PIONEER OF THE BRASS INDUSTRY
Fired by the genius of Abraham Darby and financed by his Quaker partners, industrialisation came early to Bristol. We find out why, 300 years ago, the brass industry was so important.
On November 30, 1706 - almost 300 years ago to the day - eight Quaker businessmen drew up a deed of partnership to establish a Bristol brass company.Prepared to find the extra £6,000 necessary to get the business off the ground were a cidermaker, a vintner, a pewterer, a needlemaker and a maltmill-maker by the name of Abraham Darby.
Darby wasn't a West Country man - his family, Quaker farmers and nailmakers, came from near Dudley in the Midlands. After working as an apprentice in a Birmingham maltmill business, Darby decided to set up a works of his own in Bristol. Edward Lloyd, a Bristol Quaker and cidermaker, was one of five partners who, in 1700, unsuccessfully petitioned the Privy Council for permission to set up a brass works in the city.
Darby was not one of them but, as a fellow Bristol businessman, came into contact with Lloyd through his Quaker apprentice John Thomas. The early years of Darby's business are not well documented, but we know that by 1702/3 he was concerned with brass production, possibly to make components for his maltmills.
He couldn't have chosen a better place. Apart from the commercial possibilities of the city, the local copper smelters, at Crew's Hole and Conham, were seeking new markets and calamine, a mineral needed to make brass, was easily available from the Mendips. Darby, who wanted men skilled at working the metal using water power, travelled to Holland to hire Dutch workmen. He then set up a works at Baptist Mills, just outside the city on the river Frome.
Three hundred years ago, the casting of cannons, church bells and the like in sand or earth was a very specialised craft, not used by brass makers. Instead, flat plates were made by pouring the molten metal into moulds made from large, virtually indestructible, slabs of granite.
These plates, beaten into thin sheets by the skillful use of water-powered hammers, were then used to make 'battery' - hollow ware vessels such as pots and pans. Although, in many parts of the country, this last part of the operation was done by hand, in Bristol it was also done using water power. Many of the finished goods were exported from Bristol to the West Indies for use in the plantations.
Within a few years, some of the Dutch workers were moved from Baptist Mills to a more reliable site on the river Avon at Keynsham. In January 1708, John Buck, a brassworker, registered the birth of his son at the parish church. A month later there was another birth, this time in the Steger family. At the time of the formal Quaker partnership of 1706, Darby, described as the company's 'active man', was becoming interested in making hollow ware vessels out of iron rather than brass.
If it could be effectively done, he reasoned, it would make the goods a lot cheaper. Hannah Rose, the daughter of Darby's apprentice, was to write later: 'After some time he (Darby) had a mind to set the Dutchmen to try and cast iron pots in sand. 'They tried several times but could not do it, so he was at a great loss in paying wages for no result.
'At length, John Thomas, my father, then a young man who came on trial to learn the trade of malt mill making, seeing the Dutchmen try and . . . not bring to perfection, asked his master to let him try. 'So with his leave he did it, and afterwards his Master and him were bound in Articles in the year 1707 that John Thomas should be bound to work at their business and keep it secret and not teach anybody else for three years.
'They were so private as to stop the keyhole of the door.'
But Darby, finding his partners in the brass works unwilling to work with iron, decided, in 1708, to pull out of the partnership and set up a foundry of his own.
Establishing himself in Cheese Lane, by the river and near the Pip 'n Jay church in St Philips, the ironmaster worked alone until joined by two partners in 1710.
By this time, Darby had taken over an established works in Coalbrookdale. Here, instead of utilising charcoal, the traditional fuel, in his blast furnace, he began using coke made from low sulphur coal. Where others had failed, Darby had succeeded. A turning point in the use of coal, it helped put Britain at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
It's been suggested that the pioneer utilised knowledge he had gained working with maltmills - the malt trade had been one of the first industries to use coked pit coal as a fuel. Further speculation by industrial archaeologists is that Darby first experimented with low sulphur coal - abundantly available in Bristol - in place of charcoal in his brass works at Baptist Mills.
It was estimated that 400 horseloads of coal per week were used by the Bristol brass works between 1710 and 1712. After Darby had withdrawn to Coalbrookdale the brass company - now known as the Brass and Battery Work at Bristol - continued to thrive, although we don't know who took over as the 'active man'.
Brassware continued to be made using water power from the Avon for more than 300 years. Many of the Dutch workers, the Crinks, Craymers, Frays and Ollises, stayed and settled in the Avon valley.
As more modern processes were introduced to Birmingham factories, these were ignored in the South West. The battery hammers at Saltford finally stopped, overtaken by progress, in 1908. When Keynsham's Avon Mill closed some 20 years later it really was the end. But, through Abraham Darby, Bristol can justifiably claim to have helped launch the iron industry - a process vital to the success of the forthcoming industrial revoltion.
Brunel was grateful. When the ss Great Britain was being constructed, her large iron plates came from the thriving Coalbrookdale works. If you would like to make a group visit Saltford Brass Mill - it opens from time to time throughout the summer - ring Joan Day on 0117 986 2216.
Where there's mud there's brass: The ancient brass mills at Saltford can still be visited.
