Nestled in a quiet wooded valley near the modern town of Telford in the English Midlands is the birthplace of the industrial revolution.
Today the three quiet villages — Coalbrookdale, Coalport and Ironbridge are quaint little communities but two hundred years ago they were the powerhouse of the Industrial revolution.
Coal and ironstone mining in the district started in medieval times with the locals having a wide range of words to describe different types of coal — Lancashire Ladies, Randle and Clod being just a few terms.
Iron had been smelted at Coalbrookdale from the late 16th Century however the arrival of potmaker Abraham Darby in 1709 that catalysed the industry with his method to reliably use coke for the blast furnaces.
Further downstream, the Madeley Wood smelter became infamous as the bedlam furnaces, named after the noise and confusion of London’s notorious asylum.
With the new reliable way to smelt iron and a string of blast furnaces along the valley, production skyrocketed and the valley’s natural advantages of accessible coal, iron and water meant it became the centre of the industrial revolution.
Increased production meant more workers and people flocked in from the surrounding agricultural communities — not in a dissimilar way to today’s experience in China.
That increased population meant more slums, what is today’s cute village was once sqaulid poverty, albeit an improvement on the life of an agricultural worker. Epidemics were common with 32,000 lives lost in cholera in 1831-2.
Despite the squalor of the workers’ quarters, the ironmasters were proud men and Coalbrookdale’s new bridge could only be build of one material — iron.
Ironmasters like John Wilkinson and Abraham Derby III were also ferocious promotors of their product and the bridge stands as a proud, strong advert for the strength of Coalbrookdale’s iron. Wilkinson himself built the first cast iron barge a few years later and was eventually buried in a cast iron coffin.
Eventually though the smelters of Coalbrookdale began to lose their competitive edge as mining and blast furnace technology improved, the ironmasters responded with moving into decorative and intricate cast iron features like the Boy and Swan statue that now graces the gardens of the Coalbrookdale Iron Museum.
Despite their successes, Coalbrookdale’s slide continued, with coal production peaking in 1871 and a steady decline over the following century.
Today, there’s not a lot of industry in Coalbrookdale except for one plant that keeps the area’s engineering tradition running.
For Britain, the question is how the nation’s economy continues it’s engineering traditions, 45 minutes drive away is a relic of Twentieth Century industry — the Austin motor works at Longbridge.
Today an assembly plant fills a small corner of the formerly sprawling factory site and over it flies the flag of it’s new owners. The People’s Republic of China.
We live in interesting times.
