Blood, Faith and Iron: A dynasty of Catholic industrialists in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England

Paul Belford

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781789690682
• eBook ISBN: 9781789690699
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Ironbridge Gorge is an iconic industrial landscape, presented as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and so part of a national narrative of heroic Protestant individualism. However this is not the full story. In fact this industrial landscape was created by an entrepreneurial Catholic dynasty over 200 years before the Iron Bridge was built. This book tells that story for the first time. Acquiring land at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Brooke family invested in coal mining and iron production – and introduced a radical new method of steelmaking which transformed that industry. Drawing together years of painstaking archaeological and historical research, this book looks in detail at the landscape, buildings and industrial installations created by the Brooke dynasty between the Dissolution and the English Civil War. It also explores the broader contexts – religious, economic and political – which shaped their mind-set and their actions. It considers medieval influences on these later developments, and looks at how the Brookes' Catholicism was reflected in the way they created a new industrial landscape. In so doing it questions traditional narratives of English industrialisation, and calls for a more sophisticated understanding of this period by historical archaeologists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Information
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Figure 1. Location of the study area. Top left: the British Isles, with the United Kingdom shaded. Top right: the English West Midlands and Welsh border area showing the River Severn and its principal tributaries. The England-Wales border is shown as a da
• Lines of Enquiry
• Before the Revolution
• Figure 2. Simplified geology of north-east Shropshire. Drawing by Paul Belford,
• after Toghill, Geology in Shropshire, Figure 4.
• Figure 3. Map of the study area showing principal features, settlements and place names during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. East is at the top. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 4. The landscape of medieval Madeley. As discussed in the text, the paucity of field and cartographic evidence means that this map is to some extent conjectural.The areas of arable land suggested here have been derived largely from field names and
• Figure 6. 6-9 Church Street, Madeley. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figures 5. ‘The Little Hay’, Madeley. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 7. Industrial assets of Much Wenlock Priory in the later middle ages. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Society and Religion
• Figure 8. Claverley. Early thirteenth-century wall paintings in the church. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 9. Views of Robert Brooke’s memorial in Claverley Church. Top: detail of the effigies, with Robert Brooke in the centre flanked by his two wives. Bottom left: general view of the tomb from the north side, showing the descendants arranged around the
• Photographs by Paul Belford.
• Figure 10. John Brooke and Anne Shirley as depicted on the Claverley tomb. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 11. The Madeley memorials of Anne and John Brooke. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 12 The Madeley memorials of Etheldreda and Basil Brooke. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Visions of Landscape
• Figure 13. A pond, or not. The lower of the two balancing pools at Madeley Court, looking south with the house on the right-ha d side of the photograph. The existence of this pool before the mid-nineteenth century cannot be confirmed; the hills beyond the
• Figure 14. Madeley Court gardens in the early seventeenth century, showing a conjectural arrangements of suggested ‘compartime ts’. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 15. The Madeley Court sundial: two views views showing its relationship to the house and garden. Top: the western face, looking south-east. In the seventeenth century the west wing of the house would have lined the eastern edge of the garden. The b
• Figure 16. The four faces of the Madeley Court sundial. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 17. The possible extent of the Madeley park, and routes through the landscape, during the first part of the seventeenth century. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 18. The Wrekin perceived from ground level in the twenty-first century. Looking west from the high point of Park Lane, on the western edge of Madeley. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Expressions in Architecture
• Figure 19. Madeley Court: Phases 1 and 2. New buildings are shaded dark grey. Drawing by Paul Belford, after Moffett and Meeso ‘Madeley Court’, Figure 20. See also footnote 26 on page 106.
• Figure 20. Madeley Court: Phase 3. New buildings are shaded dark grey. Drawing by Paul Belford, after Moffett and Meeson ‘Madeley Court’, Figure 20. See also footnote 26 on page 106.
• Figure 21. Madeley Court: the main house viewed from the gatehouse, across the relict courtyard. The north range is facing the camera. The western end of the north range was rebuilt after the demolition of the west range. The side-facing porch is also evi
• Figure 22. Madeley Court: the gatehouse. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 23. Architecture by Walter Hancock. Left: Shrewsbury Market Hall. Right: Richard Herbert’s tomb in St. Nicholas’ Church, Montgomery. Photographs by Paul Belford.
• Figure 24. The Lodge. Left: phase plan. Right: south-facing elevation. Drawings by Paul Belford.
• Figure 25 The Lodge. Left: symbols carved into the first floor (top) and ground floor (bottom) fireplaces. Right: part of the wall painting on the first floor room. Photographs by Paul Belford.
• Figure 26. The Lodge. South-facing elevation. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 27. Upper House. Nouth-facing elevation. The tower of Madeley Church can be seen in the background to the left of the house. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 28. Upper House Barns, a Royal hiding-place in 1651. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 29. Upper House. Left: simplified phase plans of the complex (top) and the house (bottom). Right: north-facing elevation as existing (top) and conjectured appearance in the first half of the seventeenth century (bottom). Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 30. Boscobel House. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 31. Moreton Corbet Castle. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Industry and Conformity
• Figure 32. Process flow. A water-powered blast furnace and forges in sixteenth-century Sweden. Author’s collection.
• Figure 33. Fuel and mineral extraction in the Severn Gorge during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: sites mentioned in he text. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 34. Ironworking sites in Coalbrookdale during the sixteenth century. Later sites are in italics. Compare with Figure 50 on page 173, and Figure 51 on page 175. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 35. Coalbrookdale Lower Forge. Excavation of the waterwheel in 2015. The figure is standing in the waterwheel, with a g indstone to the left. Behind the waterwheel are the remains of the cast-iron sluice mechanism. Photograph © Clwyd-Powys Archaeol
• Figure 36. Coalbrookdale Lower Forge excavations in June 2015 showing culverts and walls relating to the eighteenth and nineteenth century use of the site. View from the former dam wall, looking west towards Dale Road. Photograph © Clwyd-Powys Archaeologi
• Figure 37. Coalbrookdale Lower Forge excavations: overall plan of the site and detail of the waterwheel and associated features. Redrawn by Paul Belford after original drawings by Sophie Watson for the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust. ©CPAT. Reproduced w
• Compare with Figure 53 on page 181.
• Figure 38. Iron production during the second half of the sixteenth century in England and Wales. Drawing by Paul Belford, using data from Peter King, The Iron Trade in England and Wales.
• Figure 39. Shropshire blast furnaces and forges in the sixteenth century. Compare with Figure 42 on page 162. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 40. Sixteenth century wheelpit excavated at Wednesbury Forge. Drawing by Paul Belford after an earlier version by Sophie Watson and Keith Hinton.
• Innovation and Resistance
• Figure 41. Cross-section and plans of a typical cementation steel furnace. Based on a nineteenth century Sheffield example illustrated in John Percy’s Metallurgy (1864). Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 42. Shropshire blast furnaces and forges in the seventeenth century. Compare with Figure 39 on page 147. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 43. Blast furnaces and forges in the Forest of Dean during the seventeenth century. The ‘King’s Ironworks’ comprised the sites at Cannop, Lydbrook, Parkend and Soudley. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 44. Excavations at the Madeley steelworks in August 2004, looking south-west. The ranging rod is on the brick base of the ashpit. The crouching figure in the background is in the south-west hearth access area. The seated figure in the foreground is
• Figure 45. Madeley steelworks, combined plan of archaeological excavations. Later features relate to nineteenth century teneme t housing, incorporating parts of the eighteenth century malthouse. The walls and furnaces of the steelworks are shaded. Drawing
• Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 46. Madeley steelworks: excavation plan of the northern furnace.
• Figure 47. Madley steelworks: the base of the northern furnace after excavation in 2005, looking south-east along the ashpits he from the north access area. The curved external face of the brickwork is the Phase 2 enlargement of the 1630s; the inner core
• Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 48. Derwentcote steel furnace. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Figure 49. The Madeley steelworks compared with later examples of cementation steelworks.
• Figure 50. Iron and steelworking sites in Coalbrookdale in the first half of the seventeenth century. Compare with Figure 34 o page 139, and Figure 51 on page 175. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 51. The impact of Basil Brooke’s steelworks on the landscape of Coabrookdale. Compare with Figure 34 on page 139, and Figure 50 on page 173. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 52. Reconstruction of the Madeley steelworks as it may have appeared shortly after construction. Drawing by Paul Belford.
• Figure 53. Iron production during the first half of the seventeenth century in England and Wales. Drawing by Paul Belford, usi g data from Peter King, The Iron Trade in England and Wales. Compare with Figure 38 on page 145.
• Industrialisation and Identity
• Figure 54. The view from The Lodge, looking north towards Buildwas. Photograph by Paul Belford.
• Conclusion
• Bibliography