The first thing striking the attention is a buff coloured shale, weathered on the surface to clay, at the base of the bold bluff cliff of gritty sandstone so conspicuous on the brow of the hill. Whilst examining this member of the Silurian series a man from a neighbouring cottage remarked, “That is fuller’s earth; persons fetch it when they are galled, and it is good for the eyes; large quantities are fetched away and sent to Manchester.”
The fossils it contains show that it belongs to the lowest member of the Ludlow group, and that the whole of the Aymestry and Upper Ludlow have been stripped off and washed away before either the millstone grit or the coal-measures were formed.
Among the fossils yielded by this shale, in addition to bivalves and corals, are those interesting forms of crustaceans called pen fossils, from their resemblance to a quill pen. The species we found was Graptolithus priodon, described in the early works of Murchison as Graptolithus Ludensis. The trilobites, from the fineness of the material, are so sharply and beautifully preserved that the visual organs of the little creatures are clearly discernible, even to the optical tubes, elongated cones, or crystaline lens such as are to be seen so marvellously distinct on the eyes of the dragon-fly of the present day. The beautiful markings too on the shield of these wondrous little creatures which flourished in these seas, in such numbers that they may be got out in groups—forms which died out and perished before the close of the carboniferous formation represented above it—are so delicate and fine as to equal if not to defy imitation in ordinary materials in use at the Dale Works; and it is we fancy at least worth the experiment whether with this shale reduced to powder it might not be made to produce delicate impressions after the example here set by nature. We also found here some beautiful Lingula, a Patella, an Orbicula, a Leptæna, a Lituites, a Fienestella, and other fossils. To inhabitants of the Dale, here is a field of research open which they may make their own, close to their own doors.
This fine earth is known by various names where it occurs in Shropshire and the adjoining county of Herefordshire. In the latter county it is said to be used by country people for cleansing purposes, in which case it is called “Walker’s earth or soap.”
If the reader will follow this soft soapy shale, as we did, higher up into the coppice, he will find large masses of rock which have been toppled over through the shale giving way. A slip on the side of the narrow path discloses a bed of it, and immediately above it, consequent upon a former slip, we come upon a sandstone rock from twelve to fourteen feet thick, with quartz pebbles, representing the millstone-grit. Then a bed of black shale occurs, about six inches thick, which is chiefly made up of coal-plants, some of which are converted into charcoal. These plants do not appear to have grown on the spot, but to have been drifted into their present position. They were evidently in a soft and yielding state, some of them being pressed quite flat. [318] One good sized slab opened with a cast of a Lepidodendron, and we met with another cast, clearly of the same tree, a short distance west of it. Another, a Sigillaria, was much more distinct, the leaf scars being quite sharp, and the fibres of the inner bark very clear. This interesting band of coal shale is succeeded by another of yellowish clay, of about equal thickness; and these are followed by a second and a third band of black shale, with alternate ones of yellowish clay. Above these are thick sandstone rocks, some white, and some coloured red by iron, which here and there occurs in the form of hematite.
The whole of these rocks, from the surface to the soft Lower Ludlow shale here described would better represent the series of connecting links conducting us down from the Crawstone Crust at the Black Rock Quarry than any shaft section we could find described, and the whole may properly be classified as Millstone grit, which is known to attain a thickness of 80 feet in this locality, and to increase to 120 and 150 at a short distance from here, whilst in Derbyshire it thickens to 350 feet, and elsewhere to a maximum of 1,000 feet, and includes, as here, shales and thin coals. Colliers recognise the ironstone which crops out here as the Poor Robin of the Dawley Deep field pit, which occurs 60 feet below the Little Flint Coal; which affords another key to the series of measures which underlie the same coal at the Black Rock Quarry. The Poor Robin however here described must not be confounded with the one of the same name in south Staffordshire, which occurs higher up in the series.
We have given a few, and those the lower coals only, such as are found in the vicinity of Coalbrookdale; it would require more space than we can devote to it to enter upon a description of the measures occurring higher up in the series, in what is called the Coalbrookdale Coalfield. The ideal representation given of coal producing plants at the head of this article and in subsequent pages, and the one given p. 213, will convey a tolerable idea of the surface as it occurs to the minds of geologists during successive periods of the coal formation, and upon which we purpose offering some remarks, condensed and as brief as is consistent with a due explanation of the circumstances. We have already spoken of the oil which exudes from the rock described. It is the same which oozed from a similar rock at the “Tar Tunnel” at Coalport, at the rate, it is said, of 1,000 barrels per week. We extract from it naptha, rectified naptha, gas to illumine our houses, and those magnificent colours derived from the sun’s rays when the earth was young and green, mauve, magenta and a hundred medium tints.
Coal itself rarely contains well preserved specimens of plants, but Sporangia (Flemingites gracilis) may be found in the Lancashire Ladies’, the Flint coal, and most if not all others, the tough little seed cases having resisted the effects of fermentation and crystallization, which destroyed the cellular tissues of plants, but which may sometimes be seen in a carbonised state. If the reader will be at the trouble to split open a piece of coal where he finds brown streaks at the edge, he may detect with the naked eye thousands of little discs clustered and heaped together so thick as to constitute one third at least of the coal; and if he applies a lens he will find some open, with bright amber coloured matter inside; and others closed and imbricated. We have found them in all the coals we have yet examined. Let any one doubtful of the vegetable origin of coal take a bass burnt white from the grate, tap it on the edge, and he will find between the laminated plates numerous impressions of plants. Lindley and Hutton, from experiments instituted by them, state that plants such as are represented on pages 305 and 313, were peculiarly adapted for preservation under water.
Many hundreds of species of plants have been made out, two thirds being ferns. Very beautiful and clear impressions of the accompanying one, Alethopteris lonchitica, or true fern, are obtained, the finest impressions being generally in the Ballstone. It was in fact the great age of ferns: as many as 250 having been described, according to form, structure, &c. Thus, we get:—Asterophyllites (star leaf fern), Cyclopteris (round fern) chiefly in the Ballstone, Caulopteris (star fern); Sphenopteris (wedge shape fern); also Newropteris, or nerved winged fern, which are given on the two following pages:—
Many bear strong resemblances at a first glance to others cultivated in our greenhouses, or growing wild in their favourite habitats, and some approximate so closely to living forms as to make it a question whether they should be classified with different genera or not. The number is remarkable, considering that not more than sixty distinct species are at present indigenous to Europe. The tree ferns of modern horticultural gardens, with their scar-marked trunks and branching fronds, like those from the Mauritius, Brazil, and the Isle of Bourbon, convey tolerable ideas of those of the coal-measure period. We have already spoken of the mare’s-tail of antediluvian times; it is seen in the full page representation, with its glorious head towering high, and the young shoots peering above the slime. Deep in the forest is a species sending forth silky streamers; and prostrate is a species of Lepidodendron, or scaly tree, with branches feathered to the end and bearing cones as scaly as the tree. Others also shoot out their leaves; the Ulodendron staggers beneath its large arm-bearing cones, whilst the seal-impressioned Sigillaria towers high and overtops the whole with its noble crown of foliage. The roots of the latter lie by thousands on our coal-banks, showing distinctly whence the smaller fibres started; some are still connected, being protected by a matrix that formed the sandy soil in which they grew. Water-reeds and forest trees, green parasitic plants, ribbed and jointed, sending forth long-entangling feelers, must have woven a mantle of vegetation rank, matted, and dense in shadow, over the marshy platform where reptiles lurked at intervals. Of the inhabitants of those newly-formed forest lands, scorpions, beetles, flies, and a few reptiles, are all that have yet been found among the relics of the Shropshire coalfields. Saving the buzzing of a beetle and the whirring flight of a scorpion, the shaking of great fronds and fruits, and the sighings of the forest as hot breezes shook the giant pines and rung the pendant catkins, or the sudden splash of some strange fish seizing upon its prey, no sounds were heard. Unlike our woods and copses, all was silence: no songs of birds, no carolling of larks, no warbling of thrushes, no lowing of cattle, no bleating of sheep, and no human voice to break the stillness.
There were inequalities of surface then as now. The country had its uplands and its valleys, its rivers and its lakes, its dry and damp soils, its cool and sunny spots, but with one general genial climate reigning over all.
We have said on page 284 that Mr. Cranege lived in the house Mr. Moses now lives in. It should have been, where Mr. W. Hughes now lives, opposite the Wesleyan chapel.
In mentioning this chapel we might add that the Rev. John Fletcher assisted in its erection, working and carrying stones like another man, with his coat off.
The lease for the ground was obtained by John Share from Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds told Share he might make out the lease for 99 years. Share made it out for 99 years and added “and one year more.” Mr. Reynolds said “Share thou art deep, but I’ll sign it.” The lease has recently expired and the building has been handed over to the Conference.
Ironbridge is a part of Madeley which, like Coalbrookdale, has risen to an independent ecclesiastical division, and its church now enjoys the unmerged rectorial tithes, valued at about £115 yearly, which formerly belonged to the mother church. In other respects also it enjoys privileges which formerly belonged to Madeley proper, such as markets and fairs. When the grants of these privileges were made, and indeed for centuries afterwards, the slopes now covered with houses, and the streets which show a busy population, not only had no existence but the germs, even, which were to call them forth did not exist. The Fox had not become the object of sport it now is, but reared its young undisturbed in holes and burrowings on the hill side which bears its name; and the Brock or Badger shared with its brother burrower undisturbed dominion along the face of the same slope. There was indeed higher sport just then on this side of the Severn. Madeley-Wood was in reality what its name implied. It stretched its green unbroken mantle in front of the river from Coalbrookdale to the Lees or Lay, where the young wood was beat down and an open space kept for grazing. [325] It then followed the declivity where Madeley-Wood Hall now stands, and swept round the high ground of the Haye, where it joined on to Sutton-Wood, which continued a wood till a century or three quarters of a century ago. The Hay, opposite and on a level with the Lay, was another clearing, but one fenced round, into which deer or swine were driven. They could not well be hunted along the rough ground on the slope, but men with dogs rose early and drove them to the enclosures. High up at Lincoln Hill is Lodge Farm, formerly the keeper’s, or the Hunting Lodge—
“Where with puffed cheek the belted hunter blew his wreathed bugle horn.”
Any one who examines the building for himself will at once see that it was erected for some very different purpose than that to which it has been devoted of late years. On approaching it you find substantially built old stables covered by thick heavy tiles, and an ancient barn, with thick walls and heavy timber. The house is of stone, and the windows appear to be of the same date and style as those at the Court. On going inside and ascending by winding stairs to what is called the watch-tower, you find four projections, at the extremity of each of which was a circular opening for a look-out; and beams inside, which are supposed to have formed seats for the watchmen or warders. These are now stopped up, and one, which is said to have had a date is also plastered over. The view would embrace the forest to the point where it united with that of Sutton in one direction, to the Severn in another, the country in the direction of Madeley in a third, and fourthly that reaching beyond Leighton to beyond the Breidden Hills, as you see over the high ground of Lincoln Hill. The thick oak doors and their middle age hinges shew that it has been intended as a place of some strength. The distance from the Park, the Rough Park, and the Court House, render it probable that it was erected for the protection of the forest in this direction. And if its walls could speak they might tell of the visits of many a noble steward or forest-ranger, who whilst hunting the wild boar or stag, here rested and hung up his spear and horn, and received refreshment. Dukes in his Antiquities says that when many of the tenures dependent upon the forest grew useless and obsolete, the king appointed stewards and rangers to take care of the deer. Drayton has thus described these forest-keepers:
“I am clad in youthful green, I other colours scorn,
My silken bauldrick bears my bugle or my horn,
Which, setting to my lips, I wind so loud and shrill,
As makes the echoes shout from every neighbouring hill;
My dog-hook at my belt, to which my thong is tied,
My sheaf of arrows by, my wood-knife by my side,
My cross-bow in my hand, my gaffle on my rack,
To bend it when I please, or if I list to slack;
My hound when in my thong, I, by the woodman’s art,
Forecast where I may lodge the goodly hie-palm’d hart.”
Drayton then describes how by the loftiest head he chooses his deer, unherds him from the rest, and either hunts him down with dogs, or stalks it underneath his horse to strike or take alive.
Hawking too must have been a favourite sport among the gentle-born long after this Lodge was built.
Peregrene falcon The Peregrene falcon, the Gerfalcon, and the Goshawk were used (of the former we give a representation) as well as dogs, and King John’s Forest Charter allowed all freemen the privilege of using them. One old writer says “every degree had its peculiar hawk, from the emperor down to the holy-water clerk.” This probably applied to river-hawking, pond-hawking and field-hawking. At any rate in 1267, the then rector of Madeley, Richard de Castillon, found it necessary to obtain from Henry III., then at Shrewsbury, a license “to hunt in the Royal Forest of Madeley,” then reaching to the Severn; and in 1283 we find the rector’s superior, the Prior of Wenlock, obtaining permission to have a park there; to fence out a portion of the forest, and to have a Haia (Hay) for his deer. The Prior had no doubt by this time learnt a lesson, for he had been fined in the heavy sum £126 13s. 4d. in 1250 for three trespasses within the forest; and again in 1259, as shewn p. 8, he was again fined £100 for building houses within the forest boundary, and ordered to pull them down; but having the following year paid another £100, a grant was made that he and convent may have their houses in peace. The first perambulation of Edward the I.’s time shews that “the Vill. of Madeleye, with its bosc (wood) and two plains,” with “the bosc of Little Caldebroc” were disaforested, and so freed from the severe forest laws of the period. And again, the final perambulation of 1300 in speaking of the jurisdiction abandoned, again mentions Madeley, Capsi, and Caldebrok. Where Capsi was, and to what place the name applied is a puzzle.
Capsi or Capsey is still the surname of families in Wellington, and it is the christian name of a man in Bridgnorth, Capsey, Cristie or Cristey. It is mentioned after Madeley and before Coalbrookdale; might it not have been what is now called the Castle, and Castle Green. This seems probable enough, as there are no traces or traditions of anything approaching to a castle having existed there since the Conquest.
In a survey of the Lordship of Madeley in 1772, we find no mention of Capsi; but we do of Conygray, Dove House Meadow, Doer close, &c. The lords of the manor after the woods were disaforested succeeded to all absolute authority to hunt, course, hawk, fish, and fowl; and to authority to grant power to others at their will and pleasure to do the same. Before altogether quitting this forest it may be well to notice a circumstance which goes to illustrate what we sometimes hear of places of sanctuary in former times. There were poachers then as now; and at the forest assizes in 1209 it is stated that two men, named Hugh le Scot, and Roger de Welinton had taken a doe. Hugh took refuge in a church, and lived a month there; but admitted to the Foresters and Verderers his guilt. He escaped at last, having disguised himself in woman’s clothes; and both were then declared fugitives. In 1235, the bosc of Madeley, with those of Kemberton, Sutton, Stirchley, and Dawley were said to be in the Bailiwick, of Wombridge: subject to officers such as Foresters, Verderers, or Stewards there. It is not improbable therefore that the chief officer of Wombridge may have had a Lodge where we find one. It might have been one of the houses which the Wenlock Prior had built, and which he was only permitted to retain by payment of £100 fine to the king; or again, it might have been built by him when, as Dukes says, he obtained leave of Edward I., in the 11th year of his reign, to “convert Madeley-Wood, within the perlieu of the forest of Mount Gilbert,” as the Wrekin then was called in honour of a monk resident there, into a park.
Any way, if the reader compares the styles of architecture and the materials of which this Lodge and the Gateway or Lodge of the Court are built he will find strong reasons for coming to the conclusion that the latter are from the same quarry, and that the former also correspond. Both have unglazed circular openings at the top; but the one is covered with heavy shelly limestone slabs, and the other with thick old fashioned tiles. The windows of the Madeley-Wood Lodge are smaller, for protection; the doors are of thick oak, studded with nails driven in when the wood was green; portions of the old oak floors only remain. A paved yard has at one time extended beyond and under the stables, if not the barn, we are told by one of the occupants. Domesday also says there was a wood capable of fattening 400 swine, so that there must have been a good many beeches, ancestors of those near the Lodge, to supply mast, or oaks to furnish acorns.
The Old Court and these Lodges, almost the last relics of the feudal times in Madeley and Madeley Wood, have had their ends hastened by rents and cracks made by undermining, in search of minerals, and will soon disappear. But for iron cramps and strong buttresses of bricks the old Lodge would have gone down long ago.
There is one other relic, and one even of greater antiquity.
The oldest building of all in the parish is the old Mill by the Court house. It is mentioned in Domesday; and looking at the thickness and hardness of some of the beams they seem calculated to last as long as they have done; and even they seem to have done duty in some former building. The old wheel is gone and the one which succeeded it, and the pool, originally a fishpond, which supplied water power has gone too; it was, when we remember it on the upper side the old granary or barn.
The Hay House also must be ranked among the oldest buildings of its class, as one which comes down to us from forest times, and in connection with this bosc or Madeley-Wood we have been describing. The house stood here no doubt in forest times, and in its capacious cellars good venison and wine have ere now been stored.
Among the oldest houses in Madeley now standing must be mentioned that belonging to and occupied by Mr. George Legge, where Mr. Wolfe entertained King Charles. Also the house belonging to Mr. John Wilcox. Mr. Wilcox informs us that in the writings it was originally called “Little Hay;” having been built for the son of the proprietor of the Hay house; and that in front was the fold-yard, with a house or two at the outside for farm servants. The interior of the house bears marks of great antiquity; and one room appeals to have been used as a chapel. In what was originally a field was found a well formed with circular stones; on the top ranges are figures, 12 in number, probably representing saints of the Roman Calendar.
Some of the old heavily timbered cottages have been pulled down to make way for modern structures. Freed from exacting forest laws openings in woods began to be made; and during the next two centuries houses of timber, half timber, and wattle-and-dab, and timber and bricks, began to rise up here and there, at Madeley, along the Severn side, and at the Lloyds. Some houses were fitted together, so far as their frame-work was concerned, in woods where the timber grew, and the parts being afterwards removed were pegged together: among them may have been the New house mentioned in Henry the VIII’s grant of 1544, that bearing the date 1612, in the Dale, Bedlam Hall, and the Blockhouse. [333]
Nothing whatever is known, so far as we could learn, about the history of Bedlam Hall; and little beyond conjecture concerning the Block-house, which formerly meant a place to defend a harbor, a passage, or station for vessels. That the ford above was a passage at a very early time there can be no doubt; and it might have been erected by the lords of the manor to protect such a pass. (The date upon the old house nearly opposite is 1654; and this was built by Adam Crumpton, who owned the ferry and paid duty to the lords of the manor (we presume) on each side.) Some say it was a store for barge tackle; and others that it owes its name to the fact that bargemen here put on a block and reeved their lines to get up the ford. It is quite certain that Madeley Wood bargemen had now begun to carry coals, got by levels driven into the hill side under the Brockholes and Foxholes, and to export them, as old Fuller speaks of more than 200 years ago. The monks of Buildwas however had vessels in the 13th century, as we have shewn in “our History of Broseley” (p.p. 14 and 15); and as early as 1220 obtained a giant of a right of road, through Broseley-Wood to the Severn, over which to carry stone to their barges, which they loaded near what is now Ironbridge.
In 1756 there were 39 barges belonging to 21 owners at Madeley-Wood; now there are not half a dozen. From an early period there seems to have been a ferry here; probably boats were kept on either side by the owners of the two old houses which existed near. At any rate there were means of crossing the river when king Charles came down for that purpose and found the passage guarded, during the progress of his flight after his defeat at Worcester. Of roads on this side we fancy there were none, excepting the beds of brooks up which the Wenlock monks scrambled to reach their granary, their mill, their park, and fishponds at Madeley, but of these we shall speak presently.
The present town may be said to owe its creation to the construction of the far-famed iron bridge which here spans the Severn, and from which it derives its name. The iron works established at Madeley Wood, together with the flourishing works of Coalbrookdale, and the communication the bridge opened up with those of iron and clay at Broseley, so fostered its trade that it soon sprang into importance as a town. John Locke, the well-known author of the work on “The Understanding,” has somewhere said that he who first made known the use of iron “may be styled the father of arts and the author of plenty.” Next to the discovery of the material, in point of importance, is its adaptation to the uses and conveniences of mankind. No bridge crossed the river between Buildwas and Bridgnorth, and to the noble arch which crosses the Severn the place is indebted alike for its population, its importance, and its name. It has the credit of having been the first of its kind, and in design and construction was a triumph of engineering skill rarely witnessed at the period at which it was built. A great advance upon the rickety wooden structures, affected by wind and rain, it was no less so upon those clumsy-looking ones of stone higher up and lower down the river, which, choking up the stream and impeding navigation, caused apprehensions at every flood for their safety. The design originated at a period interesting from the expansion of the iron trade and the progress of road making; and was opposed by the ferry men, who thought boats a sufficient accommodation in connecting both banks of the river. But as stone succeeded more primitive formations—logs, single or planked, thrown across a stream—so iron from its strength and lightness triumphed over other materials. It may add to the triumph of the achievement to remark, that both French and Italian engineers who, during the last century took the lead in engineering works of this kind, had made attempts in this particular department, but failed—chiefly from the inability of their iron founders to cast large masses of metal. The first attempt, we believe, was made at Lyons, in 1775. One of the arches was put together, but the project was afterwards abandoned as too costly, timber being substituted in its stead.
The second Abraham Darby had looked at the place and thought how it was to be done. The third Abraham Darby, who on arriving at man’s estate showed himself possessed of the same spirit of enterprise as had distinguished his father and grandfather, resolved to carry out the idea, and to erect a bridge which should unite the parishes of Broseley and Madeley, the former then in the full tide of its prosperity as an iron making, pot making, and brick making district. The time was favourable for the experiment, not only on account of the expansion of the iron trade, but from the progress just then taking place in road making; and the owners of the adjoining land as well as those at the head of local industries were found favourable to the scheme. A company was formed, and an Act of Parliament was obtained, the provisions of which were so drawn as to provide against failure, the terms being that the bridge should be of “cast iron, stone, brick, or timber.” Like some members of the company, the architect, Mr. Pritchard, of Shrewsbury, does not seem to have had full faith in the new material, as in the first plans prepared by him iron was to be used but sparingly, and in the crown of the arch only. This did not satisfy Abraham Darby, John Wilkinson, and others; and Mr. Darby’s principal pattern maker, Thomas Gregory, made other plans.
Wilkinson had made and launched his iron barge down at the Roving, he had made “iron men” to get the coal, he had made an iron pulpit, he had made himself an iron coffin, which he kept in his greenhouse, besides one or two to give away to his friends. He had faith in iron, in iron only, and he insisted upon the employment of his favourite metal.
Telford described him as the king of Ironmasters, in himself a host; the others said he was iron mad, but submitted; and the bridge was commenced. The stone abutments were laid in 1777, during which time the castings were being made at the Dale. The ironwork took but three months to erect. The following particulars may be interest.
On the abutments of the stone works are placed iron plates, with mortices, in which stand two upright pillars of the same. Against the foot of the inner pillar the bottom of the main rib bears on a base plate. This rib consists of two pieces connected by a dovetail joint in an iron key, and fastened by screws; each is seventy feet long. The shorter ribs pass through the pillar, the back rib in like manner, without coming down to the plate. The cross-stays, braces, circles in spandrils, and the brackets, connect the larger pieces, so as to keep the bridge perfectly steady, while the diagonal and cross-stays and top plates connect the pillars and ribs together in opposite directions. The whole bridge is covered with top plates, projecting over the ribs on each side, and on this projection stands the balustrade of cast iron. The road over the bridge, made generally of iron slag, is twenty-four feet wide, and one foot deep. The span of the arch is one hundred feet six inches, and the height from the base line to the centre is forty feet. The weight of iron in the whole is three hundred and seventy-eight tons, ten hundred-weight. Each piece of the long ribs weighs five tons, fifteen hundred. On the largest or exterior rib is inscribed in capitals—“This bridge was cast at Coalbrookdale, and erected in the year 1779.”
During the construction of the bridge a model was prepared and sent up to the Society of Arts, who presented Mr. Darby with their gold medal in recognition of his merits as designer and erector; and a model and an engraving of the bridge may still be seen in the Society’s rooms, John Street, Adelphi. Mr. Robert Stephenson has said of the structure: “If we consider that the manipulation of cast-iron was then completely in its infancy, a bridge of such dimensions was doubtless a bold as well as an original undertaking, and the efficiency of the details is worthy of the boldness of the conception.” Mr. Stephenson adds “that from a defect in the construction the abutments were thrust inwards at the approaches and the ribs partially fractured.” This was not the case. It arose from the nature of the land and its exterior pressure which was obviated by sinking and underbuilding the foundation, and to remedy the supposed defect, two small land arches were, in the year 1800, substituted for the stone approach on the Broseley side. While the work was in progress, Mr. Telford carefully examined the bridge, and thus spoke of its condition at the time:—
“The great improvement of erecting upon a navigable river a bridge of cast-iron of one arch only was first put in practice near Coalbrookdale. The bridge was executed in 1777 by Mr. Abraham Darby, and the ironwork is now quite as perfect as when it was first put up. Drawings of this bridge have long been before the public, and have been much and justly admired.”
Mr. Smiles in speaking of the bridge quotes a Coalbrookdale correspondent who, writing in May, 1862, says that
“at the present time the bridge is undergoing repair; and, special examination having been made, there is no appearance either that the abutments have moved, or that the ribs have been broken in the centre or are out of their proper right line. There has, it is true, been a strain on the land arches, and on the roadway plates, which, however, the main arch has been able effectually to resist.”
It is a pleasing object in the landscape, and passed its centenary this year, 1879, with no other display than a few small flags which Mr. Frisby placed on the balustrades. It has paid for itself over, and over again; and the excessive toll is at present severely felt. Those sharing the benefits of the monopoly of course protest against attempts to make it a free bridge, and being private property there is no other means of effecting the object than by buying them out, or by obtaining ah Act of Parliament. There is, it is true, one other: and that the suicidal one of letting it rust to its own destruction—a course the monopolists seem resolved to take. [340]
The Severn formerly was a great liquid highway for heavy goods; people took their boats to Shrewsbury to the fairs for butter, cheese, and groceries, and came down with the stream, others were carried on pack-horses; a strong enduring race now extinct.
Roads were made pretty much at will, and were repaired at pleasure. Covered waggons, like Crowley’s, drawn by 4 or 6 heavy horses, crept along the rough circuitous roads. It was not till 1763 that turnpike-gates were established, to raise money to keep roads in repair. Stage coaches then ventured into districts they had not visited before. Previous to a road being made along the Wharfage, coaches had to toil up the hill at the back of the Swan, but after the bridge was built they went under it and turned up by the stables to the front of the Company’s Inn, the Tontine. Afterwards they ran somewhere at the back and came into the old road at Lincoln Hill. Ultimately the present road was made by Styches pit to the top of the bank. At one time four coaches ran through the town; two from Shrewsbury to Cheltenham, L’Hirondelle and the Hibernia; and two from Shrewsbury to Birmingham; the Salopian and, we think, the Emerald. The two latter belonged to the brothers Hemmings, who drove them; but who afterwards quarrelled and ran in opposition to each other. Taylor of the Lion started the “Young Salopian” in opposition; and Hemmings then called his the “Old Salopian.” When the Birmingham and London railway opened, Taylor got a petition numerously signed to the Post Master General, asking in an apparently disinterested way to be allowed to carry the mail bags gratuitously to Birmingham, at the same time binding himself to forfeit a heavy sum if he failed to be in time. He obtained his wish and immediately called his coach the Royal Mail; which not only brought him custom but saved him £1 4s. 0d. per week at Tern Gate, 18s. at Watling street, £1 4s. 0d. at Priorslee, 12s. at Shifnal, and tolls at all the other gates to Birmingham.
John Peters took a fancy for driving the Hibernia, thinking he could take it down the steep hills between Shrewsbury and Ironbridge without stopping to have the wheels looked. The first steep descent was the Wyle-cop, and this he managed to get down without accident; but in trying the experiment down Leighton Bank, shortly before the first change of horses, the coach, driver, and passengers came to grief, and were pitched right over into a field at the bottom of the hill. Peters was seriously injured, and some of the passengers were badly hurt; but Peters never tried a similar experiment to the end of his days.
In those days it was a strange sight for a stranger coming down the bank towards Bedlam for the first time in the dusk of a winter’s evening, when the works were in full operation. We remember Hemmings once telling of a Cockney coming down into the country for the first time, and waking up from a snooze, unable to conjecture the true character of the scene, and insisting upon going no farther. To him the mazy river was the Styx; and had he been able to see the ferry unpaddled moving slowly to and fro in mid-channel, he might have imagined it was Charon’s boat; and the bellowing blast-furnaces and coke-fires the entrance to Inferno. These fires have long been extinguished, and the supply of mineral riches being exhausted, labour has migrated to places where nature had similar gifts in store to stimulate wealth-creating industry. You may yet perceive the crumbling outlines of the ruins, abrupt and massive, like the tottering walls of some dismantled castle. Mr. Glazebrook, Mr. E. Edwards, and others horsed some of the coaches from Ironbridge, and the stopping and changing usually drew a group of tradesmen and others to witness the sight. L’Hirondelle was horsed from Shrewsbury by Jobson of the Talbot, who took a special pride in his team. When Hemmings left the road we had some few attempts at running Omnibuses by the Rushtons, and by Walters; first to Wolverhampton, and next to Wellington; but railways coming nearer drove them from the road.
The tradesmen of Ironbridge naturally took great interest in the various schemes proposed to bring railways within their reach, and assisted manfully in meeting the difficulties which for a long time delayed the execution of the works on the part of interested landowners, and others who advocated rival schemes; and it may be interesting here to place on record facts bearing on the subject.
First by the 16th and 17th Vict. Ch. 227, entitled “An Act for making a Railway from the Oxford, Worcester, and Wolverhampton Railway near Hartlebury, in the County of Worcester, to the Borough of Shrewsbury, in the County of Salop, WITH A BRANCH to be called the Severn Valley Railway, and for other purposes.”
2ndly, in 1855. By the 18th. and 19th. Vict. Ch. 188 entitled “An Act for making and maintaining the Severn Valley Railway, and for other purposes.”
3rdly. in 1856. By the 19th. and 20th. Vic. Ch. 111 entitled “An Act for authorizing deviations from the authorized line of the Severn Valley Railway, and for making further provisions with respect to Shares in the Capital of the Severn Valley Company, and for facilitating the completion of their undertaking, and other purposes.”
4thly in 1858. By the 21st. and 22nd. Vic. Ch. — entitled “An Act for making further provisions with respect to the Severn Valley Railway in order to the completion thereof, and for other purposes.”
5thly in 1860. By the Severn Valley Railway Leasing Act 1860 to the West-Midland.
Was authorized in 1853, but a portion only of this Railway (from Wellington to Lightmoor) was constructed and the powers of the Act lapsed. It was worked by the Great Western Company in connexion with their line from Lightmoor to Shifnal and Wolverhampton.
The Great Western Company and the West Midland and Severn Valley Railway Companies promoted Bills for Leasing this Railway in the Session of 1861. The Great Western Bill also proposed for the extension of their existing Line ending at Lightmoor, from Lightmoor to Coalbrookdale. The West Midland and Severn Valley (joint) bill in addition to its provisions for leasing the Wellington line to Lightmoor provided for the construction of a Railway from the Ironbridge Station on the Severn Valley Railway over the river Severn through Coalbrookdale to the Lightmoor Station of the Wellington line at Lightmoor. There were in fact three Bills before Parliament for constructing Railways from Lightmoor to Coalbrookdale, two crossing the river Severn, one joining the Severn Valley Railway at Ironbridge, and the other joining the Severn Valley and the Much Wenlock and Severn Junction Railway at New Barn. The Much Wenlock & Severn Junction Railway was authorized in 1859 by 22nd. and 23rd. Vict. entitled “An Act for making a Railway from Much Wenlock, in the County of Salop to communicate with the Severn Valley Railway and the River Severn in the same County.”
These railways conferred great advantages upon the town of Ironbridge both as a means of sending and receiving goods, and also as enabling tradesmen to economise time in attending markets or fairs, and in bringing men of business into the neighbourhood.
They also bring numerous visitors in summer time, who are attracted by the scenery in the neighbourhood. It may indeed be taken as a fact, as we have said before, that there are nooks and corners just outside and along the Severn Valley now better known to strangers than to the inhabitants; and which natives themselves have never seen. With eyes to watch the till and see their way along the beaten track of business, men not unfrequently lose sight of intellectual pleasures within their reach; in their hurry to secure gain they forget items that might serve much to swell the sum of human happiness at which they aim. Like Wordsworth’s clay, cold, potter; to whom
A primrose by a river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more,—
so, insensible to the life that is within them and the glories which surround them, they feel not that flow of which Milton speaks, that—
Vernal joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair!
Coleridge too has said,
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
And some one else, speaking lovingly of the Author of Nature, has written:
“Not content with every kind of food to nourish man,
Thou makest all Nature beauty to his eye
And music to his ear.”
There are no bolts, bars, or boundary walls, and there need be
“No calling left, no duty broke,”
in making ourselves more acquainted than we are, by holiday rambles and dignifying investigations, with wonders which constantly surround us.
Valley of the Severn as seen from the hill near Coalport Incline Plane
Few more interesting spots could be chosen than Ironbridge, with its woods, and cliffs, and river, which from tourists, and all lovers of the beautiful, never fail at once to secure attention and admiration. You may travel far and not meet a page so interesting in nature’s history. Many are the occasional visits—many are the stated pilgrimages, made from distances—by devotees of science, desirous of here reading the “testimony of the rocks.” To such, this natural rent in the earth’s crust; this rocky cleft, the severed sides of which, like simple sections of a puzzle, afford the clue to its original outline and primæval features, and prove full of interest. Like some excavated ruin, flooring above flooring, there are platforms and stages where in rearing the old world’s structure the workers rested. Coins of that far off period are plentiful where human habitations now stand, terrace above terrace. Other than these, the little town has no antiquities older than its bridge; other than the hunting lodge and half-timber-houses previously mentioned; there are no castle keeps, cathedral aisles, or moss-crowned ruins; no suggestive monuments of the past save those already noticed and such as nature furnishes. ’Tis rich in these; these it has mature and undecayed: and in such mute eloquence as no work of man can boast. Massive and motionless there are around the most interesting and instructive specimens of the world’s architecture. Not a winding path threads the hill side but conducts to some such memorial, but opens some page written within and without. Take the favourite summer’s walk of the inhabitants, that leading to the Rotunda, on the crest of the hill; and you stand upon the mute relics of a former world! Beneath is the upturned bed of a former sea, and around is the storied mausoleum where hundreds of the world’s lost species lie entombed. Few places boast a more suggestive or more romantic scene. Lower still, just at
“The swelling instep of the hill,”
winds the silvery thread woven by the Severn through the valley, interlacing meads, woods, upland swells, and round-topped grassy knolls. Amid pasture land sloping to the water’s edge and relieved by grazing cattle, rise the ivy-topped ruins of Buildwas Abbey; beyond is a pleasing interchange of land and water, the whole bounded by hills scarcely distinguishable from the azure sky. Mingled sounds of birds and men and running water strike strangely on the ear; and often in the calm twilight fogs move slowly on the river. How these rocks and caverns echo and reverberate during a thunder-peal, when loud and long-continued. The inhabitants tell, too, of curious acoustic effects produced along the valley; how in under tones from one side the river to a point of equal elevation on the other neighbours may whisper to each other, the atmosphere acting as a sounding-board for the voice. This is so in a rent in the rocks above the Bower-yard, known to natives as the Bower Yord.
“Up the bower, and through the Edge,
That’s the way to Buildwas bridge,”
is a local ditty with no other merit than antiquity; but it has served as a lullaby to generations cradled long ere the bridge below was reared. Over-looking the Bower is Bath-wood—minus now the bath. Tych’s-nest comes next, where the kite formerly squealed, and had its eyrie; and still later—as the oldest inhabitant is ready to testify—where badgers were caught, and made sport of at Ironbridge Wake.
Ironbridge abounds in pleasant walks and sunny spots; and right pleasant ’tis to view from some eminence on the opposite bank—Lady-wood or Benthall-edge, the prospect spread out before you. Clustering cottages are seen to perch themselves on ridges, or to nestle pleasantly in shady nooks half hid by rocks and knolls and trees; while bits of nature’s carpet, garden plots and orchards, add interest to the scene. On points commanding panoramic sweeps of country, of winding dales and wooded hills, have sprung up villa-looking residences and verandahed cottages that tell of competence, retirement, and those calm sweet joys that fringe the eventide of prosperous life. There are no formal streets or rigid red brick lines to offend the eye: but that pleasing irregularity an artist would desire. Looking east or west, fronting or turning their backs upon each other, many gabled, tall chimneyed, just as their owners pleased; there is a freedom and rusticity of style that gratifies the sight and harmonises well with the winding roads that meets the poet’s fancy and goes beyond the limner’s skill. To mention severally these suburban hill or tree-embosomed retreats would be sufficient by the name itself to indicate the faithful picture we have drawn. From the Severn to the summit, the hill is dotted over with villas, Gothic and fanciful, fronted by grottoed gardens, flanked by castellated walls and orchards, with ornamental hedge-rows and shady sycamores; whilst in mid-air, lower down, like a gossamer on a November morn, appears the iron net-work of the bridge. We have written so much and so often of these scenes that we are tempted here to hand in copy to the printer of what we have previously said on the subject.
However beautiful these rocks and hills are by day, the view of Ironbridge assumes a character equally sublime when the glare of the sun is gone, when the hills cast their shadows deep and the river gathering the few rays left of the straggling light gives them back in feeble pencils to the eye. At sunset when the hills are bathed in purple light, and the god of day before his final exit between Lincoln Hill and Benthall-edge a second time appears; by moonlight, when rosy tints have given way to hues of misty grey, when familiar objects grow grotesque and queer, and minor features melt away amid the deep calm quiet that reigns below, serial pictures of quaint perspective and inspiring beauty present themselves. To the stranger entering the valley at night for the first time the scene is novel and impressive. Silence,
Faithful attendant on the ebon throne,
sways her sceptre over dim outlines which imagination shapes at will, and the river, toned down to the duskiest hue, whispers mournfully to each smooth pebble as it passes.
The church occupies a picturesque situation on the side of the hill, opposite to the bridge, from which it is approached by a long flight of steps on one side, and a circuitous path winding round the hill on the other. It was built in 1836, and like the bridge, is of a material with which the district abounds. It would however have been equally in character with the place, and more pleasing to the eye, had it been built of stone. It has a tower, a nave, a chancel, and side aisles, and a richly stained glass window, with full length figures of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John. The endowment has been augmented very much of late years through the munificence of the Madeley Wood Company, who subscribed £1,000, and the liberality of the late Rev. John Bartlett, and others. Also by the purchase of the unredeemed rectorial tithes. The sum of upwards of £1,000 was raised too for better school accommodation for the place.