Making Brass - The history of industry in the Dudley borough

Making Brass
The history of industry in the Dudley borough
D
udley was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Situated on
vast reserves of coal close to one of the most populous cities of England, and with ever-improving transport
infrastructure to connect it to the rest of the country, Dudley rapidly became an industrial centre. Although many
of the traditional industries on which Dudley was built have now become part of history, their impact upon the
landscape, culture and fabric of the borough was immense and can still be seen all around us.
The industrial Midlands was a true powerhouse
sitting at the centre of a vast array of trades
and industries. Just within the boundaries of
the Dudley borough, industrial production
centred on the trades of ironworking, mining,
brewing, nail-making, glassmaking, brick making,
chain making, munitions manufacture and many
others besides. All of these industries employed
large numbers of people and exported British
goods around the world. During the nineteenth
century, across the globe, in almost every
country, you could find goods and items forged
and produced in the Black Country, where
industrial expertise, especially in the chainmaking and glass working trades, was worldclass.
This great golden age of industrial production
in the Black Country was mirrored by similar
successes for British industry throughout the
industrial heartlands of the North of England
and Wales. Coal, iron and worked goods from
the South Wales valleys, and coal, cotton, iron
and textiles from Yorkshire and Lancashire,
supplied global markets with British goods.
Inevitably, many of the industries of this great
golden age peaked and a gradual decline set
in which was apparent, though not always
directly acknowledged, even in the early
twentieth century. The demands of two world
wars kept British industry heavily engaged and
ensured that the vital contribution of women
to Britain’s industrial successes finally began to
be recognised as the twentieth century wore
on. In the post-war period the decline of many
of Britain’s industries became more marked as
stiffening competition from overseas and sharp
falls in demand reduced markets for British
goods.
From the mid-1970s, Dudley has seen a huge
transformation as many of the forges and
works have closed. Light industry still thrives in
the borough but the days of the great industrial
works seem to have faded. Perhaps one of
the biggest symbols of this transformation has
been the building of the Merry Hill shopping
complex and the Waterfront on the former
Round Oak Steelworks site.
As industries declined and faded their archives
arrived here and this exhibition will showcase
several key industries that were at the heart of
Dudley’s industrial prosperity, ‘making brass’ for
the nation.
Below left: Forging an ingot into a propeller shaft.
Below right: Press forging a 35 ton ingot
Making Brass
Iron making
I
ron is produced by reducing the oxygen in iron ore to leave a useable, useful metal, which, when initially produced, is
known as ‘pig iron.’ This can be re-melted to produce other forms of iron such as cast iron (brittle, but easily-moulded,
corrosion-resistant and strong in compression) and wrought iron (strong in tension, resistant to fracturing but much
harder to produce in quantity in historical times).
Dudley eventually became famous for the mass production of wrought
iron but there were many technological hurdles to overcome before this
could happen, and cast iron was initially easier to produce in quantity.
In early history wrought iron could only be inefficiently produced, as
much of the molten metal would bond with the carbon fuel it was heated
on, leaving only a small portion of useful wrought iron behind for several
hours of hard work. Cast iron, being less pure, was therefore easier to
make in quantity for the time invested.
As the blast furnace was introduced from Europe around 1500 it
became possible to work iron ore more efficiently and produce several
hundredweight of cast iron in 24 hours. To do this however required the
use of large amounts of charcoal as a fuel, and wood was not plentiful
in the Black Country. Also, most early blast furnaces relied on water to
power the hammers which shaped the iron produced, and there were
not many suitable rivers in the region for this either. Despite sitting
on plentiful reserves of iron ore then, initially Dudley was not rapidly
industrialised.
All of this changed once it was discovered, by early industrialists such
as Dud Dudley and Abraham Darby, that if suitably prepared, coal could
be ‘coked’ to provide an alternative fuel source for the furnaces. With
the adoption of Darby’s coking method and Watt’s steam engine, forges
could be run on Dudley’s abundant coal supplies and no longer needed
to be set close to rivers for power. Finally, Henry Cort’s puddling furnace
revolutionised production of the purer wrought iron from pig iron, by
permitting a more controlled process. Cort separated the carbon fuel
(coal) from the molten metal in the furnace with a fire bridge. The molten
metal was stirred with a metal bar while the carbon in the ore reacted to
a controlled current of air in the furnace. Because the coal fuel was kept
separate from the molten metal throughout, much purer iron could be
made in much higher quantities than before. Wrought iron could now be
mass produced.
By 1790 these new technologies had become widely adopted in the
Black Country, and by 1796 there were 14 blast furnaces in the area. By
1806 this had increased to 35. At this time each could produce up to
fifty tons of wrought iron a week which was shipped along the canals to
towns such as Birmingham or Bristol and down the coast to London or
overseas.
By 1850 Dudley was producing thousands of tons of iron of all kinds per
year for domestic markets, bulk export and to serve secondary industries
such as chain and nail making.
Top left: Detail view of an order book, Somers Forge.
Top: Detail view of a section of the Puddlers Work Book, Somers Forge (WRI/1/6/7/1)
Above: Somers Forge Paybook, detail view (WRI/1/6/7/4)
Making Brass
Chain making
A
t the height of the Industrial Revolution Dudley was world-famous for its chain-making industry. Chain making was
carried out in Dudley initially on a cottage industry basis and the sight of a family forge turning out small quantities
of chain would have been a common one in the borough in the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries.
While the making of chain was commonly practised in the borough, it was
Noah Hingley who made commercial chain making Dudley’s predominant
industry. In 1820, Hingley contracted with a Liverpool ship owner to
create a 1 ½ inch diameter chain cable for the ship’s anchors. This was
very ambitious as cables of this size had seldom been produced in the
borough, but Hingley not only succeeded in creating the chain at his
forge in Netherton, but turned out a chain of exceptional quality. Further
orders were soon placed by other ship owners and Hingley’s success
encouraged other chain makers to begin turning cottage industries into
larger concerns.
Dudley soon garnered a reputation as a specialist centre for the
production of chain and anchor cables, and public testing stations were
established in Netherton to enable the strain-bearing capacity of chain
produced in the borough to be tested. This further cemented the area’s
burgeoning chain-making industry and by the turn of the twentieth
century huge volumes of chain were being produced in Dudley’s works
annually. Orders were placed by the great shipping lines of the day such as
P&O, Cunard and White Star Line, and the Royal Navy and various foreign
navies also contracted work in Dudley.
Perhaps one of the most famous anchor chains ever produced here
was for the RMS Titanic, which was completed to great celebration in
the town. Our archives also show orders to Dudley firms for anchor
chains for some of the most famous battleships in history such as the IJN
Haruna, which at the time of the order was one of the Japanese Navy’s
most advanced warships.
Above: Lloyd’s Proving House, Primrose Hill, Netherton.
Top right: Female chain makers at Cradley Heath.
Centre right: Men rolling the iron for making chain.
Bottom right: Titanic’s anchor being brought through the streets of Netherton.
Making Brass
Nail making
N
ail making, like many of the major Black Country industries, was initially carried out in Dudley as a small concern,
individual cottage industries run by farming families during the wintertime, and this is the situation described by
the earliest records of nail making in Dudley in the twelfth century. As with many of the other industries it took
technical innovation to enable true mass production to begin.
In the case of nail making this came about when Thomas Foley, himself
the son of a nail maker, opened his iron slitting mill on the River Stour
near Kinver. Slitting the iron ensured that the finished bar was ready for
immediate work and was of a standard size convenient for the production
of nails. This in turn simplified the production of nails which allowed for a
commensurate increase in the quantity of nails produced. Dudley became
a major centre of nail production in the Black Country and nail making
was also carried out in Old Hill and Halesowen.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century and throughout much of
the nineteenth century, demand for nails from America was enormous
due to the rapid expansion of houses and settlements there which
were predominantly made of wood. This did much to stimulate the nail
trade but it also stimulated the development of machinery that could
mass produce nails in order to meet the demand. A skilled nail maker
could turn out hundreds of nails an hour but nail cutting machines that
were developed in Birmingham in 1811 could exceed this volume of
production.
By 1830 the mass production of machine-made nails was causing difficulty
for traditional nail makers whose work was usually very poorly paid.
Nailmasters would frequently cut off the supply of iron and exploitative
middlemen called ‘foggers’ would then offer the poverty-stricken nailers
cut price iron to work with and then pay them in cheques that could
only be spent on the foggers’ own goods. Nailmasters and foggers would
often deliberately work hand in glove with each other to promote one
another’s interests and profits.
In the 1840s the situation was so dire that nailers and their families were
starving and when nail masters suddenly reduced wages by 20% they and
other Black Country nailers rioted and marched on Dudley. The army
eventually dispersed the rioters with cavalry cutting them down in the
streets. Nevertheless the nailers were determined to organise to protect
themselves against exploitation, eventually forming one of the growing
number of trade unions.
Left: Nail shop, Darby End.
Above Nail shop, Hermit Street, Upper Gornal
Making Brass
Glass making
I
f Dudley was famous for chain and nail-making, Stourbridge was famous for its glass manufacture. The history of glass
making in Stourbridge is a long one, dating to the early 1600s as artisans from the Lorraine area of France arrived in
Britain as contractors on large projects. Perhaps the most famous of these was Paul Tyzack, who, having completed an
order in the south of England, gradually worked his way to the Vale of Stour, setting up an early glass house there at
Colemans.
Dudley Archives holds many of the pattern
books for the great glass manufacturers of
Stourbridge, and ensures that their many
beautiful designs are preserved for posterity.
As with other early industrial industries, the
reliance of the glass trade on dwindling supplies
of wood for furnace fuel severely hampered its
development. Paul Tyzack was one of the first
glass makers to master the art of using pit coal
in the manufacturing process, which was a great
step forwards for the industry. In addition, the
clay underlying Stourbridge was found to be of
exceptional quality for use in glass making and,
given the easy abundance of coal in the area,
Stourbridge became a natural centre of the
industry.
By the mid 1600s Tyzack was producing
eighteen cases of glass a week, forty weeks
of the year, and had established himself as a
leading light in the industry. Other glass makers
set up glass houses in Amblecote, Wordsley and
Oldswinford and some began to specialise, with
Jeremiah Bague for example only producing
Far left: Glass blowing
Centre: Pot Room, Royal Brierley Crystal,
Below: Glass engraver at work ?
Bottom: Redhouse Glass Cone
glass vessels, as opposed to broad glass for
window making.
Early glass was often very cloudy in character
and improvements in processes were sought to
rectify this. Before the end of the seventeenth
century George Ravenscroft had pioneered the
use of lead in glass making which gave a much
more translucent end product, and Stourbridge
glass makers rapidly adopted its use.
By the mid nineteenth century the Stourbridge
glass industry was dominated by the
Richardsons of Wordsley, Greathead and
Green of Brettell Lane and Thomas Webb of
Amblecote. The glass produced by these firms
was of very high quality and they competed for
national and international recognition. Thomas
Webb’s firm won the Grand Prix for glass at
the 1878 Paris Exhibition and Stourbridge
glassware and crystal rapidly became world
renowned. Stourbridge became a centre of
cameo glass production, in which fused layers
of different coloured glass are etched through,
producing beautifully ornate and opulent
designs. So skilful were Stourbridge’s craftsmen
that they even replicated a famous Roman vase,
the Portland Vase, by hand. In a testament to
the area’s pre-eminence in English glassware
production, the Portland Vase was recently
restored by a small team of Stourbridge glass
workers.
Making Brass
Mining
D
udley sits on top of the South Staffordshire coalfield, and coal is known to have been mined here from at least the
thirteenth century. One of the great advantages Dudley held over other coal-mining areas in Britain was that one of
the best coal seams in the country, the so-called Ten Yard Seam, which was thirty feet thick in places, lay at or very
near the surface. While in other areas it was frequently necessary to expend considerable labour in mining a deep
shaft to access the coal, in the area around Dudley pits were rarely deeper than 500 feet.
to growing clamours for reforms and improved
safety measures, with the 1880s seeing 11,349
miners killed in accidents, of which 2,686 were
killed in mine explosions.
By the turn of the century safety standards in
mines were gradually beginning to improve and
death tolls from accidents in the mines began
to drop. Nonetheless, mining always remained a
difficult physical job but without which almost
all of the manufacturing processes that made
the Black Country great could not have been
carried out.
By 1665 there were fourteen pits within ten
miles of Dudley, mining an average of 3,000
to 5,000 tons per year. With the onset of
the Industrial Revolution and the discovery
that coking pit coal could be used instead of
charcoal as a blast furnace fuel, demand for
Black Country coal to feed the burgeoning
secondary industries, such as chain making,
ironworking and glass making, rapidly increased.
The average coal mine in the Dudley area
was run on quite a small scale. In 1843, 69
pits locally provided work for 1932 men, with
an average of 28 per pit. This is quite a small
number compared with collieries in the North
of England which might employ hundreds of
men at any one time.
The 1870s were a boom time for mining in
the Dudley area with around nine million tons
of coal mined in 1872. Because of the shallow
depth at which coal around Dudley could be
found it was usually the case that mine owners
decided simply to start another shaft once
the easier-to-access coal had been won in
an earlier shaft, meaning that pit heads were
often as little as 300 yards apart and generally
shallow. This also meant however that the
Top left: Plan of Woodside Colliery
Left: Detail view of a plan of Park Head Colliery,
Above: Colliery accident book, detail view.
Below: Pit bottom, Baggeridge Colliery.
South Staffordshire mining
area gradually became less productive, such
that by 1913 only 3 million tons were being
mined annually. Baggeridge Colliery was an
attempt to address this and was a rare example
of a deep mine in the area.
Mining was dirty, dangerous and difficult work,
and working conditions for miners were often
very poor. Initially miners were expected to
use their own wages to buy their own working
and safety equipment, and British coal mine
owners were generally much slower to provide
safety equipment than those on the Continent.
The heavy death toll of miners, especially
towards the end of the nineteenth century, led