Telford is rightly known as the place where in 1708 Abraham Darby discovered the way to use coke to smelt iron ore and I wrote about this in How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. It is worth pondering that this was an environmentally friendly development since before this it is said a small iron furnace would consume 2,000 acres of woodland annually.
Iron smelting had been carried out in Telford and its surrounding for perhaps two millennia. It was perfectly placed in a gorge running down to the river Severn. High up the gorge there was limestone and coal along with iron ore. Darby leased an existing furnace from the Brook family and adapted it to his new process. The gorge had fast running water to power the bellows for blast furnace. The resulting pig iron and in due finished goods could then be taken downhill to the river for onwards transmission. In due course the banks of the Severn were lined with iron works, tile works, china works and limestone quarries.
Darby's Coalbrookdale Company continued in one form or another until 2017. It began with pig iron but then specific castings including the famous iron bridge, pillars, boilers for steam engines and rails. As a Quaker, he would not cast cannon Much later the company cast parts for Rayburn and AGA eventually being owned by Glynwed. In the meantime it extended its interests into coal mines and metal work.
The process of making coke from coal produced by-products including gas and tar, the latter being combined with the spent material from the furnaces to make asphalt. It also later provided the base material for many chemicals. Gas from coke production would, of course, light the nation's towns until North Sea gas came on stream.
There were other iron masters and other major employers. Among these, John 'Iron mad' Wilkinson was an iron master with works at nearby Broseley and at one time provided one eighth of Britain's iron output. He cast boilers for Boulton & Watt. He developed a method of casting cannon in a single solid form which would then be bored out to form the barrel. He then devised a method whereby the cannon was rotated whilst the boring tool remained fixed and this greatly improved accuracy. Later he made the first iron barge for use on the river Severn.
The Lilleshall Company founded in 1764 traded until 1964 and was the largest employer. Owned by landed gentry it sought to exploit the natural resources that lay underground. It built several iron works, a glass works, brick works, mines, canals and stretches of railway. In the mid nineteenth century Lilleshall ws producing 15,000 tons of finished iron a year as well as a million bricks and massive steam engines.
None of this would have been possible without a skilled workforce whose experience in iron working stretched back many generations. Nothing stood still. The Ketley iron works was repurposed for the production of rain water goods.
Coalport manufactured bone china. The company came about by the joining of the landowning Browne family who brought clay, coal and capital and a talented engraver Thomas Turner who had been apprenticed at the Worcester factory. Production continued from 1750 until 1926. There is now a Coalport Museum.
The Shropshire canal opened in 1797 and provided a vital link and was followed as elsewhere by railways. In and around Telford just about every large factory and mine had its own branch line; it was a wonder of modern transport. Electricity arrived in 1876 with the production of Elwell and Parker High Speed Electric Engines. Coalbrookdale installed its own power generating station in 1906.
The General Strike saw declines in both Lilleshall and Coalbrookdale and Coalport moved to the potteries. Other businesses prospered: the Horsehay Company made bridges and crains, Heybridge Steel produced miles of wire and Walkers and Corbetts made tanks and boilers. Ever Ready Batteries set up a factory and Joseph Sankey took over Briggs Bodies and made car parts especially wheels. Chad Valley had two factories making toys.
In 1939 work began on the vast Ordnance depot at Donnington and I tell its extraordinary story in War on Wheels. It remains a Ministry of Defence establishment.
Lucas automotive manufactured lighting and Rists wiring. Sankey also produced armoured vehicles at the Hadley Castle works until it became part of GKN, then Alvis and BAE Systems. It is now RBSL (owned by Rheinmetall and BAE Systems) and which now produced the Boxer fighting vehicle and Challenger 3 tanks.
Further reading
- https://www.ironbridge.org.uk/visit/coalbrookdale-museum-of-iron/
- George Evans, Telford's Living Landscape (Wellington: Vision Books, 1993)
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