“THE KING OF THE
IRONMASTERS” by Wayne Turner
(Journal No.1, 1973 republished in Journal 7, 1979)
There are probably more legends surrounding the name
of John Wilkinson than that of any other industrialist, either of his own time or since: born in
a market cart, later a discoverer of coal-gas, coal-tar, the coke-smelting
process in iron, improver of steam-engines, and even (in one learned
encyclopaedia) the builder of the famous Iron Bridge. The fact that few of these
tales have any basis of truth must not, however, obscure the fact that
Wilkinson’s achievements were immense. He was, of course, what we in Britain
call a “character”; he was also his own publicity agent and would be the
last one to disagree with anyone who laid extravagant claims to his inventive
genius. One notion that Wilkinson himself never claimed was the foundation of
the “Wilkinson Sword” Company, a firm with which he had nothing to do,
despite popular belief to the contrary
Whilst remembering the fact
that Wilkinson had an enormous industrial “empire” around which he
circulated his own coinage (minted at Soho, not in Broseley, I hasten to add),
it is with his doings in the Broseley area that this short article is concerned.
Nevertheless, let us not forget the “chief cities” of his “empire”,
before looking at his work in the Broseley region; Bersham, Bradley, Hadley,
Hollinswood, Snedshill and Brymbo, where he ran extensive and important
ironworks; Castlehead and Brymbo, where his agricultural improvements drew forth
much contemporary praise from farming experts of the day; his ventures in copper
and his big lead concerns at Buckley, and around Minera, Brymbo and Mold, as
well as at Rotherhithe; his important share-holdings in three or four canals,
and his banking enterprises. Add, too, that in his seventies he sired three
children by his housekeeper at Brymbo Hall and one has at least a somewhat
remarkable man
Before settling at “The
Lawns” in Broseley, Wilkinson had been an iron merchant in Cumberland and an
ironmaster under his father at Bersham. When he arrived at Broseley in 1757, it
was to join several Bristol and Shropshire businessmen in the taking out of a
lease from Lord Forester on a furnace site at Willey. This was confirmed in a
further lease of 1759, where it appears that Wilkinson was to be a kind of
technical adviser to a company, which would specialize in the manufacture of
guns for Board of Ordnance contracts, Britain having in the meantime gone to war
with France. It is said that Wilkinson swindled his Willey partners by informing
them that the whole venture was a waste of money: the partners therefore sold
their shares cheaply and quickly to the ironmaster, who then unearthed a store
of good-quality iron which he had buried under Willey, and sold it at a goodly
profit! Wilkinson had arrived at Willey as a widower, with a small daughter who
was being brought up in Shrewsbury, but in 1763 he married a Wroxeter lady of 40
and settled at “The Lawns”
In 1774, Wilkinson patented a
new type of cannon-borer, an engine with which he could bore iron with
astonishing accuracy. His skill as a caster and borer brought him to the notice
of James Watt and the latter’s partner, Boulton, whom Wilkinson already knew.
Wilkinson now produced a cylinder-borer and, in doing so, provided Watt with
cylinders “bored to truth”. This was the answer to perhaps the most
difficult of Watt’s problems, and with this skill the Broseley ironmaster was
to make himself indispensable to the Soho partners, who insisted that all of
their engine parts should he made by, and bought from, Wilkinson. The second
Watt engine was assembled at Willey, where most of the parts had been bored and
fashioned. Watt himself came to look over the workmanship and the setting up of
the engine, staying with the ironmaster at “The Lawns”. He expressed his
complete satisfaction with Wilkinson’s results and in 1776 the finished engine
was working at what Wilkinson had termed, since his acquiring control in 1763,
the New Willey Company. It was set up to blow his blast furnace at Willey, the
first use for a steam- engine other than raising water, whether for pumping or
fountains or providing water for wheels to work bellows.
Between 1768 and 1770
Wilkinson set up a new ironworks, this time at Bradley, near Bilston, in
Staffordshire. Here he had another mansion as well as coalmines and blast
furnaces, in which he used coke, as he had at Bersham. In time, this became his
mightiest ironworks. At Bradley in 1782 - 83 he set up another “first”, in
this case a steam-powered forge-hammer, driven by the new ‘Sun and Planet’
gear. Another house purchase was made in 1778 - 79, this time a solitary, marine
residence at Castlehead, near Grange (N. Lancs.) on a piece of marshy land which
became an island at high tide.
In 1779, Wilkinson’s name
appears as one of the chief shareholders in the Iron Bridge project over the
River Severn, connecting the two parishes of Broseley and Madeley. In 1787, the
ironmaster produced the world’s first iron boat; it was a long narrow barge,
made at the Willey ironworks and launched at the Willey Wharf to a salute from
Wilkinson’s Willey guns. Other such boats appeared from Wilkinson, mostly for
use on the canal near Bradley.
At about this time, too, he
completed what was surely one of his most gigantic tasks, that of casting and
making 40 miles of cast-iron piping for the Paris Waterworks. Some of these
pipes were made at Willey, where they were taken down Wilkinson’s Tarbach
Dingle tramway to the wharf on the Severn and from there to the trans-shipment
port of Chepstow. Other pipes were made at Bersham from whence they went
overland to Chester and from there by sea to Chepstow.
In the 1790’s Wilkinson’s
terrible fraternal war took place with his brother, William; and one of the
results of this was that William informed Boulton and Watt that his elder
brother had been erecting Watt-type steam-engines, not only for himself, but for
other customers both at home and abroad, unfortunately without premiums!
After a long, undignified period of wrangling, Wilkinson had to pay up,
much to his annoyance, for, rightly or wrongly, he considered that his part in
the eventual success of the steam-engine had been at least as important as
Boulton’s had been. The end of the century found him spending more and more
time between Bradley and his new ironworks (acquired in 1792) on the rich Brymbo
Estate in North Wales, not far from Bersham, which seemed to be declining in
importance. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1800 he leased his Broseley
home to John Rose, the famous Coalport China manufacturer.
In 1804, with Snedshill and
Hollinswood having been relinquished some years earlier (1793/97), Wilkinson
began producing iron again in that area, on the New Hadley Estate, acquired in
1791. By now Wilkinson was a father again: his housekeeper at Brymbo Hall
produced three children between 1802 and 1806. His appointed heir, however, was
his nephew, Thomas Jones; provided, of course, that he took the name of
Wilkinson - which he did! In 1808, the mightiest ironmaster of the day died at
his home in Bradley and he was buried, after several attempts, in his huge
cast-iron coffin in the front garden of his home at Castlehead. The grave was
surmounted by a tall obelisk, also of cast-iron, on which was inscribed his own
epitaph, or at least a watered-down version of the somewhat vitriolic original!
In the years between 1812 and
1817 the Wilkinson empire was brought down in ruins through useless,
unprofitable litigation, largely the work of his heir and nephew. In 1828, his
coffin and obelisk were removed to the village of Lindale, in order to expedite
the sale of his former house, and the end was complete.
Before his death, Wilkinson had threatened his Bradley workers that, seven years to the day after his death, he would come back to see his beloved furnaces, mounted on his big grey. It is surely a testimony to the power of the man’s personality to read in the faded press notice of July 1815, that several thousands turned up to see their former squire and master! Thomas Telford had recognised his stature. When he went to discuss the plans for the new Ellesmere Canal in October 1793 he wrote: “I had the support of the great John Wilkinson, King of the Ironmasters."
“King of the Ironmasters” – comments by
L.F.
Peltor, Bridgnorth (Nov.1979) – Journal 8, 1980
Further to the article in Journal No.7 (1979), I enclose
some notes on the Wilkinson family and its connections, and a correction.
John Wilkinson’s father, Isaac (died 1784), of Clifton,
near Workington, was a small farmer and also a pot founder with Backbarrow
Company, Colton in Furness. He was described as “shrewd and intelligent” -
this is illustrated both by the patent he took out for a laundress’s box iron,
and by his sending John to be educated at a dissenters’ academy at Kendal, run
by Caleb Rotherham, D.D. (Edinburgh). Rotherham (1694 - 1752) was born at Great
Salkeld, near Penrith, and became the friend and correspondent of Dr. Joseph
Priestley. These two dissenting divines would obviously greatly influence
Wilkinson’s well-known heterodox beliefs.
Miss Jessica Lofthouse, in
‘The Curious Traveller through Lakeland’, states that John built or bought
his own little forge and furnace down the Winster river at Wilson House, near
Lindale. From the Winster mosses he dug peat to use in smelting haematite ore.
For ease in transport he cut a canal into the turbary and used a shallow
turf-carrying boat. Tradition says he made an iron boat, the first of its kind,
for this work. One was seen to sink in Helton Pool, a small tarn in which, they
say, the “first iron ship was tried out”. But when ‘The Trial’ was
launched on the Severn in 1787, the Winster folk who had jeered “How dosta
think iron’ll float ?" were silenced.
John’ s brother, William
(1743 - 1808), was educated at the Unitarian academy in Warrington where Dr.
Priestley was a tutor. He too became an ironmaster. Their sister, Mary (1744 -
96), married, in 1762, Joseph Priestley, LL.D. (Edinburgh), F.S.A.
(1733 - 1804), who was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds. He was a dissenting
minister, and a man of science who discovered oxygen. Mary has been described by
one authority as Isaac’s only daughter, but there seems to have been another,
Sarah (1745 - 1808), who married Thomas Jones, a surgeon of Leeds; John’s
nephew and appointed heir was presumably their son.
In 1755 John married Anne
(1733-56), daughter of the Rev. Thomas Mawdesley of Mawdesley Hall, Croston (Lancs),
and Margaret (née Godsalve), whose grandfather was a merchant of Amsterdam.
Ann’s sister, Margaret (1753-1812), married John Wilson Robinson, Mayor of
Kendal, 1756/7. Anne dying at the early age of 23, John later married Mary Lee,
of Wroxeter (1723 - 1806). He had a daughter by his first wife but no issue is
recorded of his second marriage. However, by Ann Lewis, his housekeeper, John
had three illegitimate children - Mary Anne, Johnina and John. These three later
assumed by Royal Licence the name Wilkinson, and in 1808 were granted arms as
follows :-
Mary
Anne:- gu1es a fess compony azure and argent cotised between 3
unicorns passant of the last, in centre chief point the chemical character of
Mars (i.e. Iron) or; a bordure wavy ermine;
Johnina:-
as above, but the bordure erminois;
John
:- as above, but the bordure gold.
The Crest in each case was - a mount vert thereon a
greyhound sejant argent collared compony azure and argent, the dexter paw
resting on a bezant charged with the chemical character of Saturn (i.e. Lead)
sable.
With reference to Wilkinson’s arrival in this area in 1757 (p.2. paragraph 3) the lease on a furnace site at Willey was taken out from George Forester, Esq., (1735 - 1811), the ‘Bachelor Squire’ whose exploits were recorded by John Randall in ‘Old Sports and Sportsmen, or the Willey Country’. George’ s cousin Cecil Forester inherited the Willey estate, taking the surname Weld-Forester, and was created the first Baron Forester in 1821.