Copyright ã International
Bond & Share Society 2001
The use of coke as a fuel to smelt iron had
been attempted in the second half of the 17th Century, but the first
successful process was established by Abraham Darby around 1709 at his newly
acquired ironworks in the Coalbrookdale, Shropshire. This was a major
industrial breakthrough because it allowed the casting of much larger pieces
than the old charcoal fuel process, which had been largely restricted to pots and kettles. Darby’s achievement in
mastering the coke smelting process enabled this small valley in Shropshire to
become the cradle of the world’s industrial revolution. The products of Darby’s
ironworks were shipped down the River Severn by barge to Bristol and thence all
over Britain and progressively outwards to Europe and the rest of the world.
The Coalbrookdale Company founded 1717
Abraham Darby died in 1717, not yet 40,
intestate and leaving a widow and a family of young children of whom the eldest
boy Abraham II was aged only 6. The equity of the business was valued at £3,200 and was then divided into 16
shares. After a series of transactions 11 of these shares were held by Thomas
Goldney (a major creditor at Abraham Darby’s death) and his son, 2 by Darby’s
son-in-law Richard Ford and 3 in trust for Darby’s children (these 3 being
transferred to Abraham II and Edmund Darby in 1723). Hence from 1717 the
Coalbrookdale Workds was owned by a company, at first known as the
Coalbrookdale Company, which later became its official title from 1790 until
recent years.
Birthplace of Industry
Abraham Darby’s move from Bristol to
Coalbrookdale in 1709 brought him within 17 miles of Dudley (his own
birthplace) where Thomas Newcomen was struggling to perfect the world’s first
cylinder-and-piston steam engine. This he achieved in 1712, only three years
after Darby’s achievement with coke smelting. Then years later these two
technologies came together when the Coalbrookdale Company cast the first
Newcomen cylinders in iron (previously they had been made expensively in
brass). In 1763 the Company cast a massive cylinder of 74’’ (nearly 2 metres)
diameter for the Walker Colliery on Tyneside. As far as best can be discovered
today, the Coalbrookdale Company laid in its own works, England’s (perhaps the
World’s) first iron railway (1767). They had made the first iron wheels to run
on rails in 1729. The world’s first railway locomotive was built by the Company
in 1802/3 for Richard Trevithick.
Members of the Darby family, by blood or
marriage, managed the Coalbrookdale Company from its beginning until 1849. The
Darbys believed in iron for everything. They advocated iron for pavements, for
coffins, even for houses. (Iron kerbstones still exist in the village of
Ironbridge today). They are credited with the first iron aqueduct and the first
iron boat.
In September 1775 a group of subscribers came
together to form a company for the building of a bridge across the River Severn
between Benthall and Madeley near the Coalbrookdale Works. Abraham Darby III
took the lead. Although initially his financial share in the Iron Bridge was
less than 20%, at a later stage he and his family owned over 50%. At first it
was intended that the bridge should be built of « stone, brick or
timber" but eventually the committee of shareholders accepted a tender
from the Coalbrookdale Company to construct a bridge in cast iron, the first
such bridge to be built anywhere. To finance the building of the bridge, 64
shares were issued with entitlement to income from the tolls. The total cost
may have been about £6000. One of the first share certificates, signed by
Abraham Darby III and other significant businessmen, can be seen at the Elton
Gallery at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. A transfer document in the Shropshire
Records Office shows that as late as the 1860s there were still only 64 shares
in issue, so the share certificate in the Museum must be one of the rarest
English shares in existence.
The casting of members for the bridge occupied 1777 and 1778 and involved
rebuilding and enlarging the Coalbrookdale furnace. The main rib castings each
weighed over 5 tons and were 70 feet (21 metres) long. The bridge was opened to
all traffic on New Year"s Day 1781.
A visit to the village of Ironbridge and the
nearby Ironbridge Gorge Museum today is immensely enjoyable and worthwhile. The
entire dale area, the Bridge, the Works, the flaring of the furnaces at night,
attracted and fascinated the artists of the day. The most modern and impressive
industrial enterprise of the period was (and is) situated in an exceptionally
romantic rural landscape. Coalbrookdale was described by a contemporary as ‘the
most extraordinary place in the world. ‘ Now many of the prints and paintings
of the period are on display in the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, which houses the
complete Elton Collection of Art and the Industrial Revolution, a superb
collection displaying the railways and other industrial constructions before
1840. Today one can see in the old Coalbrookdale Works, Abraham Darby’s
original furnace and indeed parts of its predecessor dated 1658, as well as
many cast iron pieces manufactured at the Works and related documents and
prints.
Right by the Iron Bridge stands another
historic construction, the Tontine Inn, still operating as a hotel, built in
1784 or so by another company of shareholders with much the same membership as
the Bridge Company. The minute book of the Inn Company for 1784-91 is in the
County Records Office at Shrewsbury and it contains the signatures of many of
the important partners in the Coalbrookdale businesses : Abraham III and
Samuel Darby, Richard and William Reynolds, John Wilkinson, Joseph Rathbone et
al. The developers were not at all satisfied with the return on their
investment and in 1791 the inn was sold to new owners.
Today’s Industrial Museums
The whole Ironbridge/Coalbrookdale area is well
worth a special visit. In the immediate vicinity of Ironbridge, as well as the
Elton Gallery and the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron, there are the Coalport
China Works Museum and the Blists Hill Open Air Museum displaying early
industrial artefacts and machinery including two massive beam engines built in
1851 and the Hay Inclined Plane, built in 1792 to lift iron canal barges by
rail between different levels of water in the Coalport Basin and the Shropshire
Canal. The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, which designs and manages most of
these sites, has won both the British and the European Musum of the Year
awards. To see the Iron Bridge Company share
certificate or other items not on display, it is essential to make a prior
phone call to the Gallery in Ironbridge.
Bibliography :
1.
Dynasty
of Iron-Founders by Arthur Raistrick, Longmans Green & Co. London 1953.
Reprinted August M Kelley, New York, 1970.
2.
Art
and the Industrial Revolution by Francis D Klingender, 2nd edition
edited and revised by Sir Arthur Elton, Evelyn Adams & Mackay 1968,
paperback edition by Paladin 1972.
3.
Books
and pamphlets of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, Ironbridge, Telford, Salop
TF8 7AW
Copyright ã INTERNATIONAL BOND
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