ones to be refilled with minerals which were conveyed for the
use of the works. The speed was regulated by a brake made to press, not
as now upon the barrel at the top, but upon the wheels of the descending
waggons. The man thus regulating their speed, was the jigger, and the
hill leading from Coalbrookdale to Wellington, where one of these
inclines was situate, became “The Jigger’s Bank.” (Sometimes called the
Jig-house Bank, because, of a house there.) In addition to this railway
for the purpose of supplying the furnaces, there was another, by which
the furnaces at the top were connected with the foundry at the centre;
and rails, first of wood, and then of iron, continued for many years to
be used, facilitating the transport of heavy materials from place to
place.
On the last occasion on which we saw him we were sent by a good old aunt,
a Quaker lady who loaded us with presents for the old man, when he had
gone to live in “Charity Row,” as it was called. Speaking upon matters
connected with the history of the Dale—more particularly in reference to
the Darbys and Reynoldses—the old man would grow eloquent; and the effect
of a little present—a basket of strawberries or a packet of tobacco—had a
wonderful effect in stimulating memory. Nothing was “open sesame,”
however, like a drop of “Barnaby Spruce’s old Beer.” {292} Say you had
sent for half-a-gallon of Spruce’s best October brewing, and he grew
loquacious at once.
“Remember him,” speaking of Richard Reynolds, he would say, arching
his eye-brows, and growing animated, as recollections of the past
came tripping upon the heels of each other. “I knew him well; all
the poor knew him; the robins and the sparrows knew him, for he would
carry crumbs a hundred miles in his pockets ‘for his robins.’ He
made a vast fortune, and then everybody knew him; books, and tracts,
and newspapers all talked about him. He was a Quaker—not a thin,
withered, crotchety disciple of George Fox, but a full-fed Quaker,
fair and ruddy, with eyes of blue that gave back the bright azure of
the sky and lighted up a fine and manly face. I see him now—his
light hair flowing in curls beneath his broad brimmed hat upon his
shoulders. He yielded to every man his own, not only as concerned
money, but in demands upon his respect. I have known him when in a
fit of temper he thought he had spoken harshly or slightingly to any
one, follow him home and apologise for his warmth. He loved
everybody and was beloved by everybody in return. There’s my
neighbour, she will tell you how when she was a child he would run
into their shop in a morning, put half-a-crown into her hand, saying,
‘There, thee be a good child all day.’ He could not do with the
colliers, though; he built schools for their children, but the
mothers would not let them go unless he would pay them so much a day
for allowing them to attend. They were curious schoolmasters in my
day. Old John Share made nails and kept a school in the Dale; he was
one of the most learned about these parts for a schoolmaster, but he
never would believe that the earth turned round, because, as he said,
the Wrekin was always in the same place. Then, there was old Carter,
the chairmaker, of Madeley Wood; he always spelt bacon with a ‘k,’
and I remember him giving Charles Clayton a souce on the side of the
head that sent him reeling, because he insisted upon it that it
should be bacon. The Wrekin, sir, was always an object of admiration
to Mr. Reynolds. He had an arbour made from which he could see the
sun going down behind it (he used to revel in a good sunset), and
with no companion but his pipe was often used to watch it. Every
year he treated his clerks and most of the members of the Society of
Friends to the Wrekin. Benthall Edge was another favourite resort,
and he would revel at such times in the scene.”
“I could tell you many more anecdotes (the old man continued) of the
Quakers; I mean the Darbys. They all liked a joke right well; and as
for kindness, it seemed as if they thought it a favour to be allowed
to assist you. They allow me a weekly pension, have done for years,
and pay a woman to wait upon me. They are people that never like to
be done, however.”
“You knew old Solomon, the Sexton. Well he once went to the haunted
house, as they call it, for an Easter offering. The servants were
ordered to attend him, and he sat for some time and eat and drank,
and smoked his pipe—but not a word was said about Easter dues. He
knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, and feeling muddled a bit
about the head thought it time to be moving. At last Mr. Darby
entered the room, and Solomon made bold to ask for the Easter
offering. ‘Friend,’ said Mr. Darby, throwing up the sash, and
assuming a determined attitude, ‘thou hast had a meat-offering and a
drink-offering; thou hast even had a burnt offering—as I judge from
the fumes of this room, and unless thou choosest to go about thy
business, thou shalt have an _heave_-offering.’ As Solomon had no
wish to be pitched head-foremost out of the window, you may imagine
(said the old man) that he quickly disappeared.”
The old village sage, whose venerable form and long white locks rise
before us like some vision of the past—is gone; he died, as his friends
assert, at the advanced age of 107, or, as his headstone more modestly
states (and modesty is not a fault common with posthumous records) at the
age of 103. He died January 27, 1831, and his gravestone may be seen
near the southwest door of Madeley Church, under the wall; but as the
inscription is near to the grave, being below those of the Parkers, and
that of Samuel Luckock, it will, we fear, be soon obliterated by the damp
acting on the stone.
Among other servants of the Darbys who succeeded each other and held
important positions in the works were the Fords. Richard married Miss
Darby, daughter of Abraham, and was manager of the works in 1747. He
also was a Quaker; and to him really is due the credit ascribed to Mr.
Darby, of the successful use of coal in iron smelting. In the
Philosophical Transactions for 1747, for instance, the year Mr. Ford was
manager, it is stated that—
“Several attempts have been made to run iron-ore with pit-coal: he
(the Rev. Mr. Mason, Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge) thinks it
has not succeeded anywhere, as we have had no account of its being
practised; but Mr. Ford, of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, from
iron-ore and coal, both got in the same dale, makes iron brittle or
tough as he pleases, there being cannon thus cast so soft as to bear
turning like wrought-iron.”
A son or grandson of this Richard Ford was foreman and manager in the
engine department of the works, which flourished greatly till he resigned
his office, nearly half a century since. The late John Cox Ford was a
son, and A. J. Ford, recently of Madeley, a grandson.
Of later members of the Darby family we may speak in part from personal
knowledge. Like their ancestors, they were members of the Society of
Friends, although not by any means the straitest of the sect. Whilst
adhering to the grand cardinal doctrine of the Inner Light, they indulged
their own ideas of the extent to which the strict discipline of the body
should control their tastes. They were birth-members, but lax in their
opinions, and did not live by strict Quaker rule. On one occasion, when
a disciple of the old school got up as was his wont to deliver himself in
meeting, one of the younger and more lax of the members rose and said,
“Friend N—y, it would be more agreeable to this meeting if thou wouldst
sit down.”
Francis Darby, of the White House, had great taste, loved high art, and
filled his rooms with costly paintings, which he felt a pride in shewing
to his friends. Others indulged a forbidden love of music and luxury,
contrary to the faith and discipline of their fathers, without otherwise
breaking through bounds or committing faults to justify the advocates of
the truest code of Quaker rule to disown them.
Richard Darby, like his brother Francis, did not adhere to the Quaker
style of dress, either in the cut of his coat or the shape of his hat,
the latter being usually a white one of the most approved fashion. He
was a popular public man; one whose services were sought, and whose
sympathies were readily enlisted in public movements of the day, such as
the emancipation of the slaves, and others relating to questions of civil
and religious progress. His name was well known through the length and
breadth of the borough, and we have seen small farmers and labourers
around the Clee Hills brighten up at the mention of his name. William
Henry and Charles Darby, the sons of Richard, are proprietors of the
Brymbo iron works, and their sister, Miss Rebecca Darby, who resides at
the house her father lived in, is the only one of the name now living in
the Dale.
The late Abraham and Alfred Darby, sons of Edmund, and cousins of Francis
and Richard, were young when their father died. We have elsewhere said
that they became managers of the extensive and important works of
Coalbrookdale, Horsehay, Lighmnoor, and the Castle, at critical periods
of their history, and when, to maintain their existence, it was essential
to do battle with lax discipline, old customs, and deep-rooted
prejudices. They found men resting on their oars, trusting to the
_prestige_ of a fame won by a former generation, and standing still while
others around them were advancing. They determined to prove themselves
worthy of their predecessors by advancing to the front of the foremost in
the rise. Surrounding themselves by energetic agents, intelligent
operatives, and introducing new modes of manufacture, they succeeded.
With clear views of political economy, they zealously aided in battering
down barriers to a free exchange of the world’s productions, which
misconceived interest had erected. Penetrated with a lofty sense of
duty, and comprehending their positions rightly, they pursued the even
tenor of their way, sowing seed and scattering blessings which refreshed
and brightened the scenes of their labours. They worked harmoniously
together, in their studies, in the laboratory, in their works, and at
their books, making themselves acquainted with every detail and minutiæ
of their great undertakings. Order and regularity everywhere were
observable, others under them being embued with the spirit of their
employers. The church on the hill side, and its sweet and silvery bells
as their music floats along the valley and over the wooded boundaries of
the Dale, tell of their large-hearted benevolence and open handed
munificence, and that of their sister, Miss Mary Darby, and their mother,
Mrs. Lucy Darby.
Abraham, the elder, married his cousin, Miss Darby, daughter of Francis
Darby, on the 8th of August, 1839, on which occasion a kindly
demonstration was made, and 1,000 work-people dined at his expense. He
removed from the Dale to Stoke Court, near Slough; and afterwards to
South Wales, to be near the extensive works of Ebbw Vale, which he, and
some of his partners, purchased for the sum of £360,000. He died, was
brought to the Dale and buried in the cemetery of the church which he
chiefly had built and endowed, amid deep demonstrations of feeling on the
part of thousands of spectators.
Alfred, the younger brother, married Miss Christy, sister to the
well-known collector of pre-historic relics of man in an uncivilized
state, with which he stored his mansion at Westminster, and afterwards
bequeathed to the British Museum. Alfred died in the golden meridian of
age and usefulness, and his loss was deeply felt by all who knew him. He
left issue, and his son Alfred, of Ness, to which place his mother
removed from Stanley Hall, is a magistrate, and is now old enough to
discharge the duties of a country gentleman.
Of other partners in the works we may mention Mr. Henry Dickinson, who
married a sister of Abraham and Alfred Darby, for some years chairman of
the Shropshire Banking Company, and who in a most distinguished and
disinterested way lent (but on such terms as amounted to a gift) the
princely sum of £100,000 at a critical period of its existence, to save
it from falling, and numbers dependent upon it from ruin. But for
extending our remarks too far, we might say something of men like Mr.
Thomas Graham, a former cashier in the works, of Mr. William Norris, who
succeeded him in that office; men useful in their day and generation,
being foremost in good works and words, as many now living will remember.
For the same reason we refrain from speaking of the late Mr. C. Crookes,
formerly the enterprising manager of these works; and of the gentleman
who has succeeded him, and is himself a proprietor of these extensive
works, and in the commission of the peace for the borough. For similar
reasons, but much more because of the difficulty of rightly
discriminating and equally awarding a just meed of praise where so much
is due, we find ourselves prevented from speaking of many trustworthy and
clever men now engaged in various departments of these important works,
whose names occur to our minds, but whose merits we commend not less
heartily to some future local historian, for whose labours the present
work will, we flatter ourselves, smooth the way.
It would be unpardonable not to say something here of the means of
education and mental culture provided by the proprietors of the
Coalbrookdale works for their workpeople. Before the present system of
national education was established, and whilst hostile sects and parties
were indulging in bitter feuds {300} as to the kind of education to be
given, this Company under the direction of Abraham and Alfred Darby in
the most noble and generous way came forward and at great cost erected
roomy and capacious Schools here and at Horsehay, with every convenience
and appliance possible to further education.
We purpose speaking of education, with respect to the schools, in
connection with others at Madeley, Ironbridge, and Madeley Wood; and will
only add here a word or two on the subject of other and more advanced
institutions provided for the use of the men and inhabitants generally of
the Dale. First and foremost amongst them comes, of course, the Literary
and Scientific Institute, with its library, its reading room, its school
of art, its high class lectures and entertainments, so judiciously
arranged and carried on under the management of Mr. E. L. Squire, Hon.
Secretary, and Mr. Isaac Dunbar, the librarian. The School of Art too,
of which Mr. Squires is also Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Gibbons master, is
admirably adapted for developing and furthering a taste for drawing and
decoration, so essential among artizans engaged in the more ornamental
and decorative portions of the company’s productions. Nor are the
benefits of this admirable institution limited either to the works or to
the Dale: the day classes are attended by ladies of the neighbourhood,
desirous of pursuing an æsthetic course of study, and who, following the
examples of ladies whose works merit such high approval in the Art
Galleries of London and Paris, have really achieved great success in
painting birds, flowers, and figures, in enamel colours, on plaques,
tazzas, &c., both for use and for drawing room decoration.
Nor must we omit, whilst on the subject of this institution, to mention
the splendid collection of British and foreign birds lent by Mrs. Alfred
Darby, which have adorned the lecture room for so many years; or the very
fine collection of coal-measure fossils, which the late Dean Buckland
pronounced in his time the finest private collection of the kind in
England, and so liberally given by the late John Anstice, Esq.
Recently a “British Workman” has been added to other institutions, at the
room formerly occupied as a British School, under the patronage of Mrs.
Norris, who is ever active in promoting similar works, and the present
incumbent, the Rev. H. S. Wood, who, it is only justice to say, spares no
pains to make himself useful to the inhabitants of the Dale.