Telford manufacturing history

 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)

Stourbridge manufacturing history

 Wool was the business of Stourbridge as it was for a great deal of the kingdom from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. Yet it was not all.

The power source for early manufacturing was strongly flowing water and the river Stour did not disappoint. All that then was needed were raw materials and here the local area provided clay, iron ore, sand and nearby Dudley had limestone. Potash, needed to make glass, was first made locally by burning bracken, later seaweed was imported from Scotland and Spain.

Bricks were made in many places across Britain, but the banks of the Stour had red clay which produced a very high quality of building brick and white clay for firebricks essential for making glass. It was very heavy work done mainly by women producing some 14 million bricks a year.

Stourbridge is famous for its high quality glass. This is probably linked to the arrival in the district of glass makers fleeing persecution in Lorraine. The Huguenots set up in Stourbridge and surrounding villages employing local workers who too gained skills. The product was window glass but also bottles for cider, and fine glass. The finest piece was said to be a chandelier for the sultan of Turkey as a cost of £10,000. A key development was the invention of a way to make glass using coal as the source of heat. The Heath Glass Works was the Stourbridge works that can be traced through the transitions. It was however not linked by the first canal bringing coal from Dudley, handing the advantage to others better located.

In 1897 the firm of Webb Corbett was founded when they took over the White House Glass Works which had been run by WH , B & J Richardson in nearby Wordsley which was on the canal. A century earlier Royal Brierley had established at nearby Brierley Hill.

The glass making inheritance has been taken up by designer makers. The most prominent of whom, Allister Malcolm Glass at Broadfield House Glass Museum the former home of Stuart Chrystal Glass also at Wordsley, has focused on sustainability. Glass requires 1200 degrees of heat and so is energy hungry. Gas took over from coal but is still carbon based. The sustainable answer is electricity powered by solar. This perhaps begs the question of whether makers could return to Stourbridge's original source of power: the river Stour.

Coal was key to the substantial iron trade of the town. The origin predates the use of coal when charcoal was used to smelt the ore. There is evidence of hand nail making from this iron. As smelting developed so too did the process of nail manufacture but it remained heavy and dangerous work. Chains, locks and scythes were other staple products of the town.

Skills in metal work translated into metal fabrication and light engineering. For example, the German Sunlight Industries set up in the town manufacturing mobility solutions for people with disabilities.

Further reading:

Nigel Perry, A History of Stourbridge (Chichester: Phillimore, 2001)

Dudley Manufacturing History

 There is evidence of iron working in Dudley in the Domesday Book. It shared the availability of raw materials with its neighbour, Stourbridge. The source of energy for Dudley though was from the surrounding forest. This it had in common with its iron smelting rivals in the Weald in Sussex. In contrast the work coming out of blacksmiths in Dudley were more utilitarian with little evidence remaining of decorative work.

Dudley took the lead over Sussex by virtue of its reserves of coal, once the secret of smelting with coal had been discovered.

The Earl of Dudley and his son, known as Dud, were strongly influential in the way the iron industry and industry generally developed in the area between the towns of Dudley and Stourbridge. Dud claimed to have used coal to smelt iron, but nothing came of it until Abraham Darby succeeded in Telford in 1765. From then on the town of Dudley's future was mapped out until reserves of raw materials ran out.

In the early days it was nails that the men and women of Dudley made. Many of them worked for Richard Foley who had discovered the Swedish method of splitting which revolutionised the industry. Along with nails, chains were made and locks and tools. The coming of the canal both enabled Dudley to export coal to other areas particularly for glass making but also to find a larger market for its produce.

Of course the reserves of raw materials did run out but the companies of Dudley adapted.

Michael Grazebrook took over some collieries and an old blast furnace at Netherton. He installed a Boulton & Watt steam engine and then electricity and the internal combustion engine. In the 1930s he established welding and foundry shops. In the Second World War he made block buster bombs. Anther business with which eventually bought Grazebrook was Hingleys which specialised in chain making and file manufacture. Hingleys installed a Naysmyth steam hammer allowing the manufacture of large anchors. Hingleys were bought by metal workers FH Lloyd which eventually became part of Triplex Lloyd.

Samuel Lewis is another company still in business making pressings, forgings, farm harrows and hand made chains. Files are still manufactured at Vaughan's Hope Works.

National businesses came to Dudley attracted by the skills base. John Thompson of Wolverhampton came to make boilers, chimneys and tanks. Ewarts made motor accessories and we can glory in brass petrol taps, bonnet fasteners, caps and nuts. Dudley became a centre for the covering of metal tanks with protective material. Metallisation Ltd is still in operation. Nearby Brierley Hill was home to the Round Oak Steel Works which became part of Tube Investments.

Further reading:

G. Chandler and I.C. Hannah, Dudley - As it was and as it is today (London: Batsford, 1949)