COALBROOKDALE.
As an important part of the parish of Madeley, still more as a locality famous on account of its fine castings and other productions, Coalbrookdale is deserving of a much further notice than has incidentally been given on previous pages in speaking of the Darbys and Reynoldses. There are few people perhaps in the kingdom who have not heard or who do not know something of Coalbrookdale; and there are none, probably, who pass through it by rail who do not peer through the windows of the carriage to catch a passing glimpse of its more prominent features. These may be readily grouped, for the benefit of those who have not seen them, but who may read this book, as follows. In the trough of the valley lie the works, stretching along in the direction of the stream, formerly of more importance to the operations carried on in the various workshops than it is at present. Upon the slope of the hill on the south-eastern side the Church, the palatial looking Literary and Scientific Institute, built for the benefit of the workmen, meet the eye, and the more humble looking Methodist chapel. On both sides are goodly looking houses and villa-like residences, where dwell the men of directing minds; whilst here and there are thin sprinklings of workmen’s cottages—few in number compared with the hands employed. A few strips of grass land intervene, whilst above are wooded ridges with pleasant walks, and to the west some curiously rounded knolls, between which the Wellington and Craven Arms branch railway runs, sending down a siding for the accommodation of the works.
These are the chief features which strike the eye, and which would come out into prominence in photographic views taken to shew what Coalbrookdale now is. The buildings are comparatively of modern construction, but quaint half-timbered houses, rejoicing in the whitewash livery of former times, suggest a phase of Coalbrookdale history much anterior to that other buildings indicate. It is not difficult indeed to depict the earlier stages of the progress the little valley has passed through from its first primitive aspect to the present; there are, for instance, in some of its many windings green nooks and pleasant corners where nature yet reigns, and where lovers of a quiet ramble may feast their eyes and indulge their imaginations, undisturbed by the hammering, and whirl of wheels, lower down. Such a spot is that to which the visitor is led by following the stream above the pool, crossed by a footbridge. To the left of the path is Dale House, Sunnyside, the Friends Meeting House, and the road to Little Wenlock. Little is seen of the brook on the right of the path, but its presence on the margin of the slope is made known beneath over-hanging bushes by prattlings over stones, and a waterfall from some ledges of rock. Following it higher up it is found to be partially fed by droppings from rocks dyed by mineral colours of varying hue, and to present curious petrifactions, rarely permitted however to attain any great proportions. The place is variously called La Mole and Lum Hole, and speculations have been indulged in as to each derivation. The former would, of course, suggest a French origin. Lum is Welsh, and signifies a point, as in Pumlummon, now ordinarily called Plinlimmon, or the hill with five points. It is quite certain that the valley here terminates in a point, but whether this has anything to do with it or not we cannot say. All we say of it is that it is a quiet little sylvan retreat, with wooded heights, green slopes, and precipitous yellow rocks, at the foot of which the stream is treasured up and forms a glassy lakelet. But this stream, in which six centuries since “Lovekin” the fisherman set his baited lines, long ago was made to do other service than that of soothing the listening ear, or paying tribute of its trout to the abbot of Wenlock. The choice of the situation for manufacturing operations was no doubt due to woods like these, which supplied the needed fuel; but much more to the motive power furnished by the stream, for turning the great wheels required to produce the blast, and work the ponderous hammers which shaped the metal.
Brave and strong as these Dale men were, their muscles were too weak for the work demanded. As Vulcan found he needed stronger journeymen than those of flesh and blood to forge the thunderbolts of Jove, so an imperative necessity, a growing demand, led men here to seek a more compelling force to blow their leathern bellows, to lift their huge forge hammers, than animal force could supply. Woods were no longer estimated by pannage yielded for swine, but by the fuel supplied for reducing the stubborn ore to pigs of another kind. Brooks were pounded up, streams were turned back upon themselves, and their treasured waters husbanded as a capital of force to be disposed of as occasion required. Dryads now fled the woods and Naiads the streams,—as beams and shafts and cranks were reared or creaked beneath the labours they performed.
The presence of coal and iron ore could not have been inducements for the first ironworkers to settle here; neither tradition nor facts warrant the supposition that either were ever found in the valley. The first syllable of the name is deceptive, and the probability is that it was neither Coal nor Cole-brook originally, although coal appears to have been brought here for use more than five centuries ago from places just outside. Wood fuel seems to have been growing scarce as far back as the first quarter of the fourteenth century, judging from an application on the part of a Walter de Caldbrook to the Prior of Wenlock, to whom the manor belonged, for a license to have a man to dig coals in “Le Brockholes” for one year. It is not unlikely that this Walter de Caldbrook had a forge or smithy in the Dale; a situation chosen on account of the stream, which served to furnish him with motive power for his machinery. This seems all the more probable from the fact that distinct mention of such smithy is made in Henry the Eighth’s time, and that it is called “Smithy Place,” and “Caldbrooke Smithy,” [277] in the deed or grant by which the manor was conveyed by the King to Robert Brook, signed at Westminster and dated July 23, 1544. (See page 59). The fact too that this smithy was still called Caldbrook Smithy strengthens the suppositious, both as to the name and as to the fact that the Caldbrookes used the Brockholes coal for their smithy in the Dale. For smith’s work coal has always been preferred to wood; but the word smithy did not then strictly mean what it now does; that is a smith’s shop; but a place where iron was made in blooms. Thus the “Smithies,” near Willey, at present so called, was a place where there were small iron-making forges, as heaps of slag there now testify; which forges were blown with leathern bellows, by means of water power, a man having to tread them to increase the pressure.
Again, the word “Place,” which is a Saxon term for locality, situation, or a particular portion of space, itself indicates an establishment on a scale greater than a modern smithy. The words in the deed are “Smithy Place and New House.” And again, “the rights and privileges attached to the whole of the place and buildings that go under the name of The Smithy Place, and Newhouse, called Caldbrooke Smithy, with its privileges” &c. This Newhouse long ago, no doubt, had become an old house. At any rate we know of no house answering to this description at present, unless it is the half-timbered house near the Lower Forge; and if so this house must be about 100 years older than the one which has the date upon it at the forge higher up, shewing it to have been built a century later, or in 1642: and both forges no doubt were then in existence. The latter would be about the period when the flame of Civil War was bursting forth in various parts of the kingdom, and when Richard Baxter, whose old house still stands at Eaton Constantine, was witnessing the battle of Edgehill and others. This old house is such a fair specimen of the half-timbered structures of two centuries and a half or three centuries ago that we add a representation.
There are a number of square iron plates at the Lower Forge supposed to have been hearth-plates, with the following dates and initials:—
I. H. | T. K. W. | I. E. R. |
T. A. | I. A. | B. S. |
T. E. | ||
The one with the date 1609 has a head cast upon it, and the ‘W’ was for the surname of one of the early proprietors or partners named Wolfe, a member of the same family that gave shelter to King Charles at Madeley: and ‘B’ may have signified Brooke, the family who resided at the Court House, Madeley, and to whom the manor belonged at that time. There is too a beam with the date 1658, being a bearer in an old blast furnace, which is known to have been renewed by Abraham Darby in 1777. This is supposed to have been brought from Leighton, where there was a furnace in blast in 1707. Thus for long periods, during deadly feuds and troubled times, absorbed in the simple arts of industry, these men appear to have toiled on. During the Civil Wars, when Cromwell and his Ironsides were preparing for the pages of history one of its most striking passages, they worked their bloomeries, taking no part, save that a clerk in the Shropshire Ironworks was found to bear to the Protector news of the successes of his troops.
It may therefore be supposed that when the first Abraham Darby came to the Dale he found works already in existence. Mr. Smiles says “he took the lease of a little furnace which had existed at the place for over a century”; and, fortunately, since his time, the commencement of the 18th century, (1709), records of the proceedings have been carefully kept, so that there is little difficulty in tracing the progress of the art, or in giving prominence to important points which may serve to mark such progress. On page 60 are enumerated some of these discoveries, one being the successful use of coal in iron-making, another the adaptability of iron in bridge making, and a third to railroads. To these three starting points in the history of the iron trade was added that of the discovery of puddling by means of pit coal, by the Craneges; a discovery which preceded that of Henry Cort by seventeen years. It will be seen also from what has been already stated, that whilst Richard Reynolds laid down the first iron rails his son William and the Coalbrookdale Co. as early as 1800 were engaged upon locomotives to run on railways.
These stages in the history of the works down to the commencement of the present century have been enumerated thus:—
“Abraham Darby. 1707. Letters patent for a new way of casting iron pots, and other iron ware, in sand only, without loam or clay.”
“Ditto. 1712. First successfully superseded the use of charcoal by that of coke in the blast furnace.”
“Abraham Darby (son of above). 1737. First used coal instead of charcoal for converting pig iron into bar iron at the forge.”
“Ditto. 1760–63. First laid down rails of cast iron, with carriages having axles with fixed wheels.”
“Abraham Darby (the third). The first iron bridge erected over the Severn in 1777.”
“Richard Reynolds. Letters patent to Thomas and George Cranage, for a method of puddling, 1766.”
William, son of Richard Reynolds, invented a locomotive, upon the plans for which the Coalbrookdale Company were engaged in 1800. This was a locomotive for railroads, as we have shewn on page 179. We have also on a previous page spoken of Mr. W. Reynolds as a chemist, a fact which is borne out by an original letter of James Watt to his friend William Reynolds, a copy of which, being too long to insert here, will be given on a subsequent page. Facts like these, recorded in various publications, added to the intrinsic merits of the high class productions of the works, naturally served to give to the establishment in the Dale a very high position in the trade. To these too were to be added the high integrity of the proprietors and managers of the works, a guarantee of which was to be found in the fact that they were Quakers. In our “History of Broseley” page 219, we have shewn that the Friends had established themselves there as early as 1673; that a Meeting house was erected there in 1692; and that the Darbys, the Roses, the Reynoldses, the Fords, the Hortons and others were buried there, prior to the Meeting house at Sunnyside being built. The fact of a man being a Quaker was a tolerable guarantee of his being a fair dealer; and the utterance of the name of Darby or Reynolds was sufficient to command respect.
Speaking of these works at an early stage, Mr. Smiles in his “Industrial Biography” says:—
“By the exertions and enterprise of the Darbys, the Coalbrookdale Works had become greatly enlarged, giving remunerative employment to a large and increasing population. The firm had extended their operations far beyond the boundaries of the Dale: they had established foundries at London, Bristol, and Liverpool, and agencies at Newcastle and Truro for the disposal of steam-engines and other iron machinery used in the deep mines of those districts. Watt had not yet perfected his steam-engine; but there was considerable demand for pumping-engines of Newcomen’s construction, many of which were made at the Coalbrookdale Works.”
One of these engines having the date 1747 was seen at Bilston in 1812. Castings for Watt’s engines also were made here; but the first use to which the steam-engine itself was put was the undignified one of pumping the water which had once gone over the water-wheel back, that it may go over it a second time.
It is not our intention to give a detailed description of the present productions of the Coalbrookdale Works; modern castings like those of the Albert Edward bridge, and those high art ornamental ones of a lighter kind with which the public are familiar by means of various international exhibitions, afford sufficient evidence that the firm occupy a position not unworthy of their ancient renown.
It will be seen from what has been said that the religious no less than the inventive element seems to have distinguished these men, who, so far as we have gone were Quakers; but the brothers Cranege, who anticipated Cort in the discovery of puddling were Wesleyans. Little seems to be known of these men or of their families; but Dr. Edward Cranage, of the Old Hall, Wellington is, we believe, of the same family. Another descendant of the family writes us to say that—
“George Cranage, one of the patentees, and Thomas his brother, the other, both married daughters of John Ward, of Eye Manor Farm, near Leighton; the writer’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Thomas and his wife died without issue, but George Cranage who married Ann Ward, left two sons and five daughters; William, the elder of the sons, was manager or in some such position at Coalbrookdale, and was concerned in the construction of the Iron Bridge. From a small manuscript volume of religious verses and paraphrases into verse of the Psalms composed by him, and now in my possession, he appears to have had some taste for literature. I have his copy of Coke and Moore’s life of Wesley, and Paradise Lost, the latter containing his autograph. He was, I have heard, a Wesleyan of the true type; worshipping at his chapel regularly, but always communicating at Madeley Parish Church on Sacrament Sundays. He lived in the house where Mr. Moses now lives, opposite the church, which house, we believe was built for him. He died in 1823, one son having died previously. The following notice appeared in a Shrewsbury paper of his death:
“Suddenly, at Coalbrookdale, aged 63, Mr. Wm. Cranage, a man whose truly benevolent nature and friendly disposition secured him the respect and esteem of all who knew him, and whose loss as a member of society will be much felt by his neighbours. In him the poor man recognised a friend, the world an honest man, and the church a steady and useful member.”
John the younger, and only other son of George, died in infancy, while the five daughters all married in Bridgnorth or the neighbourhood.
Whilst upon the subject of old workmen at the Dale it may be well here to introduce a notice of the Luccucks, some of whom were Quakers, but two of whom, Benjamin and Thomas, became clergymen of the church of England. Benjamin was apprenticed at Coalport, where he painted a set of china, which whilst breakfasting with an English prelate he was surprised to see produced at table. When a lad he was of a daring disposition. He would lie down, for instance, between the rails of the Incline Plane and allow the carriage and a boat with five tons of iron in it to pass over him, notwithstanding the risk run of being caught and drawn over the rollers by the hook dangling at the end of the carriage. The mother of Mr. W. G. Norris, the present manager, and one of the proprietors, was a Luccock; and other members of the same family are still employed in the works. The grandfather of the former was apprenticed to the first Abraham Darby soon after he came to the Dale. A copy of the indenture or agreement between the parties may not be without interest at the present day. It commences thus:
“Abraham Darby and Thomas Luccuck, concluded and made this 13 day of June, 1714, between Abraham Darby, of the city of Bristol, Smith, in behalf of himself and rest of his co-partners in the ironworks of Coalbrookdale, in the County of Salop, on the one part; and Thomas Luccuck, of the parish of Norfield, in the County of Worcester, who agrees to serve in the art and mystery of making or casting of iron pots and kettles, &c.”
It then proceeds to state that
“Abraham Darby promises to pay the said Thomas Luccuck the sum of 6s. 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.