Henry Cort

		Henry Cort Inventor - Creator of puddled iron - Father of iron trade
		This page is part of a website based on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. The creator and owner of the site was Eric Alexander who passed away. The site is now hosted by Hans Weebers Please contact me with any comments or queries.

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Shropshire and Staffordshire ironmasters

The concentration of eighteenth-century iron industry in two areas of the West Midlands is attributable partly to favourable local conditions: a good supply of ingredients and fast-running streams driving hammers, rollers and bellows.

Another feature is a navigable river providing transport, in days when long-distance roads are rare and primitive. Downstream is the commercial centre of Bristol, so it is no surprise to find Bristol merchants much involved in the iron trade.

This place has the remarkable advantage of finding in the mountains on the banks of the river Iron Ore, Coal and (in the neighbourhood) Lime Stone so that Nature has here supplied every requisite material for Smelting the ores of Iron.

Entry for Coalbrookdale in diary of Charles Hatchett, May 1796.

One area is around the Severn Gorge, where the famous iron bridge will be built. The other is on a tributary, the Stour, which drains an area west of Birmingham.

At Portsmouth above the Gentlemen who supply the Yards there viz Willm Attwick Esq of Portmansquare London & Mr Thos Morgan of Gosport acknowledge that they use bars £8000 value yearly - they buy principally from Manufacturers in Staffordshire & Worcestershire.

From records of Cramond ironworks in National Library of Scotland archives.

John Becher's role

It may be no coincidence that John Becher takes up residence at Shut End, just north of Stourbridge, not long after the birth of his third son, Henry Hopson Becher. Researches into the Becher family suggest that Henry Hopson's birthplace is Park Hall, Kidderminster, which at the time is owned by the Foley family, whose fortune was made earlier in the iron trade.

Another pointer is an entry in a ledger book of the Gibbons family in 1782, recording payment by Becher of over £500, a vast sum in those days. One Gibbons brother is a merchant in Bristol, where Becher was born and raised: two are ironmasters with works on both the Stour and the Severn. Other names mentioned in the ledger are also identified with the trade. The record probably indicates a purchase of ironmongery by Becher, presumably on behalf of Cort's business in Gosport.

Severn Gorge area

Is the Ironbridge area more important than that round the Stour in the eighteenth century? It certainly achieves more prominence, thanks to the iron bridge.

The whole of the bridge was cast in Coalbrookdale at Abraham Darby's Foundry and proved to be the wonder of the age, and still its graceful and ageless beauty attracts thousands of tourists every year.

From monograph on John Wilkinson by Ron Davies.

It is also the place where smelting with coke is pioneered.

Though recent research suggests that an early breakthrough was achieved by Shadrach Fox, the name usually associated with this process is Abraham Darby.

A name shared by three generations of ironmasters at Coalbrookdale, just north of the Severn.

The first Abraham Darby experiments with the coke-smelting process. The second makes it commercially viable. The third uses the product for casting a great variety of items, most notably the components of the iron bridge.

The first two both die while their sons are minors, so there are two interregnums when others run the company.

Boss during the second interregnum is Richard Reynolds, who has married a daughter of Abraham Darby II. During this period the Cranage brothers, furnacemen at Coalbrookdale, introduce a new fining process.

By the time Reynolds hands over control of Coalbrookdale to his brother-in-law Abraham Darby III, he has started up other works in the area, at Horsehay and Ketley.

He continues to run these, independently of the Darbys. Later his son William will take them over.

Another name associated with the Ironbridge area is John Wilkinson. But he has extensive iron interests elsewhere.

Other ironmasters' families

Many other names occur in the litany of ironmasters from the Ironbridge and Stourbridge areas. Gibbons, Homfray, Wright and Jesson are names of particular interest in the Henry Cort story. Sir Ambrose Crowley is also a name from these parts.

You can spend countless hours on the Web browsing through details of all these families.

RELATED TOPICS

Iron manufacture

Cort's patents

Cort's promotion efforts 1783-6

Cumbrian ironmasters: Wilkinson etc

Early works at Merthyr Tydfil

Later Merthyr connections

Scottish iron

Iron hoops

Puddling after Henry Cort

The pages on this site are copied from the original site of Eric Alexander (henrycort.net) with his allowance.
Eric passed away abt 2012
If you use/copy information from this site, please include a link to the page where you found the information.