43-570: Coalbrookdale is a town in the Ironbridge Gorge and the Telford and Wrekin borough of Shropshire , England, containing a settlement of great significance in the history of iron ore smelting. It lies within the civil parish called the Gorge . This is where iron ore was first smelted by Abraham Darby using easily mined "coking coal". The coal was drawn from drift mines in the sides of
86-509: A Quaker). Darby's son Abraham Darby the Younger was brought into the business as an assistant manager when old enough. The company's main business was producing cast-iron goods. Molten iron for this foundry work was not only produced from the blast furnaces, but also by remelting pig iron in air furnaces, a variant of the reverberatory furnace . The Company also became early suppliers of steam engine cylinders in this period. From 1720,
129-515: A few years. Darby renewed his lease of the works in 1714, forming a new partnership with John Chamberlain and Thomas Baylies . They built a second furnace in about 1715, which was intended to be followed up with a furnace in Wales at Dolgûn near Dolgellau and in Cheshire taking over Vale Royal Furnace in 1718. However, Darby died prematurely at Madeley Court in 1717 – the same year as he began
172-771: A partnership between the University of Birmingham and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust offering postgraduate and professional development courses in heritage . Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries , Madeley and the adjacent Little Wenlock belonged to Much Wenlock Priory . At the Dissolution there was a bloomsmithy called "Caldebroke Smithy". The manor passed about 1572 to John Brooke, who developed coal mining in his manor on
215-473: A seventh to Thomas Reynolds, three sevenths to Joseph Gulson Reynolds, and three sevenths to Dr. William Reynolds. Thomas (d. 1854) left his seventh to his two brothers. Between 1871 and 1889 the manor passed by various means to the Ball family, descendants of Joseph Reynolds's daughter Rebecca and her husband (and second cousin) Joseph Ball. In 1891 eleven members of the family settled their shares or interests in
258-405: A substantial scale. His son Sir Basil Brooke was a significant industrialist, and invested in ironworks elsewhere. It is probable that he also had ironworks at Coalbrookdale, but evidence is lacking. He also acquired an interest in the patent for the cementation process of making steel in about 1615. Though forced to surrender the patent in 1619, he continued making iron and steel until his estate
301-454: Is a 16th-century country house in Madeley, Shropshire , England which was originally built as a grange to the medieval Wenlock Priory . It has since been restored as a hotel . The house is ashlar built in two storeys to an L-shaped plan and is a Grade II* listed building. To the south west of the house is a 16th-century gatehouse which is separately grade I listed. Source: After
344-408: Is a viaduct carrying the railway that delivered coal to the now demolished Ironbridge Power Station . One of the two tracks is due to be taken over by Telford Steam Railway as part of its southern extension from Horsehay. The Museum's archaeology unit continues to investigate the earlier history of Coalbrookdale, and has recently excavated the remains of the 17th century cementation furnaces , near
387-413: Is separately grade II* listed. The house was partly tenanted by Abraham Darby I from 1709 until his death. After Basil Brooke's premature death in 1727 the house went into decline. Tenanted by a succession of gentleman and yeoman farmers it suffered from the ravages of coal mining. In 1880 it was described as ‘fast going to decay’ and ‘a scene of utter desolation’. Some repairs were made in 1904 but by
430-570: The Battle of Worcester . The house then had several hiding places but Wolfe advised the house was no longer safe for concealment and let the king stay overnight in a barn (now part of Upper House) while Wolfe and Penderel unsuccessfully scouted the Severn crossings which were patrolled by Parliamentary troops. Following this, the King and Penderal returned to the latter's home at Boscobel House , from where
473-570: The Dissolution of the Monasteries , the manor of Madeley was acquired in 1544 from Wenlock Priory by Sir Robert Brooke , afterwards Speaker of the House of Commons , who built his house there in 1553 on the site of an earlier monastic grange. The manor passed down in the Brooke family. In 1651 the house was occupied by a Roman Catholic, Francis Wolfe, when he received a visit from Charles II , accompanied by Richard Penderel , when escaping after
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#1732769480509516-469: The Irish Sea ice sheet dammed the river. The lake level rose until the water flowed through the hills to the south. This flow eroded a path through the hills, forming the gorge and permanently diverting the Severn southwards. The Gorge is a civil parish within the borough of Telford and Wrekin and the ceremonial county of Shropshire . It covers the part of Ironbridge Gorge that falls within
559-514: The Nine Years War , but not later than April 1703, the furnace blew up. It remained derelict until the arrival of Abraham Darby the Elder in 1709. However the forges remained in use. A brass works was built sometime before 1712 (possibly as early as 1706), but closed in 1714. In 1709, the first Abraham Darby rebuilt Coalbrookdale Furnace, and eventually used coke as his fuel. His business
602-714: The Peacock Fountain in Christchurch , New Zealand. The blast furnaces were closed down, perhaps as early as the 1820s, but the foundries remained in use. The Coalbrookdale Company became part of an alliance of ironfounding companies called Light Castings Limited. This was absorbed by Allied Ironfounders Limited in 1929. This was in turn taken over by Glynwed which has since become Aga Foodservice. The Coalbrookdale foundry closed in November 2017. Several of Coalbrookdale's industrial heritage sites are to be found on
645-685: The Shrewsbury Canal over the River Tern and was supported by cast-iron columns. Charles Bage designed and built the world's first multi-storey cast-iron-framed mill. It used only brick and iron, with no wood, to improve its fire-resistance. In the 19th century ornamental ironwork became a speciality. Ironbridge Gorge The Ironbridge Gorge is a deep gorge , containing the River Severn in Shropshire , England. It
688-647: The Telford and Wrekin Council Unitary Authority area and includes the settlements of Coalbrookdale , Coalport , Ironbridge , Jackfield and Lightmoor , but not Buildwas or Broseley which are in the Shropshire Council Unitary Authority area. It is divided into three parish wards : Coalport & Jackfield (2 councillors), Ironbridge Gorge (3 councillors) and Lightmoor (3 councillors). The Gorge Parish Council has its offices and holds its meetings at
731-399: The 1970s the hall range and garden walls were in a ruinous condition, the gatehouse was cracking and by 1977 none of the buildings were habitable. In 1973 Telford Development Corporation embarked on a restoration project, making the house structurally sound and weatherproof in 1976–79 and later partly dismantling and rebuilding the gatehouse. The property was later converted into a hotel under
774-527: The Company began to produce the first cast-iron rails for railways . In 1778, Abraham Darby III undertook the building of the world's first cast-iron bridge, the iconic Iron Bridge , opened 1 January 1781. The fame of this bridge leads many people today to associate the iron-making part of the Industrial Revolution with the neighbouring village of Ironbridge , but in fact most of the work
817-672: The Company in 1959. This became part of a larger project, the Ironbridge Gorge Museums . Its Museum of Iron is based in the Great Warehouse constructed in 1838 and Ironbridge Institute is based in the Long Warehouse, these two form the sides of an open space. On another side of which is the Old Blast Furnace, now under a building (erected in 1981) to protect it from the weather. The fourth side
860-401: The Company operated a forge at Coalbrookdale but this was not profitable. In about 1754, renewed experiments took place with the application of coke pig iron to the production of bar iron in charcoal finery forges . This proved to be a success, and led to the partners building new furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley . This was the beginning of a great expansion in coke ironmaking. In 1767,
903-544: The Iron Bridge, by William Reynolds and John Rose, producing Coalport porcelain. In 1802, the Coalbrookdale Company built a rail locomotive for Richard Trevethick , but little is known about it, including whether or not it actually ran. The death of a company workman in an accident involving the engine is said to have caused the company to not proceed to running it on their existing railway. To date,
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#1732769480509946-421: The Iron Bridge. It is unclear whether the date on one of the lower ones should be 1638 (as it is now painted) or 1658 (as shown on an old photo). The interior profile of the furnace is typical of its period, bulging around the middle, below which the boshes taper in again so that the charge descends into a narrower and hotter hearth, where the iron was molten. When Abraham Darby III enlarged the furnace, he only made
989-484: The King subsequently headed for exile in France. In 1727 Basil Brooke died a minor and the manor was divided between his two sisters, Catherine and Rose. When Catherine died her half passed to her husband John Unett Smitheman and from him to their son John who sold it in 1774 to Abraham Darby III . In 1781 Darby sold it to his former brother-in-law Richard Reynolds , his partner in the Coalbrookdale Company. Rose's half
1032-680: The Maws Craft Centre in Jackfield. The population of this civil parish at the 2011 census was 3,275. Women in the Ironbridge Gorge ward had the third lowest life expectancy at birth, 74 years, of any ward in England and Wales in 2016. Green Wood Centre has spent over twenty years training new coppice and woodland workers, with the aim of reviving the coppicing industry. Severn Gorge Countryside Trust manages most of
1075-444: The boshes wider on the front and left sides, but not on the right where doing so would have entailed moving the water wheel. The mouth of the furnace is thus off-centre. Iron was now being made in large quantities for many customers. In the 1720s and 1730s, its main products were cast-iron cooking pots, kettles and other domestic articles. It also cast the cylinders for steam engines , and pig iron for use by other foundries . In
1118-410: The first iron bridge of its kind in the world, and a monument to the industry that began there. The bridge was built in 1779 to link the industrial town of Broseley with the smaller mining town of Madeley and the growing industrial centre of Coalbrookdale . There are two reasons the site was so useful to the early industrialists. The raw materials, coal , iron ore , limestone and clay , for
1161-477: The house Dale End which became home to succeeding generations of the family in Coalbrookdale – followed quickly by his widow Mary. The partnership was dissolved before Mary's death, Baylies taking over Vale Royal. After Mary's death, Baylies had difficulty extracting his capital. The works then passed to a company led by his fellow Quaker Thomas Goldney II of Bristol and managed by Richard Ford (also
1204-540: The ironworks were operated by Lawrence Wellington, but a few years after the furnace was occupied by Shadrach Fox. He renewed the lease in 1696, letting the Great Forge and Plate Forge to Wellington. Some evidence may suggest that Shadrach Fox smelted iron with mineral coal, though this remains controversial. Fox was evidently an iron founder , as he supplied round shot and grenade shells to the Board of Ordnance during
1247-461: The late 18th century, it sometimes produced structural ironwork, including for Buildwas Bridge. This was built in 1795, 2 miles up the river from the original Ironbridge. Due to advances in technology, it used only half as much cast iron despite being 30 feet (9 m) wider than the Ironbridge. The year after that, in 1796, Thomas Telford began a new project, Longdon-on-Tern Aqueduct . It carried
1290-640: The local trail: including: Coalbrookdale railway station , the Quaker Burial Ground, the Darby Houses, Tea Kettle Row and the Great Western Railway Viaduct. In the century after the Old Blast Furnace closed, it became buried. There was a proposal for the site to be cleared and the furnace dismantled, but instead, it was decided to excavate and preserve it. It and a small museum were opened to celebrate 250 years of
1333-509: The locomotive ran on a plateway with a track gauge of 3 ft ( 914 mm ). This was two years before Trevethick's first engine to tow a train was run at Penydarren in south Wales. In the 19th century, Coalbrookdale was noted for its decorative ironwork. It is here (for example) that the gates of London's Hyde Park were built. Other examples include the Coalbrookdale verandah at St John's in Monmouth , Wales, and as far away as
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1376-549: The manor on trustees, the leading trustee being the Revd. C. R. Ball, locally reputed lord of the manor. The manor remained in the hands of the Ball trustees for the rest of its existence, probably until c. 1940; it became the custom to appoint two trustees from the Revd. A. W. Ball's descendants, two from those of his brother Canon C. R. Ball. Canon Ball died in 1918, the leading trustee thereafter apparently being his nephew E. A. R. Ball (d. 1928). The land on which Madeley Court stands
1419-477: The manufacture of iron , tiles and porcelain are exposed or easily mined in the gorge. The deep and wide river allowed easy transport of products to the sea at Bristol Channel . The gorge carries the River Severn south towards the Bristol Channel . It was formed during the last ice age when the water from the previously north-flowing river became trapped in a lake ( Lake Lapworth ) created when
1462-487: The only known information about it comes from a drawing preserved at the Science Museum, London , together with a letter written by Trevithick to his friend Davies Giddy . The design incorporated a single horizontal cylinder enclosed in a return-flue boiler . A flywheel drove the wheels on one side through spur gears , and the axles were mounted directly on the boiler, with no frame. The drawing indicates that
1505-514: The site of the Upper (formerly Middle) Forge . The Old Furnace began life as a typical blast furnace, but went over to coke in 1709. Abraham Darby I used it to cast pots, kettles and other goods. His grandson Abraham Darby III smelted the iron here for the first Ironbridge , the world's first iron bridge. The lintels of the furnace bear dated inscriptions. The uppermost reads "Abraham Darby 1777", probably recording its enlargement for casting
1548-550: The valley. As it contained far fewer impurities than normal coal, the iron it produced was of a superior quality. Along with many other industrial developments that were going on in other parts of the country, this discovery was a major factor in the growing industrialisation of Britain, which was to become known as the Industrial Revolution . Today, Coalbrookdale is home to the Ironbridge Institute ,
1591-570: The woodland, grassland and other countryside within the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site, around 260 hectares (640 acres) in all. BTCV 's Green Gym works with the trust to assist them on woodland work. Severn Gorge Countryside Trust and The Green Wood Centre run a joint volunteer project enabling local people to engage locally in activities such as coppicing, scrub removal, deer fencing, step building and woodland management. Madeley Court Madeley Court
1634-412: Was done at Coalbrookdale, as there was no settlement at Ironbridge in the eighteenth century. Expansion of Coalbrookdale's industrial facilities continued, with the development of sophisticated ponds and culverts to provide water power, and even Resolution , a water-returning beam engine to recirculate this water. In 1795, the first porcelain factory near Coalbrookdale was founded at Coalport, east of
1677-512: Was first formed by a glacial overflow from the long drained away Lake Lapworth , at the end of the last ice age . The deep exposure of the rocks cut through by the gorge exposed commercial deposits of coal , iron ore , limestone and fireclay , which enabled the rapid economic development of the area during the early Industrial Revolution . Originally called the Severn Gorge , the gorge now takes its name from its famous Iron Bridge ,
1720-400: Was separated from the manor in 1540. The earliest part of the building dates from the 13th century and was occupied by a variety of tenants until John Brooke, son of Sir Robert, inherited it c.1572. He renovated and extended it and further remodelling took place in the 17th century. A large formal garden was created, surrounded by red brick walls, in which stands an elaborate sundial. The sundial
1763-570: Was sequestrated during the Civil War , but the works continued in use. In 1651, the manor was leased to Francis Wolfe, the clerk of the ironworks, and he and his son operated them as tenant of (or possibly manager for) Brooke's heirs. The surviving old blast furnace contains a cast-iron lintel bearing a date, which is currently painted as 1638, but an archive photograph has been found showing it as 1658. What ironworks existed at Coalbrookdale and from precisely what dates thus remains obscure. By 1688,
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1806-446: Was subdivided between her four daughters. By 1781, Richard Reynolds had gradually acquired those portions as well, thus reuniting the holding under one name in 1780–81. Eminent as Quaker philanthropist and ironmaster, Reynolds died in 1816. His real property then descended to his son Joseph and his daughter Hannah Mary Rathbone. In 1824, on the partition of the inheritance, Madeley came to Joseph who conveyed it to his three sons in 1853:
1849-461: Was that of an ironfounder, making cast-iron pots and other goods, an activity in which he was particularly successful because of his patented foundry method, which enabled him to produce cheaper pots than his rivals. Coalbrookdale has been claimed as the home of the world's first coke-fired blast furnace ; this is not strictly correct, but it was the first in Europe to operate successfully for more than
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