Petitions were also presented to the Home Secretary; one from the fishermen themselves and another from the inhabitants. Of course these were from fishermen’s point of view. Those who are anxious that fish in the river should be increased, who think the protective provisions of the Act favour such increase, and who follow fishing more by way of sport and pastime, take very different views; they naturally look upon professional fishermen, men who lay night lines, and fish as a means of obtaining a livelihood, as enemies of legitimate sport. The object of protection is a laudable one, namely, that the means of innocent recreation, and the food of the people, may be increased; and eels are, there is no question, a more important article of food, so far as the people on the banks of the Severn are concerned, than Salmon, and that ten times over. Salmon can never be multiplied so as to come within the reach of the people generally. Eels, on the contrary, are an article of food with the poor, the middle classes, and the rich themselves. Moreover, they will bear comparison with any well-flavoured fish the Severn produces.
It is chiefly for eel fishing, by means of night lines, but sometimes also for fly-fishing for trout and other fish, that the coracle, that ancient British vessel, is still retained on the Severn. The men go down with the stream to lay their lines, and then carry their coracles over their heads and shoulders; so that looking at them from behind they look like huge beetles walking along the road.
Of fish unaffected by the obstructions enumerated may be mentioned the river’s pride—
“The crimson spotted trout
And beauty of the stream.”
But it must be sought for higher up or lower down the river, generally at the fords, and the embouchers of streams which come down to join the Severn, as Cound and Linley brooks. In deeper parts of the river too, near these places, good sized chub are found. But the chub is not much esteemed, although a fine fish, and, according to Izaak Walton, “proves excellent meat.” It grows to a large size, and may be caught in holes near Sweyney, where the bushes overhang such holes. Pike too are found here, but are more common about Buildwas and Cressage.
That handsome fish the roach, known by the dusky bluish green on head and back, with lighter shades on sides, its silvery white belly, and dorsal and caudal fins tinged with red, is also to be caught.
Dace, grayling, and perch, are met with, the latter congregating in holes of the river, or seen herding together hunting its prey. As Drayton says of—
“The dainty gudgeon, loche, the minnow, and the bleak,
Since they are little, I little need but speak.”
The former makes up for its small size by the daintiness of “meat.” Its favourite haunts are the swift flowing portions of the river, with pebbly and sandy bottoms. It is a ground feeder, greedy, and rushes at once to seek its prey, if you stir up the bed of the river. The bleak is about the size of the gudgeon, and is a quick biter.
From the peculiarities of its watershed the Severn is subject to sudden and unlooked for
To quote from our “History of Broseley”:—
In modern times these can to some extent be guarded against, as the news of any sudden extraordinary rise in the upper basin may be communicated to those living lower down. Formerly this could not be done; a flood would then travel faster than a letter, and coming down upon the villagers suddenly, perhaps in the night time, people would find the enemy had entered their households unawares. It was no unusual thing to see haystacks, cattle, timber, furniture, and, in one instance, we have heard old people tell of a child in a cradle, floating down the stream. Many of these floods are matters of tradition; others being associated with special events have been recorded. Shakespeare has commemorated one called “Buckingham’s Flood,” in his Richard III., thus:—
“The news I have to tell your majesty
Is,—that, by sudden floods and fall of waters
Buckingham’s army is dispersed and scatter’d
And he himself wandered away alone,
No man knows whither.”Proclaimed a traitor, and forsaken by his army, he concealed himself in the woods on the banks of the Severn and was betrayed and taken in Banister’s Coppice, near Belswardine.
The newspapers of 1785 record a sudden rise in the Severn and its disastrous results. It appears that on the 17th of December, 1794, the season was so mild that fruit-trees were in blossom, whilst early in January, 1795, so much ice filled the Severn after a rapid thaw as to do great damage. The river rose at Coalbrookdale 25¼ inches higher than it did in November, 1770. The rise in the night was so rapid that a number of the inhabitants were obliged to fly from their tenements, leaving their goods at the mercy of the floods. The publicans were great sufferers, the barrels being floated and the bungs giving way. In the Swan and White Hart, Ironbridge, the water was several feet deep. Two houses were washed away below the bridge, but the bridge itself stood the pressure, although Buildwas bridge blew up, the river having risen above the keystone in the centre of the main arch. Crowds visited the locality to see the flood and the ruins it had made.
On the Coalbrookdale Warehouse, and on a house by the side of the brook, the height of these floods are to be seen recorded. At Worcester, a little above the bridge, a brass plate has the following inscription:—“On the 12th February, 1795, the Flood rose to the lower edge of this plate.” The lower edge measures just three feet from the pavement level. Another plate at the archway opposite the Cathedral bears the following:—“On the 18th November, 1770, the Flood rose to the lower edge of this Brass Plate, being ten inches higher than the Flood which happened on December 23rd, 1672.” This measures seven feet from the ground immediately underneath.
There are three other marks which have been cut out the stonework on the wall adjacent to the archway referred to, which are as follows:—
“Feb. 8th, 1852.
Nov. 15th, 1852.
Aug. 5th, 1839.”The one in February measures from the ground six feet two inches; November, 1852, eight feet two inches; and the one August 5th, 1839, six feet two inches.
As an important part of the parish of Madeley, still more as a locality famous on account of its fine castings and other productions, Coalbrookdale is deserving of a much further notice than has incidentally been given on previous pages in speaking of the Darbys and Reynoldses. There are few people perhaps in the kingdom who have not heard or who do not know something of Coalbrookdale; and there are none, probably, who pass through it by rail who do not peer through the windows of the carriage to catch a passing glimpse of its more prominent features. These may be readily grouped, for the benefit of those who have not seen them, but who may read this book, as follows. In the trough of the valley lie the works, stretching along in the direction of the stream, formerly of more importance to the operations carried on in the various workshops than it is at present. Upon the slope of the hill on the south-eastern side the Church, the palatial looking Literary and Scientific Institute, built for the benefit of the workmen, meet the eye, and the more humble looking Methodist chapel. On both sides are goodly looking houses and villa-like residences, where dwell the men of directing minds; whilst here and there are thin sprinklings of workmen’s cottages—few in number compared with the hands employed. A few strips of grass land intervene, whilst above are wooded ridges with pleasant walks, and to the west some curiously rounded knolls, between which the Wellington and Craven Arms branch railway runs, sending down a siding for the accommodation of the works.
These are the chief features which strike the eye, and which would come out into prominence in photographic views taken to shew what Coalbrookdale now is. The buildings are comparatively of modern construction, but quaint half-timbered houses, rejoicing in the whitewash livery of former times, suggest a phase of Coalbrookdale history much anterior to that other buildings indicate. It is not difficult indeed to depict the earlier stages of the progress the little valley has passed through from its first primitive aspect to the present; there are, for instance, in some of its many windings green nooks and pleasant corners where nature yet reigns, and where lovers of a quiet ramble may feast their eyes and indulge their imaginations, undisturbed by the hammering, and whirl of wheels, lower down. Such a spot is that to which the visitor is led by following the stream above the pool, crossed by a footbridge. To the left of the path is Dale House, Sunnyside, the Friends Meeting House, and the road to Little Wenlock. Little is seen of the brook on the right of the path, but its presence on the margin of the slope is made known beneath over-hanging bushes by prattlings over stones, and a waterfall from some ledges of rock. Following it higher up it is found to be partially fed by droppings from rocks dyed by mineral colours of varying hue, and to present curious petrifactions, rarely permitted however to attain any great proportions. The place is variously called La Mole and Lum Hole, and speculations have been indulged in as to each derivation. The former would, of course, suggest a French origin. Lum is Welsh, and signifies a point, as in Pumlummon, now ordinarily called Plinlimmon, or the hill with five points. It is quite certain that the valley here terminates in a point, but whether this has anything to do with it or not we cannot say. All we say of it is that it is a quiet little sylvan retreat, with wooded heights, green slopes, and precipitous yellow rocks, at the foot of which the stream is treasured up and forms a glassy lakelet. But this stream, in which six centuries since “Lovekin” the fisherman set his baited lines, long ago was made to do other service than that of soothing the listening ear, or paying tribute of its trout to the abbot of Wenlock. The choice of the situation for manufacturing operations was no doubt due to woods like these, which supplied the needed fuel; but much more to the motive power furnished by the stream, for turning the great wheels required to produce the blast, and work the ponderous hammers which shaped the metal.
Brave and strong as these Dale men were, their muscles were too weak for the work demanded. As Vulcan found he needed stronger journeymen than those of flesh and blood to forge the thunderbolts of Jove, so an imperative necessity, a growing demand, led men here to seek a more compelling force to blow their leathern bellows, to lift their huge forge hammers, than animal force could supply. Woods were no longer estimated by pannage yielded for swine, but by the fuel supplied for reducing the stubborn ore to pigs of another kind. Brooks were pounded up, streams were turned back upon themselves, and their treasured waters husbanded as a capital of force to be disposed of as occasion required. Dryads now fled the woods and Naiads the streams,—as beams and shafts and cranks were reared or creaked beneath the labours they performed.
The presence of coal and iron ore could not have been inducements for the first ironworkers to settle here; neither tradition nor facts warrant the supposition that either were ever found in the valley. The first syllable of the name is deceptive, and the probability is that it was neither Coal nor Cole-brook originally, although coal appears to have been brought here for use more than five centuries ago from places just outside. Wood fuel seems to have been growing scarce as far back as the first quarter of the fourteenth century, judging from an application on the part of a Walter de Caldbrook to the Prior of Wenlock, to whom the manor belonged, for a license to have a man to dig coals in “Le Brockholes” for one year. It is not unlikely that this Walter de Caldbrook had a forge or smithy in the Dale; a situation chosen on account of the stream, which served to furnish him with motive power for his machinery. This seems all the more probable from the fact that distinct mention of such smithy is made in Henry the Eighth’s time, and that it is called “Smithy Place,” and “Caldbrooke Smithy,” [277] in the deed or grant by which the manor was conveyed by the King to Robert Brook, signed at Westminster and dated July 23, 1544. (See page 59). The fact too that this smithy was still called Caldbrook Smithy strengthens the suppositious, both as to the name and as to the fact that the Caldbrookes used the Brockholes coal for their smithy in the Dale. For smith’s work coal has always been preferred to wood; but the word smithy did not then strictly mean what it now does; that is a smith’s shop; but a place where iron was made in blooms. Thus the “Smithies,” near Willey, at present so called, was a place where there were small iron-making forges, as heaps of slag there now testify; which forges were blown with leathern bellows, by means of water power, a man having to tread them to increase the pressure.
Again, the word “Place,” which is a Saxon term for locality, situation, or a particular portion of space, itself indicates an establishment on a scale greater than a modern smithy. The words in the deed are “Smithy Place and New House.” And again, “the rights and privileges attached to the whole of the place and buildings that go under the name of The Smithy Place, and Newhouse, called Caldbrooke Smithy, with its privileges” &c. This Newhouse long ago, no doubt, had become an old house. At any rate we know of no house answering to this description at present, unless it is the half-timbered house near the Lower Forge; and if so this house must be about 100 years older than the one which has the date upon it at the forge higher up, shewing it to have been built a century later, or in 1642: and both forges no doubt were then in existence. The latter would be about the period when the flame of Civil War was bursting forth in various parts of the kingdom, and when Richard Baxter, whose old house still stands at Eaton Constantine, was witnessing the battle of Edgehill and others. This old house is such a fair specimen of the half-timbered structures of two centuries and a half or three centuries ago that we add a representation.
There are a number of square iron plates at the Lower Forge supposed to have been hearth-plates, with the following dates and initials:—
I. H. |
T. K. W. |
I. E. R. |
T. A. |
I. A. |
B. S. |
T. E. |
||
The one with the date 1609 has a head cast upon it, and the ‘W’ was for the surname of one of the early proprietors or partners named Wolfe, a member of the same family that gave shelter to King Charles at Madeley: and ‘B’ may have signified Brooke, the family who resided at the Court House, Madeley, and to whom the manor belonged at that time. There is too a beam with the date 1658, being a bearer in an old blast furnace, which is known to have been renewed by Abraham Darby in 1777. This is supposed to have been brought from Leighton, where there was a furnace in blast in 1707. Thus for long periods, during deadly feuds and troubled times, absorbed in the simple arts of industry, these men appear to have toiled on. During the Civil Wars, when Cromwell and his Ironsides were preparing for the pages of history one of its most striking passages, they worked their bloomeries, taking no part, save that a clerk in the Shropshire Ironworks was found to bear to the Protector news of the successes of his troops.
Baxter’s House as it is, slightly renovated
It may therefore be supposed that when the first Abraham Darby came to the Dale he found works already in existence. Mr. Smiles says “he took the lease of a little furnace which had existed at the place for over a century”; and, fortunately, since his time, the commencement of the 18th century, (1709), records of the proceedings have been carefully kept, so that there is little difficulty in tracing the progress of the art, or in giving prominence to important points which may serve to mark such progress. On page 60 are enumerated some of these discoveries, one being the successful use of coal in iron-making, another the adaptability of iron in bridge making, and a third to railroads. To these three starting points in the history of the iron trade was added that of the discovery of puddling by means of pit coal, by the Craneges; a discovery which preceded that of Henry Cort by seventeen years. It will be seen also from what has been already stated, that whilst Richard Reynolds laid down the first iron rails his son William and the Coalbrookdale Co. as early as 1800 were engaged upon locomotives to run on railways.
These stages in the history of the works down to the commencement of the present century have been enumerated thus:—
“Abraham Darby. 1707. Letters patent for a new way of casting iron pots, and other iron ware, in sand only, without loam or clay.”
“Ditto. 1712. First successfully superseded the use of charcoal by that of coke in the blast furnace.”
“Abraham Darby (son of above). 1737. First used coal instead of charcoal for converting pig iron into bar iron at the forge.”
“Ditto. 1760–63. First laid down rails of cast iron, with carriages having axles with fixed wheels.”
“Abraham Darby (the third). The first iron bridge erected over the Severn in 1777.”
“Richard Reynolds. Letters patent to Thomas and George Cranage, for a method of puddling, 1766.”
William, son of Richard Reynolds, invented a locomotive, upon the plans for which the Coalbrookdale Company were engaged in 1800. This was a locomotive for railroads, as we have shewn on page 179. We have also on a previous page spoken of Mr. W. Reynolds as a chemist, a fact which is borne out by an original letter of James Watt to his friend William Reynolds, a copy of which, being too long to insert here, will be given on a subsequent page. Facts like these, recorded in various publications, added to the intrinsic merits of the high class productions of the works, naturally served to give to the establishment in the Dale a very high position in the trade. To these too were to be added the high integrity of the proprietors and managers of the works, a guarantee of which was to be found in the fact that they were Quakers. In our “History of Broseley” page 219, we have shewn that the Friends had established themselves there as early as 1673; that a Meeting house was erected there in 1692; and that the Darbys, the Roses, the Reynoldses, the Fords, the Hortons and others were buried there, prior to the Meeting house at Sunnyside being built. The fact of a man being a Quaker was a tolerable guarantee of his being a fair dealer; and the utterance of the name of Darby or Reynolds was sufficient to command respect.
Speaking of these works at an early stage, Mr. Smiles in his “Industrial Biography” says:—
“By the exertions and enterprise of the Darbys, the Coalbrookdale Works had become greatly enlarged, giving remunerative employment to a large and increasing population. The firm had extended their operations far beyond the boundaries of the Dale: they had established foundries at London, Bristol, and Liverpool, and agencies at Newcastle and Truro for the disposal of steam-engines and other iron machinery used in the deep mines of those districts. Watt had not yet perfected his steam-engine; but there was considerable demand for pumping-engines of Newcomen’s construction, many of which were made at the Coalbrookdale Works.”
One of these engines having the date 1747 was seen at Bilston in 1812. Castings for Watt’s engines also were made here; but the first use to which the steam-engine itself was put was the undignified one of pumping the water which had once gone over the water-wheel back, that it may go over it a second time.
It is not our intention to give a detailed description of the present productions of the Coalbrookdale Works; modern castings like those of the Albert Edward bridge, and those high art ornamental ones of a lighter kind with which the public are familiar by means of various international exhibitions, afford sufficient evidence that the firm occupy a position not unworthy of their ancient renown.
It will be seen from what has been said that the religious no less than the inventive element seems to have distinguished these men, who, so far as we have gone were Quakers; but the brothers Cranege, who anticipated Cort in the discovery of puddling were Wesleyans. Little seems to be known of these men or of their families; but Dr. Edward Cranage, of the Old Hall, Wellington is, we believe, of the same family. Another descendant of the family writes us to say that—
“George Cranage, one of the patentees, and Thomas his brother, the other, both married daughters of John Ward, of Eye Manor Farm, near Leighton; the writer’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Thomas and his wife died without issue, but George Cranage who married Ann Ward, left two sons and five daughters; William, the elder of the sons, was manager or in some such position at Coalbrookdale, and was concerned in the construction of the Iron Bridge. From a small manuscript volume of religious verses and paraphrases into verse of the Psalms composed by him, and now in my possession, he appears to have had some taste for literature. I have his copy of Coke and Moore’s life of Wesley, and Paradise Lost, the latter containing his autograph. He was, I have heard, a Wesleyan of the true type; worshipping at his chapel regularly, but always communicating at Madeley Parish Church on Sacrament Sundays. He lived in the house where Mr. Moses now lives, opposite the church, which house, we believe was built for him. He died in 1823, one son having died previously. The following notice appeared in a Shrewsbury paper of his death:
“Suddenly, at Coalbrookdale, aged 63, Mr. Wm. Cranage, a man whose truly benevolent nature and friendly disposition secured him the respect and esteem of all who knew him, and whose loss as a member of society will be much felt by his neighbours. In him the poor man recognised a friend, the world an honest man, and the church a steady and useful member.”
John the younger, and only other son of George, died in infancy, while the five daughters all married in Bridgnorth or the neighbourhood.
Whilst upon the subject of old workmen at the Dale it may be well here to introduce a notice of the Luccucks, some of whom were Quakers, but two of whom, Benjamin and Thomas, became clergymen of the church of England. Benjamin was apprenticed at Coalport, where he painted a set of china, which whilst breakfasting with an English prelate he was surprised to see produced at table. When a lad he was of a daring disposition. He would lie down, for instance, between the rails of the Incline Plane and allow the carriage and a boat with five tons of iron in it to pass over him, notwithstanding the risk run of being caught and drawn over the rollers by the hook dangling at the end of the carriage. The mother of Mr. W. G. Norris, the present manager, and one of the proprietors, was a Luccock; and other members of the same family are still employed in the works. The grandfather of the former was apprenticed to the first Abraham Darby soon after he came to the Dale. A copy of the indenture or agreement between the parties may not be without interest at the present day. It commences thus:
“Abraham Darby and Thomas Luccuck, concluded and made this 13 day of June, 1714, between Abraham Darby, of the city of Bristol, Smith, in behalf of himself and rest of his co-partners in the ironworks of Coalbrookdale, in the County of Salop, on the one part; and Thomas Luccuck, of the parish of Norfield, in the County of Worcester, who agrees to serve in the art and mystery of making or casting of iron pots and kettles, &c.”
It then proceeds to state that
“Abraham Darby promises to pay the said Thomas Luccuck the sum of 6s. per week during the said term of the year. Thomas Luccuck also covenants not to divulge or make known the mystery of the art of moulding in sand, tools, or utensils, belonging to the said works; and that if he divulges he will agree to pay the sum of £5 for every pot or kettle made by another, &c., through him.”
The mystery alluded to, and which it was deemed then so important not to divulge, was an improvement introduced by one of the Thomases, an ancestor of the Bristol merchants of that name, which consisted in the substitution of green sand for the more expensive and laborious method of using clay and loam in the manufacture of cast pots. By this means, not only was the article cheapened, and the number multiplied, but a more suitable and economical form was obtained; the old one being now rarely seen, except in museums, or as an antiquated heir-loom in some remote cottage. One of the old pots with a neat border has the date 1717. These domestic utensils appear to have formed the staple manufacture at the time that the first Abraham Darby removed here from Bristol, in the year 1709.
One member of this old family of Dale workmen lived to the extraordinary age of 103; and an allusion to the venerable patriarch may serve to introduce at this stage of our history a notice of two local circumstances: the extreme age of an old Coalbrookdale workman of the above name, and the “Great Land Flood” of the Dale. An account of the latter appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the time; but we prefer following the example of Southey who on an occasion we remember makes use of an old man’s memory to set forth his views of certain changes which had taken place; but at the same time with such toning down as becometh the thoughts of more sober age. Every village has incidents and events associated with it, which some old inhabitant is usually privileged to expound.
Beyond the venerable grey-beards and wrinkled grand-dames there is the village sage—vested with the dignity of a last appeal, and whose version of matters local is deemed truthful as the current coin. Age as a rule commands respect; and the wider the span that measures intervening space between the present and the past the greater the esteem. Coalbrookdale within our recollection boasted, not an octogenarian merely, or one whose claim to the honour was weakened by that of half-a-dozen others—but one, the “oldest inhabitant,” by being a quarter of a century in advance of the whole of the Coalbrookdale elders. He not only lived to celebrate the centenary of his natal day but—like a tree blanched by the storms of ages yet putting forth its leaves afresh—as showing the stamina that still remained—cut, at a still riper age his second set of wisdom teeth. Envy never sought to dim the lustre of his fame. At local festivals, when, unfettered for the day, the members of a club with flags and band met in gay summer time, he was brought to crown the presidential chair. Old Adam—such was his name—a name truly suggestive of the past and well fitted for a village sage—old Adam Luccock was widely known. He was a specimen of archæology in himself—the solitary link of a patriarchal chain that had fallen one by one—he the only one remaining. And old Adam’s cottage—perched upon a rock beneath the Rotunda, quaint, ancient, and impressed by the storms of passing time,—odorous from a narrow strip of garden sheltered by a grey limestone pile, catching the last lingering rays of the setting sun as it mantled with deep shadow the Dale below, and flooded with mellow light the uplands of the river’s western bank—was a counterpart of himself. Like the little vine that girdled its frail and wattled walls—tapping with wiry fingers at the diamond leaded window-panes—old Adam clung to the place long after his friends began to fear the two would disappear together. White as were these white-washed walls, Adam’s locks were whiter, and the accessories of dress and minor details of person and of place were in perfect keeping. A curious net-work of wrinkled smiles accompanied the delivery of one of the old man’s homilies; and amusing enough were the landmarks which memory set up for giving to each event its place in point of time. Of red-lettered ever-to-be-remembered occurrences in the village the more prominent were the phenomena of the land-slip at the Birches, and the land-flood at the Dale. We still see the old man drawing slowly from his mouth a long pipe, still more slowly letting out a wreath of fragrant smoke, as speaking of the latter he would say:—
“I remember well; it was autumn, the berries were ripe on the hedge, and fruits were mellow in the field; we had a funeral that day at Madeley, it was on the 6th of September, 1801. The air was close. A thin steamy vapour swam along the valley, and a dense, fog-looking cloud hung in the sky. The mist spread, and drops like ripe fruit when you shake a tree came down suddenly. The leaves on every tree trembled, we could hear them quake; and the cattle hung down their heads to their fetlocks. The wind blew by fits and starts in different directions, and waves of cold air succeeded warm. Dull rushing sounds, sharp crackling thunderclaps were heard, and streams of fire could be seen—like molten iron at casting time—running in and out among the clouds. Up the valley, driving dust and sticks and stones, came on a roaring wind with pelting rain. Another current moved in a different direction; they met where the black cloud stood, and striking it both sides at once, it dropped like a sponge filled with water, but large as the Wrekin. In a moment houses and fields and woods were flooded by a deluge, and a rushing torrent from the hills came driving everything before it with a roar louder than the great blast or the splash of the great wheel. Lightnings flashed, thunders roared, and before the echo of one peal died you heard another—as if it were the crack of doom. Down came the brooks, the louder where they met, snapping trees, carrying bridges, stones, and stacks of wood. Houses were inundated in an instant, gardens were swept away, and women and children were carried from windows through the boiling flood. Fiercer came the rush and higher swelled the stream, forcing the dam of the great pool; timber snapped like glass, stones were tossed like corks, and driven against buildings that in turn gave way. Steam then came hissing up from the furnace as the water neared and sought entrance to the works. The elements met; it was a battle for a time; the water driven with great force from behind was soon brought into contact with the liquid iron, and then came the climax! Thunders from below answered to those above; water converted into gas caused one loud terrific explosion that burst the strongest bars, shattered the stoutest walls, drove back the furious flood, and filled the air with heated cinders and red-hot scoria. The horrid lurid light and heat and noise were dreadful. Many said ‘The day of God’s wrath is come;’ ‘Let us fly to the rocks and to the hills.’”
After a pause, and re-lighting his pipe, he added:
“I think I forgot to say it was Sunday, and that the Darbys were at meeting; the Meeting-house was in Tea-kettle-row, it was before the neat little chapel at Sunnyside was built. It was a silent meeting,—outside among the elements there was noise enough—I mean among the members there had been no speaking, and if there had they may have heard plain enough what was going on outside. Well, when the furnace blew up they broke up and came down to see what was the matter. They never appear in a hurry, Quakers don’t, and did not then, though thousands of pounds of their property were going to rack every minute. ‘Is any one hurt?’ that was the first question by Miss Darby; she is now Mrs Rathbone. She was an angel of a woman; indeed, every one of the Miss Darbys have been. ‘Is there any one hurt, Adam;’ she said. I said ‘no, ma’am, there’s nobody hurt, but the furnace, and blowing mill, the pool dam, and the buildings are all gone.’ ‘Oh, I am so thankful,’ she said; ‘never mind the building, so no one’s hurt’; and they all looked as pleased—if you’ll believe—as if they had found a new vein of coal in the Dawley Field, instead of having lost an estate at Coalbrookdale.”
Old age sat as fittingly on Adam as glory upon the sun, or as autumnal bloom upon the mellow fruit ripened by the summer’s heat. Nature, in the old man, had completed her work, religion had not left him without its blessings; and, while lingering or waiting, rather, upon the verge of another world, he liked to live again the active past, and to amuse himself by talking of scenes with which he had been associated. He had none of the garrulous tendencies of age; and when once upon his favourite topic, he was all smiles immediately.
“We used,” he said, “to bring the mine for the Dale on pack-horses; and Horsehay being one of the halting places, was, as I believe, called Horsehay in consequence. We used, also, to take minerals on horse-back all the way to Leighton, where there was plenty of wood and charcoal, and water to blow the bellows. Strings of horses, the first having a bell to tell of their coming, used to go; they called them ‘Crickers’—and a very pretty sight it was to see them winding through upland, wood, and meadow, the little bells tinkling as they went.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said our ancient friend, “Pedlars and pack-horses were the means of locomotion and the medium of news in my day; and if we travelled, it was in the four-wheeled covered waggon, over roads with three or four feet ruts. Lord, sir, I remember, in good old George the Third’s time, when turnpike gates were first put up, there was a great outcry against them. Before that, roads went just where they liked, and there was a blacksmith’s shop at every corner to repair the damage done in bumping over the large stones. Why, sir, in this ere Dale, I can remember when there was no road through it but the tram-road. The road then was over rocks and along the brow of the hill—a bridle road only. There never was such a thing as a one-horse cart seen in the Dale till just before the road was made to Wellington; and then, as I can remember, the road was so narrow that every carter carried a mattock to stock the road wider, in order to pass, if he met another.”
The old man described the construction of those primitive forerunners of that iron network which now spreads its meshes over the entire kingdom, one of which, much worn on the one side by the flange of the wheels is before us. It has a square hole at the end, for the purpose of being pegged to the sleeper. Down the steep banks that enclose the Dale inclined planes were laid with rails of plain oblong pieces of wood, six feet in length, eight inches in width, and four inches in depth, and down these, by means of ropes, waggons by their superior gravity brought up the empty ones to be refilled with minerals which were conveyed for the use of the works. The speed was regulated by a brake made to press, not as now upon the barrel at the top, but upon the wheels of the descending waggons. The man thus regulating their speed, was the jigger, and the hill leading from Coalbrookdale to Wellington, where one of these inclines was situate, became “The Jigger’s Bank.” (Sometimes called the Jig-house Bank, because, of a house there.) In addition to this railway for the purpose of supplying the furnaces, there was another, by which the furnaces at the top were connected with the foundry at the centre; and rails, first of wood, and then of iron, continued for many years to be used, facilitating the transport of heavy materials from place to place.
On the last occasion on which we saw him we were sent by a good old aunt, a Quaker lady who loaded us with presents for the old man, when he had gone to live in “Charity Row,” as it was called. Speaking upon matters connected with the history of the Dale—more particularly in reference to the Darbys and Reynoldses—the old man would grow eloquent; and the effect of a little present—a basket of strawberries or a packet of tobacco—had a wonderful effect in stimulating memory. Nothing was “open sesame,” however, like a drop of “Barnaby Spruce’s old Beer.” [292] Say you had sent for half-a-gallon of Spruce’s best October brewing, and he grew loquacious at once.
“Remember him,” speaking of Richard Reynolds, he would say, arching his eye-brows, and growing animated, as recollections of the past came tripping upon the heels of each other. “I knew him well; all the poor knew him; the robins and the sparrows knew him, for he would carry crumbs a hundred miles in his pockets ‘for his robins.’ He made a vast fortune, and then everybody knew him; books, and tracts, and newspapers all talked about him. He was a Quaker—not a thin, withered, crotchety disciple of George Fox, but a full-fed Quaker, fair and ruddy, with eyes of blue that gave back the bright azure of the sky and lighted up a fine and manly face. I see him now—his light hair flowing in curls beneath his broad brimmed hat upon his shoulders. He yielded to every man his own, not only as concerned money, but in demands upon his respect. I have known him when in a fit of temper he thought he had spoken harshly or slightingly to any one, follow him home and apologise for his warmth. He loved everybody and was beloved by everybody in return. There’s my neighbour, she will tell you how when she was a child he would run into their shop in a morning, put half-a-crown into her hand, saying, ‘There, thee be a good child all day.’ He could not do with the colliers, though; he built schools for their children, but the mothers would not let them go unless he would pay them so much a day for allowing them to attend. They were curious schoolmasters in my day. Old John Share made nails and kept a school in the Dale; he was one of the most learned about these parts for a schoolmaster, but he never would believe that the earth turned round, because, as he said, the Wrekin was always in the same place. Then, there was old Carter, the chairmaker, of Madeley Wood; he always spelt bacon with a ‘k,’ and I remember him giving Charles Clayton a souce on the side of the head that sent him reeling, because he insisted upon it that it should be bacon. The Wrekin, sir, was always an object of admiration to Mr. Reynolds. He had an arbour made from which he could see the sun going down behind it (he used to revel in a good sunset), and with no companion but his pipe was often used to watch it. Every year he treated his clerks and most of the members of the Society of Friends to the Wrekin. Benthall Edge was another favourite resort, and he would revel at such times in the scene.”
“I could tell you many more anecdotes (the old man continued) of the Quakers; I mean the Darbys. They all liked a joke right well; and as for kindness, it seemed as if they thought it a favour to be allowed to assist you. They allow me a weekly pension, have done for years, and pay a woman to wait upon me. They are people that never like to be done, however.”
“You knew old Solomon, the Sexton. Well he once went to the haunted house, as they call it, for an Easter offering. The servants were ordered to attend him, and he sat for some time and eat and drank, and smoked his pipe—but not a word was said about Easter dues. He knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, and feeling muddled a bit about the head thought it time to be moving. At last Mr. Darby entered the room, and Solomon made bold to ask for the Easter offering. ‘Friend,’ said Mr. Darby, throwing up the sash, and assuming a determined attitude, ‘thou hast had a meat-offering and a drink-offering; thou hast even had a burnt offering—as I judge from the fumes of this room, and unless thou choosest to go about thy business, thou shalt have an heave-offering.’ As Solomon had no wish to be pitched head-foremost out of the window, you may imagine (said the old man) that he quickly disappeared.”
The old village sage, whose venerable form and long white locks rise before us like some vision of the past—is gone; he died, as his friends assert, at the advanced age of 107, or, as his headstone more modestly states (and modesty is not a fault common with posthumous records) at the age of 103. He died January 27, 1831, and his gravestone may be seen near the southwest door of Madeley Church, under the wall; but as the inscription is near to the grave, being below those of the Parkers, and that of Samuel Luckock, it will, we fear, be soon obliterated by the damp acting on the stone.
Among other servants of the Darbys who succeeded each other and held important positions in the works were the Fords. Richard married Miss Darby, daughter of Abraham, and was manager of the works in 1747. He also was a Quaker; and to him really is due the credit ascribed to Mr. Darby, of the successful use of coal in iron smelting. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1747, for instance, the year Mr. Ford was manager, it is stated that—
“Several attempts have been made to run iron-ore with pit-coal: he (the Rev. Mr. Mason, Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge) thinks it has not succeeded anywhere, as we have had no account of its being practised; but Mr. Ford, of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, from iron-ore and coal, both got in the same dale, makes iron brittle or tough as he pleases, there being cannon thus cast so soft as to bear turning like wrought-iron.”
A son or grandson of this Richard Ford was foreman and manager in the engine department of the works, which flourished greatly till he resigned his office, nearly half a century since. The late John Cox Ford was a son, and A. J. Ford, recently of Madeley, a grandson.
Of later members of the Darby family we may speak in part from personal knowledge. Like their ancestors, they were members of the Society of Friends, although not by any means the straitest of the sect. Whilst adhering to the grand cardinal doctrine of the Inner Light, they indulged their own ideas of the extent to which the strict discipline of the body should control their tastes. They were birth-members, but lax in their opinions, and did not live by strict Quaker rule. On one occasion, when a disciple of the old school got up as was his wont to deliver himself in meeting, one of the younger and more lax of the members rose and said, “Friend N—y, it would be more agreeable to this meeting if thou wouldst sit down.”
Francis Darby, of the White House, had great taste, loved high art, and filled his rooms with costly paintings, which he felt a pride in shewing to his friends. Others indulged a forbidden love of music and luxury, contrary to the faith and discipline of their fathers, without otherwise breaking through bounds or committing faults to justify the advocates of the truest code of Quaker rule to disown them.
Richard Darby, like his brother Francis, did not adhere to the Quaker style of dress, either in the cut of his coat or the shape of his hat, the latter being usually a white one of the most approved fashion. He was a popular public man; one whose services were sought, and whose sympathies were readily enlisted in public movements of the day, such as the emancipation of the slaves, and others relating to questions of civil and religious progress. His name was well known through the length and breadth of the borough, and we have seen small farmers and labourers around the Clee Hills brighten up at the mention of his name. William Henry and Charles Darby, the sons of Richard, are proprietors of the Brymbo iron works, and their sister, Miss Rebecca Darby, who resides at the house her father lived in, is the only one of the name now living in the Dale.
The late Abraham and Alfred Darby, sons of Edmund, and cousins of Francis and Richard, were young when their father died. We have elsewhere said that they became managers of the extensive and important works of Coalbrookdale, Horsehay, Lighmnoor, and the Castle, at critical periods of their history, and when, to maintain their existence, it was essential to do battle with lax discipline, old customs, and deep-rooted prejudices. They found men resting on their oars, trusting to the prestige of a fame won by a former generation, and standing still while others around them were advancing. They determined to prove themselves worthy of their predecessors by advancing to the front of the foremost in the rise. Surrounding themselves by energetic agents, intelligent operatives, and introducing new modes of manufacture, they succeeded. With clear views of political economy, they zealously aided in battering down barriers to a free exchange of the world’s productions, which misconceived interest had erected. Penetrated with a lofty sense of duty, and comprehending their positions rightly, they pursued the even tenor of their way, sowing seed and scattering blessings which refreshed and brightened the scenes of their labours. They worked harmoniously together, in their studies, in the laboratory, in their works, and at their books, making themselves acquainted with every detail and minutiæ of their great undertakings. Order and regularity everywhere were observable, others under them being embued with the spirit of their employers. The church on the hill side, and its sweet and silvery bells as their music floats along the valley and over the wooded boundaries of the Dale, tell of their large-hearted benevolence and open handed munificence, and that of their sister, Miss Mary Darby, and their mother, Mrs. Lucy Darby.
Abraham, the elder, married his cousin, Miss Darby, daughter of Francis Darby, on the 8th of August, 1839, on which occasion a kindly demonstration was made, and 1,000 work-people dined at his expense. He removed from the Dale to Stoke Court, near Slough; and afterwards to South Wales, to be near the extensive works of Ebbw Vale, which he, and some of his partners, purchased for the sum of £360,000. He died, was brought to the Dale and buried in the cemetery of the church which he chiefly had built and endowed, amid deep demonstrations of feeling on the part of thousands of spectators.
Alfred, the younger brother, married Miss Christy, sister to the well-known collector of pre-historic relics of man in an uncivilized state, with which he stored his mansion at Westminster, and afterwards bequeathed to the British Museum. Alfred died in the golden meridian of age and usefulness, and his loss was deeply felt by all who knew him. He left issue, and his son Alfred, of Ness, to which place his mother removed from Stanley Hall, is a magistrate, and is now old enough to discharge the duties of a country gentleman.
Of other partners in the works we may mention Mr. Henry Dickinson, who married a sister of Abraham and Alfred Darby, for some years chairman of the Shropshire Banking Company, and who in a most distinguished and disinterested way lent (but on such terms as amounted to a gift) the princely sum of £100,000 at a critical period of its existence, to save it from falling, and numbers dependent upon it from ruin. But for extending our remarks too far, we might say something of men like Mr. Thomas Graham, a former cashier in the works, of Mr. William Norris, who succeeded him in that office; men useful in their day and generation, being foremost in good works and words, as many now living will remember. For the same reason we refrain from speaking of the late Mr. C. Crookes, formerly the enterprising manager of these works; and of the gentleman who has succeeded him, and is himself a proprietor of these extensive works, and in the commission of the peace for the borough. For similar reasons, but much more because of the difficulty of rightly discriminating and equally awarding a just meed of praise where so much is due, we find ourselves prevented from speaking of many trustworthy and clever men now engaged in various departments of these important works, whose names occur to our minds, but whose merits we commend not less heartily to some future local historian, for whose labours the present work will, we flatter ourselves, smooth the way.
It would be unpardonable not to say something here of the means of education and mental culture provided by the proprietors of the Coalbrookdale works for their workpeople. Before the present system of national education was established, and whilst hostile sects and parties were indulging in bitter feuds [300] as to the kind of education to be given, this Company under the direction of Abraham and Alfred Darby in the most noble and generous way came forward and at great cost erected roomy and capacious Schools here and at Horsehay, with every convenience and appliance possible to further education.
We purpose speaking of education, with respect to the schools, in connection with others at Madeley, Ironbridge, and Madeley Wood; and will only add here a word or two on the subject of other and more advanced institutions provided for the use of the men and inhabitants generally of the Dale. First and foremost amongst them comes, of course, the Literary and Scientific Institute, with its library, its reading room, its school of art, its high class lectures and entertainments, so judiciously arranged and carried on under the management of Mr. E. L. Squire, Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Isaac Dunbar, the librarian. The School of Art too, of which Mr. Squires is also Hon. Secretary, and Mr. Gibbons master, is admirably adapted for developing and furthering a taste for drawing and decoration, so essential among artizans engaged in the more ornamental and decorative portions of the company’s productions. Nor are the benefits of this admirable institution limited either to the works or to the Dale: the day classes are attended by ladies of the neighbourhood, desirous of pursuing an æsthetic course of study, and who, following the examples of ladies whose works merit such high approval in the Art Galleries of London and Paris, have really achieved great success in painting birds, flowers, and figures, in enamel colours, on plaques, tazzas, &c., both for use and for drawing room decoration.
Nor must we omit, whilst on the subject of this institution, to mention the splendid collection of British and foreign birds lent by Mrs. Alfred Darby, which have adorned the lecture room for so many years; or the very fine collection of coal-measure fossils, which the late Dean Buckland pronounced in his time the finest private collection of the kind in England, and so liberally given by the late John Anstice, Esq.
Recently a “British Workman” has been added to other institutions, at the room formerly occupied as a British School, under the patronage of Mrs. Norris, who is ever active in promoting similar works, and the present incumbent, the Rev. H. S. Wood, who, it is only justice to say, spares no pains to make himself useful to the inhabitants of the Dale.
Under the management of Mr. John Fox the clay-works of the Coalbrookdale Company have become so expanded and improved, that they now form an important department of the Company’s undertakings, and are at the present juncture, no doubt, among the more profitable of their industries. Since sanitary science has so successfully called public attention to the importance of the use of good bricks impervious to damp, the productions from these excellent coal-measure clays have been more in demand. Clays, as commonly understood, mean earth of sufficient ductility to allow of being kneaded into some useful shape or form, and rank as raw materials. Some are soft, others are indurated, or hard and rocky; but all have in one sense been prepared by certain poundings, grindings, washings, and mixings, carried on by Nature on a larger scale than that on which they are now still further fitted for use. They differ in quality, in degree of fineness, and in colour, and show certain relationships by which it is clear that they are descended from sand, just as sands are descended from a hardy race of pebbles, which in turn bear close relationship to rocks, from which undoubtedly they have been derived. Surface clays used for making inferior bricks and tiles, whose earthy odour gives evidence of alumina, are generally derived from red sandstone rocks, ground down into mud by the machinery of waves or streams whilst our deeper coal-measures clunches, and clays were originally the sediment thrown by rivers at their embouchures into inland lakes or seas, and are usually much more free from lime, iron, grit, and other foreign substances and impurities.
When brought to the surface, these clays are hard as a rock. Formerly they were allowed to lie during the winter to weather, as it is called; and a statute now obsolete required, under a heavy penalty, that bricks should not be made unless the clay for making them had been turned over at intervals, three times at least before the first of March. But brickmakers, not having patience to wait for the action of the weather, have invented machinery to do the work, and the clay is taken direct from the pit to be crushed by iron rollers, and then conveyed by coarse canvas-screens to tanks to be moistened, and afterwards to the pug mill. This is an upright cylinder, with a revolving vertical shaft, fitted up with horizontal knives following each other at an angle so as to cut, amalgamate, and temper the material, and which also acts as a screw to deliver it.
Ornamental bricks of elaborate design for architectural purposes require more delicate manipulation, and the clays for these undergo a more careful preparation. Machines in some instances are used, which take the clay, temper, thoroughly amalgamate it, and convert it into the finished article, and at the brick-yards of the Coalbrookdale Company presses have been erected by which bricks may be stamped at once from the semi-dry clay.
This company, too, have been at great pains to turn their clays to account by copying the Italian and Lombard style of making bricks of various forms and colours; and the buildings erected with these bricks, and others, with white facings of the same material, of which the present Literary and Scientific Institute is an example, possess great architectural beauty. Still further examples of the æsthetic treatment of these admirable clays were made a short time ago by Monsieur Kremer, who modelled and prepared at the company’s Lightmoor clay works, in relief, and on a large scale, an historical subject, connected with Scottish history in the time of King James, as a facade for a house in London; also some noble groups, life size, of figures representing the four seasons, for a gentleman’s grounds and park near London. The reader may judge of the adaptability of these clays for such purposes by inspecting a group of a similar kind in front of the Institute.
We exhibited ourselves in 1851 specimens of these and other coal-measure clays, with articles manufactured from them on both sides the river, and we had the satisfaction of hearing from distinguished judges, familiar with their merits, such as presidents of foreign Academics of Science, speak of them as superior to any they had ever seen. [306]
The works of the company in the Dale, at Lightmoor, Horsehay, the Castle, and other parts of Dawley, are so intimately connected and so entirely dependent upon the mineral resources of the district, that some further notice is needed to complete this stretch. We said at the commencement that neither iron nor coal were found here, but in the quotation from the Philosophical Transactions it is stated that Mr. Ford made iron either hard or soft from ore and coal got in the dale; and it may perhaps without being considered a sketch of language be said that the opening into the Lightmoor valley, where coals were undoubtedly worked at an early period, is a northern lip or extension of the Dale itself. Indeed the whole of the rich mineral tract extending from Broseley to the extreme limits of the Lilleshall Company’s works, some seven miles in length, and terminating in a Symon Fault on the south-east of Madeley parish, about four miles in breadth, is universally known as the Coalbrookdale Coalfield; but the Dale proper is a hollow scooped out of soft Silurian shale, which shews itself at the railway station, by the viaduct, on the road to Lightmoor, and in various other places. Here two great faults or rents in the coalfield meet; one coming down from the Dunge at Broseley, and the other from the direction of Lilleshall, causing a difference of level varying from fifty to seven hundred feet. The coal-measures approach the northern extremity of the Dale on three sides, forming a fringe which rises from a few feet above the Dale to three hundred feet above the Severn at Ironbridge, and to over seven hundred feet at the highest points. It was this outside fringe of lower coals which tempted early miners, who by means of levels in the hill sides got their “Smith’s Coal,” leaving others, which they did not then need for house fuel. Interesting instances of the outcrops of these coals are to be seen at the surface on high grounds overlooking the Dale, also on the side of the railway opposite to Black Rock quarry, where an instructive section of the Best, Middle, and Clod Coals are visible, with a slight fault displacing them. They crop out on the side of the Lincoln Hill walks; and on sinking a trial pit at Castle Green near there, many years ago, it was found that the Middle and Clod coals had been removed, and the space filled up with gob. The upper coals here, and also the pennystone, as at the Lodge Pit, remained; but at the latter the clod coal, the best coal for iron-making purposes, was removed, and the space filled up with refuse.
When quarrying stone at the Black Rock, on the right hand side of the tramroad leading to Lightmoor, for the purpose of constructing the viaduct for the Wellington and Severn Junction Railroad, an interesting discovery was made of a number of fossil trees. Some were still clinging to the soil from which they originally derived their nourishment, as here shewn, somewhat imperfectly, by the accompanying engraving. One was twelve feet in circumference at the point at which the roots, which were eight in number, and two feet ten inches in their thickest part, diverged and spread, at a distance of eighteen inches from the trunk, and divided into two, and at a distance of four feet dipped into ground. The tree appeared to have been buried in mud before decay commenced, and to that circumstance was due probably its preservation from further decay, portions of trunks and branches were strewed around. We obtained a photograph and forwarded it to the Illustrated London News, in which paper an engraving appeared at the time. It was, we believe, a sigillaria, but was smooth, and shewed few of the marks common to the genus, such as appear on the accompanying enlarged section of the upper part of trees of a like kind. The roots also were smooth as far as exposed. The rock in which the roots were embedded was the Crawstone crust, and the sandrock which surrounded it was highly charged with oil or petroleum, derived from the vegetation which had produced the seam of coal, (the little flint coal) above, or from the decaying trees and branches of trees which now lie prostrate, and are embedded in the rock itself. There is one of considerable size at the time we write, five feet of which is exposed to view, the other part is obscured by the rock; and at the upper end where it enters the rock is a soft brown substance, about an inch thick, with impressions of the woody fibre of the tree itself. It is just that kind of fleshy substance one would suppose to belong to such trees, and one can scarcely resist the impression that it is the bark. Examined by the lens it appears to be thickly studded with small white crystals, strewed about.
Interlacing each other are Calamites, the giant representatives of our mares-tail which still flourishes near in damp places on the surface. The following representation will afford an idea of the gigantic proportions they then attained. They are to be found at all stages of growth; sometimes with their central pith, surrounded by a ligneous cylinder, divided by medullary rays, and having a thick bark. These reed-like plants were of course suited to the moist condition then prevailing, and assumed magnificent proportions.
The following is the section as it now appears, commencing at the surface and taking the measures in a descending order.
Below the turf,—
ft. |
in. |
||
1 |
Yellow clay |
4 |
0 |
2 |
Coal Smut; (might represent Sill, coal) |
1 |
0 |
3 |
Clunch |
1 |
0 |
4 |
Vigor coal |
0 |
10 |
5 |
Ganey coal rock (shale) |
1 |
0 |
6 |
Ganey coal |
1 |
3 |
7 |
Linseed earth (A brown soapy kind of clay) |
1 |
0 |
8 |
Best coal and middle coal (These are separated by a parting which diminishes from 10 inches on the west to 2 in. on the east.) |
2 |
0 |
9 |
Fine clunch |
1 |
0 |
10 |
Clod coal |
2 |
0 |
11 |
Clunch with roots and plants, and nodules of ironstone at bottom |
5 |
0 |
12 |
Little flint coal |
2 |
0 |
13 |
Little flint rock (with prostratetrees and petroleum) |
27 |
0 |
14 |
Crawstone crust, with upright trees and roots embedded. |
||
Total |
49 |
11 |
Beds of underclay so invariably accompany seams of coal that some have come to the conclusion that there was no exception to the rule. Here however is one, in the case of the Little Flint coal, which lies immediately upon a sand rock. Evidently it was not formed like peat from vegetation which grew and accumulated on the spot. There is no underclay to support the roots of ordinary coal-measure plants, but the coal follows closely the contour of the rock on which it lies; as though it had flowed over it and had been laid down upon it like a sheet of bituminous matter. And there is not the least doubt but that this was the case. Sigillarias, Lepidodendrons, Calamites, and tree-ferns flourished on the slime now hardened into shale, and which shows sun-cracks, and worm-burrowings, indicative of the then surface, with tracks of locomotive mullusca, as they dragged their shells along the soft impressionable slime. Heavy tropical rains then falling upon some upraised and exposed Caradoc or perhaps Millstone grit lands, the latter scarcely yet consolidated, brought down and held in suspension a quantity of sand which, as it settled down, formed a bed varying from three to thirty feet in thickness. The body of water which contained so much sand must, of course, have been much greater, and would probably cover the whole of the vegetation. The result was that the lower parts of the largest trees which were buried first were preserved in situ. The upper parts toppled over and lay embedded in the sand, as we find them. In both cases the vegetable matter decayed and was replaced atom by atom with fine sand; but the vegetable tissues, oil, and seeds, being lightest, rose above the sand, forming a pulpy bituminous plastic bed, which first fermented, and then crystalized into coal. Even the little disc-like seeds of the sigillaria, which make up a considerable portion of the coal, and which floated with other matter, lie flat and parallel with the lamina of the coal itself.
Nor is this the only instance of the kind. The Top coal of Halesfield and Kemberton shews signs of liquefaction; portions of fish, such as teeth, bones, and scales being embedded in the coal.
We ought to add in connection with the Black Rock section that the five feet of clunch over the Little Flint Coal is the underclay for the Clod Coal, and is full of roots and rootlets.
The descent from the Crawstone crust to the Silurian shale of the Dale cannot be traced. As passed through at the Limestone pit at Lincoln Hill, it was as follows:—
Ft. |
In. |
||
1. |
Crawstone Measure Crust |
1 |
8 |
2. |
Rock |
10 |
6 |
3. |
Coal Smut |
0 |
9 |
4. |
Clunch with balls of Sandstone |
12 |
0 |
5. |
Lancashire Ladies’ Coal |
0 |
6 |
6. |
Strong Clunch with Sandstone balls |
19 |
0 |
7. |
Sandstone Rock |
10 |
6 |
8. |
Chalkstone |
12 |
0 |
9. |
Limestone (Silurian) |
28 |
6 |
Total |
95 |
5 |
|
This then may be considered a fair representation of the remainder of the measures which occur below those seen on the surface at the Black Rock Quarry; but the passage from the carboniferous to the Silurian formations is no where conformable, and no mention is made of the Millstone grit, a portion of which certainly intervenes, and which is to be seen in small patches near, but which might possibly be represented by the three or four last measures in the section of the Lincoln Hill Limestone Shaft.
Excellent opportunities occur in this immediate neighbourhood of studying the junction of the Silurian and Carboniferous formations, and of the evidences afforded of the denudation of the one prior to the formation of the other. To the general reader these words may convey little meaning, but the scientific student who studies the evidences here made clear cannot fail to comprehend the fact that he has before him not only an old sea-bed, rich in relics of the fauna which inhabited its waters, but a sea-bed which had become a cliff, and had in turn been gradually cut down and wasted during successive ages prior to that at which a carboniferous flora had begun to flourish. Two series of rocks are here in juxtaposition, yet so widely separated by time, as to indicate a gap in the consecutive history of the earth as great as if we were to blot out the intermediate history of this country from the close of the Heptarchy to the reign of George III.; only that the period of time in the latter case would bear no manner of comparison with the former. If we suppose the Wenlock limestone to have been once covered at these points by the Ludlow limestone, and this again by the old red sandstone—as is the case to the south, to say nothing of the carboniferous limestone and millstone grit, we are forced to the conclusion that thousands of vertical feet, and hundreds of cubic miles of solid ground were first piled up and then cut down and carried away by the sea. Creation itself in the interval of their formation passed through many phases, during which new species came slowly into being and disappeared, and were again replaced by others. To fill up the gap that succeeds this great silurian flooring of the coal-measures, to study the intermediate links of the missing strata we must go to the millstone grit in its undenuded or partially denuded state, as it occurs beneath the coal-measures of Little Wenlock, or at the bend of the road, called “The Turn,” in going from Coalbrookdale to Wellington.