In 1759, William Cadell in partnership with Dr John Roebuck and Samuel Garbett founded the Falkirk Iron Works with his son also William as general manager until 1769. A year later, the business changed its name to the Carron Company and the Cadells swapped their holding in Carron for the Cramond Works in Edinburgh. (I continue this aspect of the story in my blog on Edinburgh).
The first blast furnace at Carron came into production on the day following Christmas in 1760 and a second a year later. Dr Roebuck, who seems to have been the driving force, won from the Board of Ordnance a contract to cast cannon for the Royal Navy. Hitherto guns had been cast in the iron works of the Weald but the advances made by the introduction of the blast furnace and then Abraham Darby's invention of the use of coal to smelt iron ore opened the field to newcomers. Darby himself as a Quaker would not bid and the contract came to Scotland. It seems that the guns turned out to be of insufficient quality and the contract was lost, I suspect to foundries at Moorfields in London, where guns were cast before the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich took over in the nineteenth century. Roebuck was a distinguished engineer and had developed a process for the production of sulphuric acid. This, I suspect, had brought him into contact with the Board of Ordnance.
Carron were an integrated business with both iron and coal. They had a deep coal mine that was flooded and so needed a steam engine capable of pumping water from a greater depth than the Newcomen engine could achieve. Dr Roebuck heard of James Watt's experiments with steam engines and provided financial backing with a view to having his mine pumped free of water. Watt struggled with his health, but also with the design of the better engine, finding time and again that practice simply did not match theory. Eventually Roebuck's money ran out and Watt was left with his idea and a prototype that didn't yet work. The story then moves to Birmingham, the Soho Works and Matthew Boulton. The very brief account is taken from the very engaging book Lives of Boulton & Watt by the nineteenth century author Samuel Smiles.
The Carron iron works became something of a hot bed of invention. Henry Cort visited, as did John Seaton the civil engineer. The business of gun casting continued in spite of the lack of orders from the Board of Ordnance and a new gun effective at close range, the Carronade, was invented and eventually supplied to the Royal Navy.
The Carron business continued to develop into steel and remained a producer until receivership in 1982. At one time it cast pillar boxes for the Post Office. The name though continues in a number of related products.
Falkirk was also home to bus builder Alexander Dennis. The company now building buses for the net zero world may move all production to England (Guildford)
To mark the millennium a remarkable lifting bridge (shown in the image) was built to connect the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal.
Further reading:
- https://falkirklocalhistory.club/around-the-area/industry/ironfounding/carron-ironworks/carron-company/
- Samuel Smiles, the Lives of Boulton and Watt (Stroud: Nonsuch, 2007 first published 1865)
- J.C. Carr and W. Taplin, History of the British Steel Industry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)
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