JOHN WILKINSON - KING OF THE IRONMASTERS

Draft for book by

Frank Dawson.

© Frank Dawson and Broseley Local History Society

The draft text is made available on this page for comment prior to publication by Broseley Local History Society.  It contains the results of significant new research concerning Wilkinson and his family relationships. The printed version will contain relevant maps and illustrations.  The draft contains about 74,000 words and runs to about 120 A4 size pages of printout.  There are 304 references.

We would like to get an idea of the likely demand for copies. 

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JOHN WILKINSON,

King of the Ironmasters

By Frank Dawson

CONTENTS 

FRANK DAWSON - Brief CV.. PAGEREF _Toc232312321 \h 1

FOREWORD.. PAGEREF _Toc232312322 \h 1

SYNOPSIS. PAGEREF _Toc232312323 \h 2

ILLUSTRATIONS WISH-LIST.. PAGEREF _Toc232312324 \h 6

Chapter 1 - BEGINNINGS. PAGEREF _Toc232312325 \h 7

Chapter 2 - WILSON HOUSE.. PAGEREF _Toc232312326 \h 14

Chapter 3 - BERSHAM - A NEW BEGINNING. PAGEREF _Toc232312327 \h 17

Chapter 4 - WEALTH AND ACCLAIM. PAGEREF _Toc232312328 \h 26

Chapter 5 - THE NEW STEAM ENGINE.. PAGEREF _Toc232312329 \h 33

Chapter 6 – THE IRON BRIDGE.. PAGEREF _Toc232312330 \h 42

Chapter 7 – THE NORTHERN SANCTUARY.. PAGEREF _Toc232312331 \h 49

Chapter 8 - DAUGHTER MARY.. PAGEREF _Toc232312332 \h 60

Chapter 9 – BROTHER WILLIAM AND FRANCE.. PAGEREF _Toc232312333 \h 70

Chapter 10 - DISAGREEMENT, DISPUTE AND LITIGATION. PAGEREF _Toc232312334 \h 77

Chapter 11 – QUEST FOR AN HEIR.. PAGEREF _Toc232312335 \h 89

FRANK DAWSON - Brief CV

FOREWORD

 John Wilkinson was the important third man in the firm of Boulton & Watt, though he was never a properly constituted business partner.  His acknowledged ironmaking expertise and his engineering skills complemented James Watt's inventive genius and Matthew Boulton's entrepreneurial flair.  He made the iron parts for the early Watt steam engines, suggested working modifications, promoted sales and organised transport. In the ten years from 1775 the three men were central figures in the dramatically developing industrial Britain.

Within this backdrop, documentary sources reveal a Wilkinson family drama on an epic scale; a father with a touch of genius; bitter quarrels between father and sons; the loss of beloved women in the uncertainties of childbirth; and a family in constant dealings with the personalities and events of the Industrial Revolution - the Darbys of Coalbrookdale, Richard and William Reynolds, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley who married a Wilkinson and Samuel More of the Royal Society, John Wilkinson's lifelong friend.

Power relationships are closely examined in the building of the great Iron Bridge over the Severn, in the litigation involving Watt's patent, in some early industrial espionage involving the manufacture of cannon for the British Navy and the Wilkinsons' development of ironmaking in France when she was at war with England.

Everyone has heard of Boulton and Watt.  Few know of John Wilkinson's importance in their story and no detailed and documented biography has yet explained it. He created a vast industrial empire but had no son to inherit it and his need of an heir led to a reputation in his old age as a womaniser and lecher.  He quarrelled with his partners and with some of his family.  He did not regard himself as bound by all the conventions of the time, consorted openly with a mistress, had three children by her in his seventies and left his vast empire to them - only for it to be consumed by litigation.

SYNOPSIS

 1            Beginnings – 1720s to 1740s

Isaac Wilkinson's origins in the north. The Little Clifton furnace in Cumberland. Birth of John. Isaac at the Backbarrow Furnace 1735-1748.  His terms of employment.  His imagination and flair -- experimentation and patents.  His marketing awareness. Improved box smoothing irons, and first iron bellows.  His sons, John and Henry - growing up, education, school - and his later children.  John's schooling at Kendal. Isaac's restlessness and deteriorating relationship with the Backbarrow Company.  His friendship with Wm Rawlinson.  His position as a Dissenter examined. 

2        At Wilson House in Lancashire - 1740s to l750s.

John discovers Castle Head hill. Isaac establishes his own iron furnace.  His improved agricultural implements, and patents.  His rise from pot-founder to gentleman. John apprenticed in Liverpool; becomes a merchant at Kirkby Lonsdale.  His wooing of Ann Maudsley and subsequent marriage into the landed gentry.  Birth of John's daughter, Mary. The Wilkinsons move to Bersham near Wrexham. 

3          Bersham; a new Beginning - 1750s to 1760s

Links with the Darbys. Isaac leases Bersham Furnace.  The death of Henry.  The death of John's young wife, Ann.  His desolation.  His daughter fostered.  His friendship with Samuel More begins.  The iron bellows again.  William to Joseph Priestley's Dissenting Academy at Nantwich. Priestley's background.  Joseph Priestley marries Isaac's daughter, Mary. Isaac and John draw apart.  John's bid against the Darbys for the Coalbrookdale Furnace lease. John's beginnings as Ironmaker in his own right.  The New Willey Company, and the Moreton Forge.  His partners.  His association with Edward Blakeway begins.  William leaves school and starts work at Bersham Furnace under Isaac and John.  Isaac leaves Bersham for South Wales.  His purpose and aspirations.  The New Bersham Company formed by his sons John and William. John marries Mary Lee and establishes his Broseley Headquarters.  His daughter Mary comes home. 

4          Wealth and Acclaim 1765 - 1776

Wars and cannon production.  John's search for investment capital.  First contact with Matthew Boulton.  His growing reputation.  Samuel More promotes his products.  John's Broseley home and Headquarters.  His womenfolk.  Purchase of Bilston estate in Bradley, north of Birmingham.  Association with Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.  Continued friction between Isaac, and John. New Bersham Co. begins to market improved iron blowing engines.  Isaac's ruinous litigation with colliers in South Wales.  His last years in Bristol.  Evidence of John's continuing links to Castle Head in Westmoreland.  Importance of the brothers as lronmasters -William at Bersham, John at New Willey and Bradley.  John's improved method of cannon production.  Visit to Bersham of Frenchman, Marchant de la Houliere.  His description of Bersham Ironworks.  His failure to persuade John to go to France.  Discussion of his successful recruitment of William.  Importance of John's new cannon-boring lathe in producing cylinders for James Watt's new steam engine. 

5        The New Steam Engine 1776 - 1781

James Watt.  His background.  His invention.  John Roebuck's financial support.  First experimental working engine with Carron Ironworks cylinder.  Watt's first Patent.  Roebuck's bankruptcy.  Matthew Boulton buys out his interest in Watt's engine.  Watt's contact with the Lunar Society of Birmingham.  Death of his wife.  His financial distress.  His move to Birmingham with experimental engine.  Boulton urgent for extension of Engine Patent.  Watt obtains Act Patent in Parliament, with sweeping protection for 25 years.  Watt's uncertainties and fears. Need of a better cylinder leads him to John Wilkinson.  Delays in Partnership  Contract between Watt and Boulton.  Watt re-marries.  The first two working engines.  Watt's anxieties. Wilkinson's confidence and re-assurance.  Family pressures on Watt, and Wilkinson.  Wilkinson's daughter Mary growing up.  Her first love.  Boulton's insistence on Engine Contract with customers delays orders.  Wilkinson's impatience.  First engines to Cornwall.  Boulton declines to accept Wilkinson into engine partnership.  Visit of Samuel More to Birmingham to see New Engine and proposals for Iron Bridge.  Evidence of close and continuing friendship between More and Wilkinson.  William Wilkinson leaves for France. 

6        The Iron Bridge 1770s

John Wilkinson's early involvement.  His friend, Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, the Bridge architect.  Abraham Darby (III) is Treasurer.  The petition to the House of Commons.  The subscribers, and initial funding.  Wilkinson urgent to build in iron but no spare capacity in his works.  Early differences of opinion.  Darby anxious about costs and backs off.  Wilkinson keeps up pressure to build in iron. Position of Darby and Wilkinson compared.  A clever manipulation of shareholdings keeps pressure on Darby.  Division among shareholders, and subtle manoeuvrings.  Darby finally commits himself to build in iron, and to a deadline.  Generous support of his commitment from all shareholders.  Wilkinson backs off.  Bridge completed, though not to schedule, but no compensation sought from Darby by shareholders.  Method of bridge construction - some recent evidence.  Cost of Bridge.  Tolls.  Payments to shareholders.  Glimpses of Cl8th life around bridge. 

7        The Northern Sanctuary 1780s

Location. Experiments at Wilson House, his temporary centre of operations.  His womenfolk join him there.  His restlessness.  A new project--his Castle Head mansion. Land purchases to secure position and aspect.  The Wilkinson Sea Bank.  Wilkinson's enthusiasm.  His purchase of Castle Head Hill itself.  His business world intrudes.  Difficulties of securing shipping to transport his iron goods.  Purchases ship, and invests in others.  Difficulties of passports for, and transport to, France in business promoted by brother William. Building of Castle Head mansion continues.  James Stockdale of Cark his agent for further land purchases and local supplies.  Wilkinson's landscaping of his hill and his plan for a new steam engine there.  His agricultural activities.  His Bell Tower.  Samuel More's description of early Castle Head building activities.  Evidence of effect on More and Wilkinson of power of landscape.  More's account of crossing  The Sands by chaise.  More's assessment of Wilkinson.  Their deepening friendship. Daughter Mary's response to Castle Head. 

8          Daughter Mary 1756-1786

Her birth, and foster parents. Childhood in Broseley. Relationship with her stepmother, Mary Lee, and family.  Her education discussed.  Her first love and some implications. Relationship with her father in early womanhood. Her introduction to Castle Head. Evidence of her restlessness among a wide circle of friends.  Distances herself from her father. Death of her grandmother and her subsequent inheritance.  Accompanies her father and uncle (William) to the continent. Father returns.  Mary and William continue travels through France and Italy for next 6 months.  Her return. Homecoming parties. Her second love, Theophilus Holbrook, a young cleric and friend of Richard Reynolds.  Reynolds' Wrekin picnic.  Evidence of Wilkinson's disapproval of Mary's new liaison.  Increasing division between them.  Mary uses grandmother's inheritance as dowry in marriage to Holbrook.  Supported by Richard Reynolds, not her father.  Mary's pregnancy, and death.  Effect on father's attitude to work and friends.  The significance in this context of Wilkinson's iron boat. 

9          Brother William and France 1770s to 1780s

Brothers or Stepbrothers -- John and William Wilkinson's kinship examined.  William's childhood and teenage years.  His schooling.  His apprenticeship at Bersham under Isaac and John.  His management of the works, and partnership. Isaac's position in the old Bersham Company.  His dispute with his nephew and fellow shareholder, William Johnston.  John Wilkinson's early years at Bersham.  Acquires Mary Lee's shares in old Bersham Company through marriage.  His relationship with William Johnston.  William Wilkinson's pre-occupation with learning iron-making skills at Bersham.  His contact with Marchant de la Houliere and his move to France.  The French contract.  His salary and status.  Extent of John's involvement in negotiations.  William's construction of the Indret Cannon Foundry.  His French friendships.  His assistance in .John's successful tender for iron pipework for new Paris water supply.  Was William a spy?  Were the Wilkinsons traitors?  William's second French contract- Louis XVI's New Cannon Foundry at Le Creusot.  His detailed report to French Govt.  The approaching Revolution and William's reputation in France.  His attitude on returning to England.  He claims his Bersham partnership dues.  The beginnings of his quarrel with John. 

10 Disagreement, Dispute and Litigation, 1790s

John Wilkinson purchases Hadley estate (1791) and Brymbo estate (1792). Bersham dispute with brother  William escalates.  Difficult role of Gilbert Gilpin, Clerk of Works at Bersham.  His attempts to reconcile.  Williams's Bill of Complaint to Chancery.  John's reply.  Evidence of his concern and attempts to frustrate process.  Brothers agree to arbitrate.  The Arbitrators and the Award.  Observations from Gilbert Gilpin, and Joseph Priestley in America.  Post-Arbitration events.  Bersham to be sold. John closes works prior to sale.  William purchases Bersham.  His attempts to poison relations between Boulton & Watt and his brother.  John anxious to retain their goodwill.  An examination of their positions.  The Pirate Engine disputes and litigation, particularly the Cark Pirate engine.  Relations between Boulton & Watt, James Stockdale and the brothers in this context.  The detailed Pirate Engine list examined.  William begins to move workmen from Bersham to Birmingham.  Arbitrators' final closing of the Bersham Books in William's favour.  Further dispute between brothers over Maas-y-Fynnon lead mine.  Defence of Watt's Patent against Hornblowers.  Discussion of final rift between John Wilkinson and Boulton & Watt and some earlier differences. 

11      Quest for an Heir in old age

Question of succession - no sons, daughter dead, but three nephews each with responsibilities in John Wilkinson's works, each with expectations.  His decision to procure an heir of his own blood.  His relationship with wife, Mary, examined.  His liaison with a maid at Brymbo, Ann Lewis.  The importance of James Adam.  The three illegitimate children born.  Wilkinson's consolidation of his affairs into a robust old age.  Retains innovatory interest in iron-making.  Consultations with Telford over proposed iron bridge over the Thames.  His Will ---main provisions. The Trustees.  Ominous portents. 

12          Posthumous Rumblings

Chapter 1 - BEGINNINGS

The father of John Wilkinson, Isaac Wilkinson, the first of this family of                                                                     ironmasters, probably came to Cumberland from Washington, County Durham, in the late 17th century, but there remains some uncertainty about his origins.  Recent research by Janet Butler[i] indicates he was born in 1695, the youngest of six children of John Wilkinson and Margaret Thompson who were married in Washington on the 27 June 1678.  However, a Bishop's Transcript of a 1705 entry in the Parish Registers for Lorton, Cumberland, records “Isaac, son of John Wilkinson, baptised 24 January”, which might  refer to another Wilkinson family, for if one accepts Janet Butler's dates he would have been 10 years old at this time.  The further evidence of his stated age of 80 years at the time of his death in the Bristol Register of Burials for 1784 must also be considered.

At an early stage in his adult life Isaac was a known Dissenter, and if he grew up with these beliefs in a family of Dissenters baptism in the established church would not have been possible.  On the other hand it may be that he developed these ideas later, and that his parents at the time of his birth were conforming members of the Church of England.

 It has been suggested, because of his subsequent close relationship with the Quaker William Rawlinson of the Backbarrow Company in south Cumberland, whose father had documented links both with the Bristol merchants and the Darbys of Coalbrookdale [ii], that Isaac came north to Cumberland from the Midlands and developed his religious views from an earlier beginning.  He certainly moved south to Wrexham in his middle life but whether that was a return, or another beginning, remains uncertain. We do know that he died in Bristol in 1784 but meantime there is further evidence for his northern roots.

Wilkinson is a northern, rather than a Midland, name.  The Church Registers in the Lake District of present day Cumbria are full of Wilkinsons, and the IG (Mormon) Index for the old county of Cumberland lists literally hundreds of them. Secondly, there is documentary evidence[iii] to show that Isaac came to the Backbarrow Company, on the River Leven between the southern end of Lake Windermere and the sea, from Little Clifton in Cumberland in 1735. Little Clifton is in Workington Parish, some three miles due east of Workington town and about eight miles by road north west from Lorton. It lies in the mouth of the broad vale of the northward-flowing River Marron a couple of miles from its confluence with the Derwent.

But there is a church record from the parish of Skelton, also close to Workington, for the year 1727 which records : “January 20^th: John, son of Isaac Wilkinson and Ann his wife, baptised”. If this is our Isaac he was married by the age of 32 (or by 22 if one accepts the alternative evidence) to someone called Ann, whose maiden name is unknown, but there is further confusing evidence for that year. From Brigham Church, a village in the area just to the west of Cockermouth, comes a record[iv] which indicates that Isaac was married there on 9 September 1727 to Mary Johnston by banns. He was 23 years old at the time.  The date and the name of his wife, but not his age, agree with Janet Butler's evidence. If both records are accepted for Isaac then two things follow. First, the baptism record would mean that Isaac's Dissenting ideas could not have developed fully by that time since his child was baptised into the Church of England; and second, his wife Ann of the January record had died, possibly in childbirth before he married Mary in the September.  A possible explanation for some of the confusion begins to emerge.

Isaac's first marriage sometime before January 1727, the date of the baptism of the John above, is to a woman called Ann about whom little is so far known.  She dies in childbirth and the infant John (who may or may not have survived) is baptised.  It is the tragedy which turns Isaac away from the beliefs and practices of the established church. As a young widower he meets Mary Johnston and marries her later that year. The following year their first child is born but there is no church record of this birth or baptism because the father is now a Dissenter.  Such a scenario would be supported by all the evidence quoted above with the one discrepancy of Isaac's age.

It is worth repeating here the folk memory still circulating in the Workington area of the birth of John Wilkinson in a cart, when his mother was returning to her home in Little Clifton from Workington market where she regularly went to sell her farm produce.  The birth in such circumstances was of sufficient notice to register as the local view that someday the baby “wod be a girt man”.  Such stories handed down by word of mouth are surprisingly enduring, often rooted in fact though embellished in the telling, and stand more as an indicator than as evidence.

This one is sometimes used to support the idea that Isaac's wife was a strong and healthy woman, which is likely to be so since she went on to bear him five more children. It also supports the tradition that the Wilkinson family roots were in farming even though in his early thirties Isaac is being described as an iron founder.  Little Clifton, too, is in the middle of that favoured livestock farmland between the Cumbrian mountains and the Irish Sea where the young sheep and cattle born on the Fells and in the mountain valleys come to be fattened.

“The area of Little Clifton today is completely by-passed by newer and faster roads, so without the aid of a detailed map it is, for a stranger, virtually impossible to locate.  It lies cheek-by-jowl to Bridgefoot village which is set upon the River Marron, a pretty spot, boasting a secluded and ancient water-powered iron forge with an attendant weir and mill house.

The old furnace where Isaac worked stood about half a mile south from Little Clifton, but today there are no outward visible signs of such, though cinder is seen in fairly large quantities and finding a lump or two of iron is no problem.

As one would expect, the site is known as Cinder Banks, a name which has been adopted to a new bungalow recently erected upon the site.  Across the field to the west of Cinder Banks is Furnace House.  It now stands empty in a long and lonely lane and was probably used in days past by managers of the ironworks and possibly the Wilkinsons…” [v]

From Furnace House the ground slopes down gently to the River Marron and its old mill half a mile away, and the view beyond to the eastward is across gently rolling country, the low ridge separating the Marron and the Lorton vales in the foreground and the rugged peaks and ridges of the high fells of the Lake District on the skyline beyond.  Still a countryside of small farms, it will have changed little since Isaac's time.

There are eighteenth century records of an iron furnace at Little Clifton, and it is likely that Isaac learned his iron-making skills there and his wife ran a small farm or holding which was their home.  The Workington Church Registers in the 1730s record the christenings of several children of a “certain Charles Reeves of Clifton Furnace”, suggesting the place was a well-known and important focus in the area at that time.

Isaac is first described  as an iron founder in an Agreement signed on 25 July 1735 [vi] between the Backbarrow Company, an established iron-making business in what was then known as Lancashire-over-the Sands, and “Isaac Wilkinson of Clifton in the County of Cumberland, Founder”.  It is a fascinating document, and makes clear immediately that the Backbarrow Company are contracting with an experienced and established craftsman.  He undertakes:   “…to cast for them all kinds of Cast Iron Ware whatsoever and what Quantities thereof as they may require him to cast at Backbarrow and Leighton Furnaces for the Term of Twenty One Years (and it shall not be Lawfull for him to leave the said Business during the said Term upon any account if they think fitt to continue the same) at the following Rates being sound and merchantable goods viz Pots and Pans of all sizes at Two Pounds Seven Shillings and Sixpence p Tun Girdles  and Boshes at One Pound Four Shillings p Tun Backs Grates and Heaters at One Pound p Tun Weights at Fifteen Shillings p Tun Waggon Wheels at One Pound Eighteen Shillings p Tun and any other kinds of Work at Proportionable rates, the said Isaac Wilkinson finding all kinds of Tools Utensills and necessaries whatsoever requisite for Casting the said Wares at his own proper Costs and Charges, the said John Maychell William Rawlinson and James Maychell finding a Casting House of Twenty Yards long and Ten Yards wide for the said purpose…”

Isaac then, did not learn his iron-founding skills at Backbarrow, did not come there as a youngster to learn his trade.  He is forty years old with enough experience at the Clifton Furnace to give him an impressive range of casting skills.  Moreover, he has sufficient standing to negotiate a compensation clause in his contract should it be terminated, and from the beginning he is pushing his employers towards innovations. The contract continues:   “…But in Case the said John Maychell William Rawlinson & James Maychell do find the said Business not beneficial to them then it may be Lawfull for them at any time to make void this agreement provided they employ no other Workmen afterward in the same way and do pay the said Isaac Wilkinson Fifty Poundes for full Damage and Satisfaction in procuring Toolles; And it is moreover agreed that if the said John Maychell William Rawlinson and James Maychell do incline to have the abovesaid Wares made by an Air Furnace in the Intervalls when their Blast Furnaces are out the said Isaac Wilkinson hereby covenants to build the same at his own Charge and to cast the Wares at the abovesaid rates but not to find the Fuel for that purpose…”.

There is another folk memory told in the Backbarrow area of Isaac Wilkinson being paid in part by his employers in molten metal to be used for his own purposes, carrying it in pots from the furnaces across the road to moulds at his house. This has tended to be dismissed by commentators who understand the quick-cooling and loss of fluidity of molten iron.  Such memories become more feasible, however, in the context of this early reference to an air furnace in which the metal could be reheated and further refined before being poured.

Information about Isaac's subsequent work at Backbarrow comes from the account books and journals of the Backbarrow Company.  His early energy and drive are impressive.  Building of the casting house, the “new pothouse”, begins in December 1735 and continues through the winter.[vii] There is a payment against it of £45.11.10 in February 1736 and Isaac begins casting in July even though the roof is not finally slated until September.  His first quarter's wages are paid the same month and a new account for "Isaac Wilkinson Potfounder" is opened which shows a production by the following February of some sixty tons of pots, pans, backs, girdles, plates and wheels. 

Later that year he proposes another innovation to his employers. He has identified a marketing opportunity for an improved type of box smoothing iron, is confident of his skill to manufacture the new product himself, is keenly aware of the competitors in the market and what must be done to outmanoeuvre them, is clear about how the release of his new irons onto the market should be controlled and what the price should be.  His written proposals are accepted with only minor modifications and signed by all parties in an agreement dated 18 October 1737.[viii]

This document identifies Isaac Wilkinson as a skilled iron founder certainly, but also as a potential entrepreneur with imagination and business flair, qualities that from this point on recur throughout his life. It also outlines the unusual relationship he is here able to establish with his employers, the Backbarrow Company.

The company is producing iron that they sell as bar iron by the ton, or make into iron products (cast iron wares). Isaac is the skilled founder employed by them to make the cast iron wares, for which he receives wages.  But he is also allowed to sell for his own profit a proportion of the cast iron wares he has made, under an arrangement whereby he buys back from the company for resale his own products at an agreed rate per ton of wares, the rate varying with the type of product.  For his improved box irons. for example, the rate he proposed was £12 or £13 per ton of wares, raised to £14 a ton in the agreement.  He also asked his employers for sole rights for the sale of these box irons which, since he took out a patent [ix] for that product the following year, it seems likely he was granted. It is the manner of the moulding of the one-piece box that makes his smoothing irons innovatory, and the fact that they can be made from a “melted fluid” of “any mixt metall” [x] indicates again a further use for the air furnace in which any old metal could be re-melted. The wording of the patent is revealing:  “…my said metallick boxes, both bottom, top, sides, and the barrs within them, consist of one entire piece of any cast metall, either iron, brass, copper, bell metall, or any mixed metall, and are made and performed from a melted fluid of any of the said metalls cast into a mould invented for that purpose, and then ground and finished in the same manner as other box irons now in use.”

Two interesting questions emerge at this point.  First, how far was an iron founder in those early days looking towards the domestic market for his profits and an outlet for his products; how far is his imagination and inventiveness focussed on the domestic scene?  The list of Isaac Wilkinson's cast iron wares suggests that the domestic market is important. Pots, pans, fire backs and grates, weights and smoothing irons are listed among his products. Second, what role did his wife play in engaging his attention on the need for an improvement to the box iron then in use?  Its old construction of separate plates bolted together could allow hot ash or small cinders to drop out onto the ironing. Perhaps Isaac had some personal experience of this.

From earliest times forges and furnaces were blown by leather bellows, the smaller ones hand-operated, the larger ones as at Backbarrow attached to a cam wheel driven by a water wheel.  Servicing and replacing the leather airbags which became creased and worn from constant use was a considerable recurring cost.  The Backbarrow Journals[xi] show payments for “tanned hides for bellows” in December 1736 and April 1737 soon after Isaac Wilkinson arrived there.  In the autumn of 1737, however, he changed for all time the dependence of his employers on leather bellows in a step which at once demonstrated his imaginative flair and his iron-making skill.

The Journal of the Backbarrow Company for 1737 has the following detailed entry :  “Backbarrow Forge Dr to Acc/t of Cast Iron Wares the sum of £6- for a pair of Cylindrical Cast Iron Bellows, put up in Septemr 1737 being computed at ½ a tun and valued at £12 per Tun….. £6-”

There is further evidence that the Company was enthusiastic about this innovation, was prepared to support it financially and wished to celebrate its arrival. There are account entries round this date for fourteen days day-labourer payments at a shilling a day to “George Walters about Iron Bellows etc” and several transfers from one account to another of iron “for new Iron Bellows”.  Particularly interesting and showing beyond doubt the enthusiasm of the Company for this improvement is an entry in “sundry disbursements” for September 1737 “For Ale ordered by the Masters on occasion of the Iron Bellows £3- ”[xii]. It was obviously a signal event.

There are two further significant records, on 1 October 1737: “By Forge, for iron used about Geering the new Iron Bellows 1c. 7st. 12lbs…£1.11.9d.’’[xiii]; and on 27 December the same year when the forge was also charged “for a pr of cylindrical Bellows & Appurtenances” weighing 18 cwt[xiv].  The former of these entries could relate to repairs or improvements to the first iron bellows installed, but it seems probable that the latter refers to a second pair of bellows at another hearth; and overall it is clear that Isaac Wilkinson was using iron bellows, designed, manufactured and installed by himself, for forge and foundry work at Backbarrow in 1737 some 20 years before they came into use elsewhere.

In this context, too, the second part of his Box Iron Patent of 1738 [xv] which is puzzling and often ignored begins to make sense, for he includes in it another item which is difficult to relate to Box Irons, and described as his “Bellows of Cast Metal for Forges, Furnaces or any other works…”.  His so-called Iron Bellows Patent [xvi] did not appear until 1757, the date generally credited as marking the introduction of iron bellows into the iron-making industry, but that Patent Application is a carefully elaborated description for a “machine or bellows to be wrought by water or Fire Engines…”. By that time of course he had two decades of practical experience of iron bellows behind him.

It is surprising that in those intervening years no-one stepped in to steal the invention, particularly in view of the enthusiasm with which the Backbarrow Company initially adopted it and which one would expect to lead to a wider broadcasting of its use.  It may be that, in spite of William Rawlinson's contact with the Midland iron-making world, this far outpost of Lancashire-over-the-Sands, difficult to access by road though less so by sea, retained its isolation and integrity until the 1770s. By then Isaac's iron-making sons John and William were living and working in the Midlands, whilst retaining strong links with the place of their roots.

During these early Backbarrow years Isaac's family had not grown beyond the two boys John and Henry, born in Little Clifton in1728 and 1730.  It is as though he needed to pour all his energy into the early opportunities this new work provided.  Things were about to change. In 1741 a daughter, Mary, was born; in 1744 a third son, William, with two further daughters, Sarah in 1745 and Margaret whose birth date is uncertain.

Tradition has it that he lived throughout the Backbarrow years at Bare Syke, a substantial family house with gardens and orchards belonging to the Maychells, just across the road from the furnace and a little south of it, close enough to supervise the work continuously but upwind of the furnace fumes.  There is reference in Backbarrow documents to “Wilkinson’s House” long after Isaac was dead which is likely to be Bare Syke, and ask after Wilkinson's House of any old resident in Backbarrow today and they will point you to it.  The impact of the family on the place has been enduring.

Isaac's two older boys grew up at Backbarrow, youngsters of seven and five when they arrived, young men of twenty and eighteen when they left, and throughout their early adolescence with no other siblings in the family to consider.  It was a marvellous place for two such lads, quite apart from the fascination of the furnace and forge which Isaac would certainly involve them in as they grew older. Backbarrow lies in a gorge section of the River Leven, about a mile downstream of the point where it empties out of the foot of Lake Windermere.  To this day it is a clean river of waterfalls and pools where salmon wait, with extensive oak woods rich in wildlife spreading into the valley on both sides.  John particularly, throughout his life and in stark contrast to his preoccupation with the noise and heat and smoke of his iron-making, responded to wilderness and water with a spirit that anticipated the later Romantics; and he created his own corner of Paradise in later years at Castle Head not far from here.  Perhaps this is where it began, where he and Henry were free to roam, where this wildness and wetness created a pattern, an ideal, for his later life.

Henry is a shadowy figure and virtually nothing is recorded about him.  It has been suggested that he was born impaired, handicapped in some way, but this has to be speculative.  However, he did not follow his older brother to school although Isaac was careful and determined in the education of his children; there is no record of marriage, and he remained within the embrace of his father's house until he died at the age of twenty-six.

There is one other haunting piece of evidence. Carved into a vertical face of the hard slate behind Bare Syke and still visible in a place where Isaac is said to have espallioned his fruit trees, are the initials HW 1745 in a fine elaborated script and obviously the handiwork of a competent scribe.  If Henry did this he had certainly learned to write and might have been taught within the family?  Or did John enscribe it for him ?  What could be John's initials JW (possibly IW) are cut into the same face of rock close by.

It is interesting to speculate that if Henry's life was impaired from birth might this not be reason enough for the eleven year gap before the arrival of the next sibling, the more so if there had been earlier birthing tragedies.  Perhaps Isaac and Mary had decided to have no more children, even before they came to Backbarrow.  If so what changed that?  Or was their daughter Mary a happy accident which carried them into the sunlight again?  Such things would have implications for the happiness of the family and for the atmosphere in which the children grew, particularly for John who was alone with Henry for so long.

The possibility of course remains that John could have been the surviving son of Isaac's deceased first wife.  If his first wife, Ann, had died when John was born, and Henry was the damaged firstborn of his second wife, Mary, Isaac might have decided to have no more children.  All his considerable energy would go into his iron-making. Then his daughter Mary was born and everything changed again.

In his old age when he was living in Bristol, Isaac signed an agreement with Thomas Guest of Dowlais Furnace at Merthyr Tydfil and Thomas Whitehouse Ironmonger of the city of Bristol for the casting and manufacture of iron goods which contains the following clause:  “…it is also hereby agreed…Thos Guest and Thos Whitehouse…to pay the said Isaac Wilkinson and Mary his wife during their natural lives one shilling per ton for every ton of Iron…made at the said works from coakes over and above 15 tons per week on average through the Blast…”[xvii]

The underlining is mine. It is not of course proof that a first wife died in those early years.  It does establish that in his old age Isaac had a wife called Mary, and if the Workington church record identifies the same Isaac then the Ann named there as his wife must have been dead.  It supports the possibility that John Wilkinson's natural mother might have died when he was very young, that he was brought up by a stepmother, that William with whom he quarrelled bitterly and irreconcilably in his later life was his stepbrother, and that his closeness to Henry might simply have been a matter of their closeness in age.

In those later Backbarrow years John left Henry to go to school though at precisely what age is uncertain, and since Isaac sent him to a Non-Conformist school at Kendal it is likely Isaac and the family were known Dissenters by this time.  The Church Schools, and there were few others, simply would not be available to them so they were fortunate in having close by a good school run by a remarkable man.

The Reverend Caleb Rotherham was associated with the Unitarian Academy at Kendal from its inception in 1733 until his death in 1752.  On 27 May 1743 he was admitted Master of Arts of Edinburgh University followed immediately by a DD awarded on public disputation “On the Evidences of the Christian Religion”[xviii].  His Academy, however, was not a theological academy and two-thirds of his students were never intended for the Ministry.  It was a place for young men, as opposed to boys.  He charged eight guineas a year for lodging and board and four guineas for learning. The young men were required to provide their own fire and candles and wash their own linen.  “They go through a whole course of Mathematics…I have a distinct consideration for that branch of instruction….”.[xix]

Outside of the universities of the time, which as Church establishments would also be closed to him, it was probably the best education available to Isaac's sons and because of the building and engineering demands inherent in the iron-making processes he would recognise the value of a good grounding in mathematics.  There is plenty of evidence in John Wilkinson's later life that it served him well, and that his handwriting and use of language had also benefited.

He, though never Henry, is in a list of Caleb Rotherham's students which has been dated at circa 1745 as a consequence of other names included in it.  The precise dates of his education at the Academy are not known, though since he would be eighteen years old in 1745 that date is likely to be towards the end of his time there.  It is recorded that Isaac later sent his son William to school at the Warrington Academy when he was fourteen years old, so it is reasonable to suppose John started at the same age and spent four years at Kendal.

Two other young men at the Kendal Academy about this time are James and Robert Nicholson, sons of a Liverpool merchant Matthew Nicholson, who was cousin to Edward Blackstone, one of the original founders of the Unitarian Chapel in Kendal, and whose widow, Ann, Caleb Rotherham married in 1746 after the death of his first wife.  Matthew Nicholson with his Kendal links may therefore be the “respectable merchant” to whom John was said to be apprenticed on his return from school “and with him continued about five years…” [xx]

In 1740, when he would have been considering the education of his eldest son, Isaac was spending more time at Leighton Furnace, also owned by the Backbarrow Company, where he began casting and trying guns.  How far this was driven by an urge to continually push out the horizons of his work, or by a belief by his employers that there may be good profits in it, is difficult to assess; but there is evidence of a restlessness in Isaac's life at this time and also the first signs of differences of opinion with the Company.

On 2 February 1741 shortly before the birth of his daughter Mary, Isaac signed a lease[xxi] with James Machell for a run down corn mill and kiln on the east side of Backbarrow Bridge and a dwelling house with outhouses, orchards and gardens on the west side. Bare Syke is on the west side and the description of the property fits though there is a discrepancy in precise location.  Does this mean that Isaac up until this point had held his family house by grace and favour until this lease gave him occupancy as a tenant?  And if so was it a move by the astute Isaac towards greater security?  Or is the dwelling house in the lease another property, which since he was living at Bare Syke he subsequently sublet?Certainly by 1753 when Isaac sought to terminate this lease a Widow Taylor was living there, but by that time he had been gone from Backbarrow five years.

The corn mill was fitted out with new grindstones which suggests he used it to finish the cast iron wares like box smoothing irons which he sold on his own behalf, providing him at the same time with his own commercial premises.  If disagreements were beginning to emerge with his employers this would be important.

The casting of guns was not going well.  The accounts show occasional rather than regular evidence of the purchase of gunpowder “for trying of Cast Guns”[xxii] some of which burst on proving[xxiii], and there is an increasing tension between William Rawlinson and the other partners at this time. William Rawlinson had been Isaac's chief support in the Backbarrow Company, certainly for the wide spread sale and distribution of his cast iron wares, and may have been responsible for the ill-starred sortie into gun manufacture.  By 1743 the partners had had enough. In a new agreement with Isaac dated 14 March [xxiv] there are indications that a substantial conflict is being resolved .

    “Let it be remember'd that Backbarrow Company having sundry articles under Consideration relating to Isaac Wilkinson…and have concluded & agreed with him as followeth, viz That Damage which the Company have suffered by Casting of Guns, shall be Ballanced by the workmanship of Casting Hammers & Anvills at Leighton last Blast, so that all Demends on both sides in these respects are to cease and be evened…”

“Let it be remember’d…” has an admonitory tone which is significant, and it would be fascinating to know what these “sundry articles under consideration” were and whether William Rawlinson stood beside Isaac at this time; but the future involvement of each of them in the Backbarrow Company was to be shortlived.  A statement of William Rawlinson's alleged debts to the Company amounting to £3,369 was drawn up by the manager in February, 1747.  A counter claim by Rawlinson demanded the production of the accounts and the sale of stock to meet the Company's debts to him, and the dispute was only settled when the Machells undertook to buy out William Rawlinson's moiety in the company in an agreement dated 8 April 1749.[xxv]

By this time Isaac Wilkinson had gone.  Following the new agreement of March 1743 the journals continue to show an Isaac Wilkinson account with the company each year until 1748, but in 1747 a major dispute erupts.  By that time Isaac is in partnership with William Rawlinson's brother Job and two other men in a new iron-making venture, the Lowood Company, about a mile down-river from the Backbarrow works and potentially a serious competitor to it. Isaac is still bound to the Backbarrow Company by his 1735 contract and they went so far as to obtain lawyers' opinion as to whether he was still in their employ and could legally do this.  They were advised that provided he continued to work for them there were no grounds for legal action against him, but the end is in sight.  His account with the Company is drawn up and balanced to 25 March 1748 after twelve years of continuous business and his name appears no more in the registers of the Backbarrow Company after that date.

Chapter 2 - WILSON HOUSE

By the time Isaac moved to Wilson House at the mouth of the Winster valley he was forty-four years old, and his family was complete. John and Henry were young men by this time, Mary was seven and William four, and the two youngest girls, Sarah and Margaret, were still toddlers.  John left the family home soon after he left school and would soon complete his apprenticeship with a Liverpool merchant[xxviii].  There are no records of the details of the apprenticeship, but Isaac might have timed his move from Backbarrow in anticipation of his eldest son's return.  Did he by now have a vision of a family business focussed on iron-making?

Both Stockdale[xxix] in 1872 and Dickinson[xxx] in 1914 say that Isaac moved to Wilson House because of the abundance of peat in the vicinity. He had certainly experimented with peat in various forms as a supplementary fuel at the Leighton and Lowood furnaces in the area, and perhaps saw it as an easily available supplement to charcoal, supplies of which even in the well-wooded Furness area of Cumberland had by then become difficult.  It is interesting in this context that when John later in his life returned to Wilson House in 1778 and 1779, by then a wealthy and successful Ironmaster, he too experimented with peat as a furnace fuel, a detailed account of which can be found in his letters to James Watt at that time.[xxxi]

Stockdale[xxxii] is quite explicit about Isaac's experiments with peat at Wilson House but says he was unsuccessful and had to revert to smelting with charcoal, though he says that a mixture of well dried peat bricks and charcoal was being used at the Backbarrow Furnace at the time he was writing (1872).  Isaac certainly operated a furnace at Wilson House as the following agreement makes clear :  “Cartmel, October 30th, 1750. - Be it remembered that this day Robert Bare of Cartmel Church Town has sold to Isaac Wilkinson, of Wilson House, two hundred tons of wett flatt iron ore, to be put on board at Lousay, the said Isaac Wilkinson promising to pay for the same twelve shillings for each ton, but in case the said Isaac Wilkinson does not approve of the said ore, that then he is only to have fifty tons of the said ore, he giving the said Robert Bare notice in April next, that he will have no more than the said fifty tons. If no notice is given then, he to have the whole two hundred tons, the said Isaac Wilkinson paying for the same on the second day of February 1751. Signed, Robert Bare, Witness - Walter Cowperthwaite. Isaac Wilkinson.”[xxxiii]

Stockdale in 1872, like Fell in 1908, had access to primary documents which have since been lost and he describes the signatures in this agreement as being “in excellent mercantile hands”, evidence that he held the original; but for all that there has to be some doubt that he quoted it correctly. Isaac is required to pay for the whole consignment before the expiry of the notice period which allows him to buy only a quarter of it if he doesn't like the quality; which is a contradiction in terms and likely to be an omission or oversight by Stockdale rather than Isaac.  The let-out clause is typical of the business shrewdness evident elsewhere in Isaac's dealings, but the agreement has another interesting focus.

The ore is coming in by water, probably by coastal barge, or flatte, and Isaac is committed to the first load whatever the quality. At that time the River Winster was open to the sea and tidal the two miles up to Wilson House and beyond, giving Isaac access to cheaper water transport for his raw materials in and his cast iron wares out, an important consideration in view of the poor roads into the area and a further demonstration of his business acumen.

It would be at this time that John first discovered Castle Head hill, a wooded rocky knoll round which the Winster curled, standing a mile downriver of Wilson House en route to the sea. It remains to this day a striking feature in the landscape, a faulted block of limestone standing up in sharp contrast to the flat valley floor sediments all round.  At that time the spring tides had unobstructed access into the sea end of the valley and twice a month they flooded all round the hill, leaving it as an island at high water. Southward into the sun the shining mud and sand of Morecambe Bay stretched away to Lancaster. From there the Guide-to-the-Sands led at low tide long strings of people and carts safely across the channels and through the treacherous sinking sands of the bay to the Cartmel and Furness coasts.  His is an ancient office, a Crown appointment dating back to medieval monastic days to provide a quicker and easier route between Lancashire and the Furness region of Cumberland, and it survives still.

The hill of Castle Head stands sentinel at this point on the coast to further access into up-country Westmoreland and Cumberland, and with dramatic skylines behind it has a powerful presence.  There is evidence of its occupation back through Roman times into pre-history both as a look-out point and a sanctuary, and John Wilkinson here in his early twenties came powerfully under its spell.  He was to return to this place again and again throughout his life, eventually to build his house and finally to be buried here.

There are questions as to precisely how Isaac eventually blew his furnace and forge at Wilson House.  Although the site is close to the river the gradient there is minimal and the river meanders with little current across a flat valley floor.  Just upstream from Wilson House, however, there is one slight break in slope towards which the remains of a wide ditch can still be seen, cutting through a peaty field.  It might just be possible to obtain a sufficient head of water by way of the ditch to turn a cam wheel to power a pair of iron bellows at the adjacent furnace, which then must question Stockdale's account of the same ditch, which he says was cut as a canal for a boat to carry peat to the site [xxxiv], an iron boat at that, the first iron boat ever built, and which at this date would have to be credited to Isaac rather than John. John certainly built an iron boat some thirty-five years later on the Severn [xxxv] and could have used one at Wilson House after that, but Stockdale's account of an iron boat here at this time is unlikely.  He was after all gathering evidence for this assertion a hundred and twenty years after the event.

Isaac certainly used water power close by in Lindale where the valley floor sediments meet the faulted slates and limestones and the slopes rise steeply. According to Stockdale he powered   “…a large grindstone... by a small waterwheel erected on Lindale Beck at a place called Skinner Hill, about a hundred and fifty yards above the higher public house at Lindal...”[xxxvi].  This is such a careful and detailed description that Stockdale must have had good evidence for it which unfortunately he does not quote, but at precisely the location he identifies the Lindale beck runs steeply downhill through a mini-gorge section, and in an adjacent field there is a flat bed of sediments behind an artificial bank, good evidence for the storage pond a water wheel on such a small stream would need in drier weather.

In these Wilson House years Isaac, though still principally engaged in the manufacture of iron goods, became once more interested in farming.  There was little opportunity in the scope and size of his property at Backbarrow to do more than build a terrace and grow fruit trees, but his tenement at Wilson House extended to at least ten acres [xxxvii], and certainly the needs of his agricultural neighbours along the coast and in the Winster, Cartmel and Lyth valleys would provide a market for the agricultural implements he began to make in his forge.

His second Patent dates from this period, for...“cast metallic rolls for crushing, flattening, bruising or grinding malt, oats, beans or any kind of grain…”. It is dated 24 January 1753 and establishes that he was still at Wilson House at that time since he gives Wilson House as his residence in the application, but another very interesting point emerges from it.  He names himself in the application as “Isaac Wilkinson, gentleman”; not pot-founder, or iron-founder, but gentleman.  That one word used at this particular point in his life might tell us more about his personality and ambitions than pages of lost letters. It tells us too that in the social code of the day he had at least the means to dress and to live in a certain style.  To probe that piece of evidence further it is necessary to examine what is happening to his eldest son, John, about this time.

The only solid information is in the Kirkby Lonsdale Parish Registers. In 1755 at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight John married Ann Maudsley, the wealthy daughter of a landed family from Rigmaden Hall north of Kirkby Lonsdale in the Lune valley.  The register entry reads:  “No 17 Mr John Wilkinson merchant of Kirkby Lonsdale in the County of Westmoreland and Miss Ann Maudsley of Rigmaden in the said Parish of Kirkby Lonsdale, spinster, were married in this church by Licence from Richard Atkinson Clerk Surrogate this twelfth day of June 1755 by T Croft.  This marriage was solemnised between us (signatures of John Wilkinson and Ann Maudsley) in presence of (signatures of Wilson Jn Robinson and Chrisr Wilson)”.[xxxviii]

Neither a Wilkinson nor a Maudsley witnessed the marriage.  Were they absent because they disapproved?  The fact that the marriage took place in Kirkby Lonsdale church is interesting given John's Dissenting background and may be the reason why a Licence was needed and why Isaac was not present. It also suggests some persuasion on the part of Ann, or her family.

Opposition to the match from the Maudsleys could be expected as a landed family who had held the Manor of Mansergh in which Rigmaden stands since 1661. [xxxix] The Wilkinsons’ origins in the recent past were as pot-founders. Isaac’s description of himself as gentleman, and John’s as merchant in the marriage record, begin to acquire new significance if the purpose is to woo and wed a Maudsley; and if the Maudsleys had opposed the marriage it might well have coloured John Wilkinson’s attitude to the gentry in his later life.

But there is another focus. Thomas Godsalve, Ann's ancestor who first purchased the Manor of Mansergh, was a Dutch merchant. He of course was long dead but there could have been surviving sympathy in the Maudsley family because of these roots for a personable young man who was in love with their daughter even though he was in trade?  Conversely there might have been increased opposition to him as a reminder of a past they wished to hide.  The evidence is with the former, and is found in another Church Register entry for Kirkby Lonsdale for 1756 when the child of their marriage, Mary, is baptised.  The parents are recorded as “of Rigmaden” which suggests they lived there after their marriage which in turn suggests the support and sympathy of Ann's family; though the baptism of the child in church again smacks of compromise.  The appearance of the Maudsleys in the Kirkby Lonsdale Registers continuously for a hundred years prior to this date indicates their enduring and traditional association with the established church; and their acceptance of a Dissenter into the family, and one with John Wilkinson's lowly background, would require a balancing consideration from him. How far good relations were established might be gauged from another record in the registers for the following year when John Wilkinson is witness to the marriage of Ann’s sister Margaret on 18 May 1756.  It all points to a love match that was able to survive the differences.

Meantime Isaac has left Wilson House.  Whether John returned to Wilson House when he left Liverpool is not known; nor is it clear if his move to Kirkby Lonsdale was due to any difference of opinion with his father. There is an absence of information about him in the early 1750s at a very important point in his life.  He was a tall, strongly-built young man with a good education and an apprenticeship completed, though whether the apprenticeship was to some aspect of iron manufacture, or whether he served the iron trade simply as a merchant at Kirkby Lonsdale remains unclear. How far Isaac's departure from Wilson House to the Midlands represented a setback to any vision he then had of a successful family iron business, or conversely how far it provided a better opportunity to build it, is similarly unclear.

Isaac's friendship with William Rawlinson, his former employer at Backbarrow and a man with an established contact with the Darby iron-making family, perhaps endured and deepened in the Wilson House years.  It is likely that Rawlinson advised him of the opportunities in the Midlands, and of the availability of the lease on the Bersham Blast Furnace near Wrexham, a place with strong Darby connections. Isaac certainly took the lease from the Chirk Castle Estate in 1753[xl], and the same year, as befitted a gentleman, rented from Squire Yorke of Erdigg a substantial three-gabled residence in its own grounds called Plas Grono in the township of Esclusham Isaf. The lease of the property remained with the Wilkinson family for the next 21 years.[xli]

Wilson House, too, was retained and eventually became the home farm of John's Castle Head estate though it was certainly Isaac's property in 1757 by which time he was resident at Plas Grono.  Stockdale quotes an important document in his possession in 1870 listing encroachments onto Common lands in the parish of Cartmel : “Isaac Wilkinson, Bersham, for an encroachment at Wilson House, taken off the common to enlarge his fields, 10 perches at £21.0.0d per acre, £1.6.3d Mem - Will pull down or pay before Easter”. [xlii]

Chapter 3 - BERSHAM - A NEW BEGINNING.

 Isaac had been living in Bersham with the rest of his family for almost three years by the time his eldest son John arrived with young wife Ann, and baby daughter Mary just a few months old. From what is known already about Isaac's drive and energy during the earlier years at Wilson House and Backbarrow it is long enough for him to have established himself in the area and to have a forward plan.  Glimpses of what that plan might have included emerge in the next few years and the likelihood is that it involved John.

There would need to have been a tempting prospect in store to persuade John to leave his merchant business in Kirkby Lonsdale and his wife’s ancestral home at Rigmaden for what amounted to an immediate step down in status in a new and untried environment, and the more so for Ann.  The move from Rigmaden Hall to a small town house in Wrexham would not be undertaken by her without real hope of better things to come. But they were young, and in love, and everything was possible; and in that summer of 1756 none of them knew what pain and sorrow would soon overtake them.

John's brother Henry died first, on 26 June at Plas Grono, by then the family home, and was buried in the Dissenters' graveyard in Wrexham.  There are no records of a declining illness.  He was twenty-six years old and unmarried.  One can only speculate on the effect of the bonds here broken and on the impact of this death, on Isaac and his wife who had loved and protected Henry within the family fold all his short life, and on John who lost the close companion of his early youth.  The place of burial confirms Isaac’s dissenting views at this date and John later erected there a memorial to his brother.  But Fate had worse in store.

On the 17 November John’s wife Ann died and he lost forever the radiance that for a few brief years had filled his life.  She was twenty three years old.  His desolation is recorded on a memorial he placed on the wall of Wrexham Parish Church, an ornate white marble plaque inlaid with black and a testament to his grief.  That it is there at all inside this magnificent church indicates at least a certain ambivalence in John’s religious ideas at the time, an attitude which reappears in his later life in spite of his father's clear position as a Dissenter.

Since Ann’s death occurred within a few months of childbirth it is likely, in the absence of documentary evidence, that the hazards always associated with childbirth at that time and the absence of anything but primitive medical techniques and treatment in face of complications were responsible for it.  This might suggest that she undertook to move from Rigmaden to Wrexham when she was already a sick woman, though the physical rigours involved in the journey and upheaval so soon after her first baby could themselves have brought on a decline.  Did John have to persuade her to move?  And if so did he feel in part responsible for her death?  And what was his response now to the little baby who lived on as a constant reminder of what he had lost?

The evidence is that it was more than he could bear. Mary was put out to nurse and for the next few years was brought up in the family of Mr John Flint, Gentleman, who controlled the stamps and post in Shrewsbury, leaving her father to grieve alone and find a new purpose in his life.  It is from this tragic loss that his focus as an Ironmaster begins and it could have been the catalyst which drove him.

Soon after this the paths of John and his father begin to diverge. It is as though John needed to establish his position and status independently of anything that might have come through Isaac, who by now is struggling at the Bersham Furnace, with an unreliable water supply, a poor quality iron ore and a smelting process with coke which suffers from insufficient blast.  It seems, too, that some of the underground pipework to and through the site was in poor condition as witness an undated letter in Isaac's handwriting to Sir Richard Myddleton of Chirk Castle:   “Sir. I am informed it you have a firret at ye castle: which I should desire ye loan of it for a day or two: I will take partickler care of it and return it safely by ye bearer who is to bring it if you can spair it so long.  It is only to put after a rabet thro' our pipes it walking throw in order to drive ye rabet thro' so as to discover if there be anything left in them: by this method we can tell where it is and cut ye pipes and take it out.  I have aplyed for one to several places but cannot yet meet with any which makes me give you this trouble. If anything should befall it I will pay any prise for it...”.[xliii]

Isaac is in his early fifties at this time.  John is twenty-eight and perceptive enough to see the limitations of working with a strong-minded father in an unprofitable business that needed substantial input and changes to turn it round.  He decided instead to look for an opportunity to make iron in his own right and at this point in his life had the confidence to move away from his father and to contemplate another future and a new life.

Part of that new life was a gradual broadening of his circle. It was about this time that he met for the first time Samuel More, a young apothecary based in London, a man a year or two older than himself with a good classical education which boasted the addition of arithmetic and accounts. In the late 1750s More is gaining notice as an experimental chemist working with Dr William Lewis at the Society of Arts (the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, that is) and on the 13 May 1761 he is elected a Member.

More and Wilkinson, both unattached males, must have been established friends by then for a few months later More introduced John Wilkinson to the Society and nominated him for Membership.  It was More’s first nomination and an important and prestigious step for Wilkinson, who must have had a growing reputation for his iron-making innovations in order to be acknowledged by the Society.  It immediately gave him access, at this early point in his rise to power, to the elite of the manufacturing and commercial world and to the many new inventions and forceful personalities that were a dynamic part of it.  These, too, were the early years of a close and continuing friendship with More, greater than with any other of his contemporaries, which was to endure and deepen into old age.

Throughout this period Isaac carried on making iron at Bersham and the evidence is that he still nourished the hope of establishing with his sons a new dynasty of iron-founders. On the 12 March 1757 he filed an elaborate patent application for his iron bellows [xliv].  The wording included the following surprising description:  “... when full of air... the air is compressed by a pillar of water of a proper altitude... and forced out by the water through a pipe at any distance required, so that a furnace, forge, or any other works may be blowed from any waterfall or falls, or from a fire engine or engines to several miles distance... by means of a pipe being fixed to the machine, to force or convey the wind through to the said work...”

The description of this device is significantly different from the Blowing Engine John developed at his New Willey works a year or two later, which More described and a drawing of which is preserved in the British Museum[xlv], and where iron bellows, regulating bellies and furnace are all in close proximity. Isaac it seems, was trying to convey the blast once generated through underground pipes considerable distances to the furnace, and in this context his undated letter seeking to borrow a ferret from Richard Myddlton to check that his underground pipes were open has new significance.

It is interesting that he took twenty years to develop this blowing machine from his simple iron bellows, and patenting it at this time suggests he had realised since arriving in this hub of the iron-making world that other ironmasters would adopt or modify it, as his son would do, and use it to their profit.  He must have had confidence, too, in the survival and expansion of the Bersham Furnace provided he could improve the blast for coke smelting, for on the 9 June 1757 he took out a forty-year lease from one John Hughes for all coal and iron lying under the nearby estate of Cae Glas, in Esclusham Uchaf near Llwyn Enion.[xlvi]

The following year he sent his son William, then aged fourteen but destined to become the third ironmaster in the family, to the school of another well-known Dissenter, Joseph Priestley, some twenty miles away at Nantwich in Cheshire; evidence of his continuing religious dissent at the time and a decision which was to have important consequences for his family in the future.

Priestley was a scholarly and free-thinking young divine not yet ordained. He was twenty-five years old, unmarried, Yorkshire born, a product of Batley Grammar School and a graduate of the Daventry Dissenting Academy.  He had already published a number of religious texts which had attracted notice and had served two brief Ministries at Needham Market in Suffolk, and Sheffield.  He suffered from an hereditary stammer which must have made it difficult for him to preach a sermon and perhaps led to the kind of compensatory behaviour which made him “…too gay and airy…”[xlvii] for his Sheffield congregation.  “…The pupils … thought of him first and foremost as an eccentric. Walking in a kind of disjointed, birdlike trot, Priestley chattered incessantly, stammering like a woodpecker. Even more disconcerting was the fact that the two sides of his face were so unalike as to cause a marked difference in his left and right profiles.”.[xlviii]

His school at Nantwich flourished however.  It was established soon after his arrival there in September 1758 and Isaac’s son, William, was to become one of the first pupils. Isaac was obviously party to information circulating among the Dissenting fraternity, first because he knew of Priestley's school at a very early stage, possibly before it opened, and second because Priestley had an interest in mathematics and sciences in addition to his theological enquiries, which would have been an important consideration for Isaac.  He might also have liked the man he saw, an eccentric certainly but, in the opinion of Josiah Wedgwood who knew him personally, Priestley was another rising star at this time and a man with an unmistakable touch of genius:  “Priestley spoke and moved rapidly; in private converse he was vivacious and fond of anecdote, often smiled, but seldom laughed; he would walk twenty miles before breakfast, carrying a long cane, and was a good horseman.  He uses no action, no declamation, but his voice and manner are those of one friend speaking to another.  In person (he) was slim but large-boned; his stature about five feet nine, and very erect…”.

It seems he was also a strict schoolmaster, “…never giving a holiday on any consideration. His school and private tuition occupied him from seven in the morning till seven at night…”

William's eighteen year old elder sister, Mary, certainly liked what she saw. How many times in the next three years did Joseph Priestley walk or ride the twenty miles to Bersham on the excuse of offering William some private tuition?

Priestley left Nantwich on his appointment to the Tutorship of Languages and Belles-Lettres at the Warrington Academy in September 1761 and was ordained there on 18 May 1762.  The move signalled the end of William's formal education and doubled the distance Priestley had to travel to see Mary.  His salary at Warrington was £100 a year and came with a house by which he was able to supplement his income by taking boarders, and Mary Wilkinson married him on 23 June that same year soon after he was ordained.  She was twenty-one years old. He was twenty-nine.

Their first child Sarah was born the following year, and their next few years together at the Warrington Academy were happy though towards the end of that time the first signs of a recurring problem with Mary's health appeared. Glimpses into their early marriage, however, show Mary involved in the social recreations of that close academic world, obviously respected as a woman of “sound culture and strong sense”[xlix], yet further evidence of the importance her father Isaac attached to good education and independent thinking.  Although the wedding was at Wrexham her father did not give her away, an office performed by one of Priestley’s pupils, and it is a strange omission in the light of other events in the Wilkinson family in 1762.

During these years the paths of John and his father had further diverged. John's financial position would be based on what Ann Maudsley had brought to him as a dowry, which might not have been a large sum if there had been Maudsley objections to the marriage, plus any accumulated profits he had made from his business as merchant at Kirkby Lonsdale; and with the Bersham Furnace barely profitable he could not expect, nor perhaps for other reasons wished to ask for, financial support from his father.  He would be looking for potential partners prepared to back his drive and ideas with capital, and his need to start a profitable business quickly would be urgent.  It may be, too, that he chose to concentrate his search in the Coalbrookdale and Broseley areas which were at the focus of the Midland ironmaking developments, with established water transport south down the Severn, as opposed to Wrexham and Bersham which looked north to Liverpool and the Dee ports.  It also placed some thirty miles distance between his own and his father's activities and that might have been important to him.

As early as 1756 Wilkinson had been in discussion with Brooke Forester about the design of a new Blast Furnace on the Forester estates at Willey, just across the river from Coalbrookdale, and destined to become the first furnace of what would be their New Willey Company.  Wilkinson by this time would have made himself familiar with the extensive Darby activities in Coalbrookdale, widely acknowledged as the foremost iron-making concern in the kingdom. With his ear to the ground to pick up local talk of their activities and processes he would know that the Coalbrookdale lease was up for renewal in 1759, and that the landlords were in dispute with the Darbys over renewal conditions.

With astonishing confidence for a young and relatively unknown new arrival in the area Wilkinson then decided, no doubt with Brooke Forester standing behind him and with the New Willey Company well forward in its planning but not yet established, to compete with the Darbys for the lease.  Articles of Agreement with the Darbys' landlords, John and Rose Giffard, were completed, though not disclosed, on 12 September 1757 for a lease to the New Willey Company to take effect at Michaelmas 1759 when the old Darby lease terminated.

There followed almost five years of litigation between John and Rose Giffard, and Thomas Goldney and Abraham Darby II for the Coalbrookdale Company, in a series of claims and counter claims from which Wilkinson and the New Willey Company were largely absent.  The action ran its course through the Court of Chancery and eventually into the Court of Common Law at Shrewsbury, where it was eventually resolved in a compromise agreement in the late summer of 1762.

The Coalbrookdale Company had no doubt been outraged when they heard of the Giffards' undisclosed Agreement with Wilkinson, whose only appearance in the dispute was at a number of informal meetings with Darby and Goldney where each side tried, and failed, to buy off the other.  A later suggestion by Wilkinson that the two companies should jointly run the Coalbrookdale works was also rejected outright.[l]

It is interesting that at this early stage in his iron-making career, and at a time of much uncertainty in his personal affairs, Wilkinson chose to take on the might of the Darbys rather than to cultivate them in a co-operative way.  He must have known that his actions would alienate them, and he must have believed therefore either that he had a good chance of acquiring the lease of what was after all a prime iron-making site with its infrastructure already established, or that at least he would come out of the confrontation with something of value.

It is fascinating to speculate what that something might have been. Did he see the Coalbrookdale works as a possible alternative, or as an addition, to his plans for the New Willey Company?  Or did he simply seek to divert the Coalbrookdale management from proper supervision of their works and hence slow down production during this period when he was seeking to establish his New Willey Company?  Perhaps he knew that Abraham Darby II was under serious financial pressure at this time and had to rely on Thomas Goldney to bankroll the litigation.  And perhaps he was able to apply pressure on the Coalbrookdale Company as a result of his actions here to release to him on more favourable terms the old furnace at Willey, on Forester land which had been leased to the Company for years.  It is of course an early example of that characteristic which recurs so constantly in his later business life, the shrewd exploitation of a timely opportunity, in this case to establish his name as a force to be reckoned with alongside some of the foremost personalities in the iron-making world.

Certainly there was a huge task in front of his New Willey Company.  The old furnace had been operating at marginal profit through shortage of water for the bellows for the past twenty years and as a consequence Richard Ford and Thomas Goldney were prepared to release it.  The furnace made only pig iron for the Bristol market, which is where Wilkinson now found prospective partners with the necessary capital.

Edward Blakeway, a wealthy Shrewsbury business man, joined Wilkinson in this new venture and Blakeway probably brought in John Skrymster also of Shrewsbury; and there was of course that shrewd Wilkinson touch in securing Brooke Forester as a partner along with the land-owning Forester family's mining agent William Ferriday.

Eventually six Bristol merchants took an interest in the business providing the broader capital base the new venture required, and establishing a link between the Wilkinsons and Bristol at this date.  This is the first appearance, too, of William Ferriday in the Wilkinson story.

The lease between George Forester and the Willey Company was dated 13 June 1757[li] and was for 42 years.  It included clauses giving authority to build new furnaces, to take large quantities of clod coal and ironstone from the Forester lands as well as clay, sand and stone for building purposes, and to lay iron rails to transport goods both within the new mining and iron-making complex and across other Forester lands to the River Severn.  It is a long and detailed document and provides long-term security for the Company.  It also describes John Wilkinson as “Ironmaster, of Bersham” which establishes his known involvement in iron-making by that time and indicates that his link with the Bersham Furnace is still retained.  He was in fact the only ironmaster among the ten founding partners, which placed him exactly where he wanted to be - in direct control of the iron-making process.

A separate Partnership Deed[lii] for the Willey Company Partners was signed by all ten of them on the same day.  The starter capital of £16,000 is contributed in ten shares with Brooke Forester holding four, the 6 Bristol Merchants two between them and John Wilkinson, Edward Blakeway, John Skrymyster and William Ferriday each holding one.

A precisely worded clause states by what dates within the first year the proportions of this capital must be contributed.  Others deal with the keeping of, and access to, the Company's account books and journals, the calculation and payment of an annual dividend, any unforeseen costs to the Company and compulsory attendance at the Partners' Annual Meeting.  Any disagreements are to be decided by a vote on the basis of the shareholdings, which immediately required a difficult degree of unanimity among the six Bristol Merchants with only two votes between them.  If voting falls evenly Brooke Forester is to have a casting vote. Partners can sell their shares to existing Partners after six months notice in writing is given, but not to anyone else without full Company consent.  No new shares shall be declared over and above the ten original shares. None of these restrictions apply to Brooke Forester.

Two long clauses detail how Partners' shares might be acquired by the Company if they fail to pay their proportions of capital by the due dates, or if they have used their shares as security for a debt which is then called in.  A major part of the document is thus devoted to circumscribing the Partners' options and establishing procedures for any failure on their part to meet payment deadlines, or to agree. Brooke Forester's dominance is established and his special position recorded.  It seems that Wilkinson from the beginning had seen that a break-up of the Partnership was likely, perhaps even desirable, once the Company had become established; and it is not difficult to see in this Partnership Deed how he might have engineered things to gain sole control of the Company, which is in fact what happened.

Much more difficult to understand is why, only five months after the Willey Company was established and in a new partnership with Edward Blakeway also of that Company, he took another lease[liii], also with authority to build a new furnace, for Moreton Forge at Moreton Corbet some twelve miles to the north of the New Willey works.

It was an old manorial forge site long out of use, as the lawyer’s recital of the lease shows, with the old forge pool then a meadow and the pool dam in need of repair.  It had a good water supply from the river Roden and its own coppice woods and came with three small messuages and a close of meadow in Moreton Corbet.  Wilkinson and Blakeway took the lease from Andrew Corbet on 17 November 1757 to run for forty-two years from 25 March 1758 for a rent of twenty-six pounds a year for the purpose of re-smelting iron pigs and the forging of malleable iron.

It seems likely that since the place was just a few miles north east of Shrewsbury news of its availability will have come first to Edward Blakeway, who would have known of the ancient Corbet family of Moreton Corbet.  The site would then have been approved by Wilkinson for its iron-making potential, even though some initial reconstruction and repair was required.

It is an important place in John Wilkinson’s story, because alongside his newly established Willey Company, this is where he first made iron in his own right.  Up to this point he had been an ironmaster by virtue of his association with his father at the Bersham Ironworks, and it is interesting that in this deed he is described as Ironmaster of Wrexham, not Bersham, perhaps indicating that he wished to establish this departure.  Where he resided in these years is not known.  It is unlikely to have been his father's house at Plas Grono which was thirty miles away.

It may be that the purpose of the Moreton Forge lease was simply an insurance policy, to cover the possible failure of the ambitious Willey Company project when it was not yet clear how the Company with its large list of Partners would work out.  Or did he see Moreton Forge running concurrent with the much larger Willey Company and benefiting from that association but very much his own concern, using perhaps the Willey Company production of iron pigs to make its own malleable iron?  Certainly the lease of Moreton Forge establishes a close working relationship between Wilkinson and Edward Blakeway which was to mature and become important to both of them in the years ahead.

It seems clear that there was uncertainty on the part of both landlord and lessees in those early months of the Willey Company as their ideas and working practices began to form in late 1757 and through 1758, and in 1759 a second lease was signed between them[liv].  It rehearses the details of the 1757 lease and refers to the high initial outlay from the Partners in mining trials and new buildings and renovations before a steady income was on stream.  The landlord, too, wished to be released from his agreement to supply all the building timber the Company required, which was obviously decimating his woods and perhaps interfering with his sporting activities.  Under the new agreement the area over which the Company could obtain clod coals and ironstone was extended to the whole estate, with the exception of one area already leased to someone else, and also excluding the Deer Park and any site within 500 yards of Willey Hall.  The agreement was to run concurrent with the 1757 lease, cost the Company another £800 a year, and consolidated their position.

Just before the second New Willey lease was signed, and with the detail of it no doubt by then established, Wilkinson and Blakeway abandoned their interest in the Moreton Forge. On 3 August 1759[lv] they assigned the forty years remaining of that lease to a co-partnership of five local men who took over the improved site with permission to build a new forge with weirs, floodgates and associated water controls before 25 March 1761, evidence of its continuing worth as an iron-making site and a vindication of Wilkinson's judgement in the first place.  But now he had a much bigger project in hand.  In the next few years the New Willey Company became one of the most important iron-making concerns in the region, the site was improved and transformed, and little by little he gained complete control of it.

The courtship and marriage of his sister Mary ran concurrently with these events which also saw William return from school as a seventeen-year-old stripling to assist his father at the Bersham Furnace in 1761.  John was making an increasing success of the Willey Company and in contrast young William had everything to learn.  He had the advantage of having grown up in an iron-making family and he had Isaac to teach him, and Isaac would see there was much to be done quickly if William was to become a significant part of any family iron-making business.  Isaac was fifty-seven years old and the ensuing events indicate that he remained yet hopeful of a family business involving his sons even though his own departure might be necessary to accomplish it.  It is a remarkable commitment, but it may not have been as self-sacrificing as at first appears.  There is evidence that he had seen new opportunities in South Wales and had already taken steps to secure a position there for himself.

In 1759, two years after his iron bellows patent and in partnership with eight other men, Isaac installed his blowing engine at the Merthyr Furnace, Dowlais.  The wording of the agreement is interesting:  “... and whereas Isaac Wilkinson of Plas Gronow Denbighshire both obtained a patent for his new invented machine for blowing furnaces, forges and other iron works by valves, Cyphons and both agreed with the other partners that they shall have the benefit of the Patent, in their said furnace.  If any one furnace... should make on an average more than 20 tons of metal per week during the first Blast then Isaac Wilkinson should receive the sum of £50 for every ton of pig iron so succeeding the quantity of 20 tons”.[lvi]

Here are all the old hallmarks of Isaac very aware of a forthcoming business opportunity and shrewdly carrying it to a favourable conclusion, in this case as a sleeping partner since he was fully committed at the Bersham Furnace at the time.  His partners in the Dowlais enterprise were four Bristol and three Glamorgan merchants, and the same Edward Blakeway of Shrewsbury who was already in business with his son John.  That, too, is significant because it suggests father and son remained close although each had by now his own iron-making establishment.  It could mean more than that. Isaac might have encouraged John to branch out on his own as a means of broadening the ultimate family base he wished to promote, even though John may not have been party to all the implications.

Certainly Isaac became extremely supportive of what he was to leave behind at Bersham. In 1762 acting for the Bersham Company he entered into a price control agreement with John on behalf of the New Willey Company, and Abraham Darby II acting for the Coalbrookdale partners, which fixed the price for the supply of engine parts to most markets, London to be excluded.  The Darbys had obviously recognised the Wilkinsons as significant competitors in the iron trade when they signed up to this, and Isaac was moving ahead of them in another way at Bersham.  He was again manufacturing cannon, and obviously encouraging John at New Willey to do the same. The Darby Ironfounders, because of their Quaker beliefs, never became openly involved in the manufacture of weapons of war.  The Wilkinsons had no such reservations, taking the profits where they could find them, and so had a distinct advantage.

Another move seems to indicate that Isaac was thinking about the long term future of the Bersham works immediately before he left. Tradition has it that in 1762 he handed over Bersham to his two sons, John aged thirty-four and William eighteen.  There is no surviving document to record the terms of this transaction. It must be safe to assume, however, that John became the senior partner, perhaps with a commitment to bring William more and more into equal responsibility, for William continued to reside at Plas Grono after Isaac left with all the appearance of being resident manager at what the brothers now called The New Bersham Company.  What particular terms related to Isaac in any agreement remain unknown. Did he retain a financial interest?  He moved from Bersham to South Wales shortly after this, but not before he had negotiated a new and improved forward lease with Richard Myddleton of Chirk Castle for the Bersham Furnace [lvii].

Under the new lease the area of the site was to include a further field, and authority was given for a cut to be made from the river to carry an improved water supply to the furnace provided it did not interfere with the water supply to Bersham Mill.  The length of the lease was extended to thirty years beyond the life of the then owner, a new access road was authorised, and all this for “…the clear rent of two pounds of good and lawful money of Great Britain…” to be paid every year to Richard Myddleton.  The lease is dated 1 January 1763 but is to run from the previous 29 September, and is signed by Richard Myddleton and Isaac, described as “…of  Plasgrono in the said County of Denbigh Iron Master…”.  It is persuasive evidence that he sought to support the future iron-making activities of his sons at Bersham after he had gone and must question the view that he left in anger because of a quarrel.

In 1763 in partnership with John Guest of Broseley, Isaac leased land from the Earl of Plymouth in Merthyr Tydfil and erected a furnace there [lviii] at what became known as the Plymouth Ironworks.  Four works were to become the mainstay of the important iron industry in the Merthyr area and soon after he left Bersham Isaac Wilkinson had a founding interest in two of them.  Did he continue to work towards a Wilkinson family of ironmasters?  And did his hope of achieving it now include a centre of operations in South Wales?

By 1763 John Wilkinson and Edward Blakeway had been business partners for six years, and their association had survived, and apparently recovered from, Blakeway's bankruptcy in 1760[lix].  How close they were as friends is not known though it is likely they would dine together from time to time and perhaps entertain merchants and other wealthy individuals with capital to invest. Edward Blakeway was married to a woman well able to act as hostess on these social occasions.  John Wilkinson was a widower and at this time unattached; it is in this context that he met the wealthy sister of Blakeway's wife, a Mary Lee of Wroxeter, who in 1763 was forty years old and unmarried.  There can be little doubt that Wilkinson's status as an unattached widower would create awkwardness in the circle that he and Blakeway wished to cultivate but there may have been a more immediate reason.

The two sisters on the death of their father Thomas Lee, had received a moiety on his estate which was valuable in terms of land and property rather than income, and Edward Blakeway's wife had sold her interest to her sister Mary, presumably for ready money to pay creditors following her husband’s bankruptcy [lx].  It proved to be a neat accommodation in the event of Mary's marriage to John Wilkinson, her brother-in-law’s business partner.  Family property was sold to solve a family bankruptcy and as a result of the later marriage the property stayed in the family.  It is rather too neat to be fortuitous, but if it was planned were they all party to it? If not all, how many, and which of them?

No information survives about the courtship of John Wilkinson and Mary Lee. Was their marriage in 1763 entirely a marriage of convenience?  Mary Lee was no mean catch.  Why had she stayed unmarried for so long?  Was she beautiful?  Was her marriage simply an escape from spinsterhood into an exciting life she had glimpses of already, or did this young widower capture her heart?  She brought substantial wealth to her marriage and that itself would be important for John Wilkinson at the time.  He could not reasonably expect her to bear him children in view of her age.  Did he settle for a consort rather than a woman, a partner to support him in his rise to power rather than a soul who could bring radiance and passion back into his life?

It is probable he found both.  From what we know of their life together for the next forty years, from his pride at being able to leave her in charge at Headquarters in his absence, from the gentleness of his enquiries after her through his friends when they were apart, the marriage, no matter how it began, grew into a strong and caring association ended only by death.

He had the reason now, and the means, to find a new home and he took over a substantial three-storey double-fronted Georgian house with a large secluded garden on the sunny side, in Church Street, Broseley just across the road from Broseley Hall where Edward Blakeway and Mary's sister lived.  The house was called The New House at that time, later The Lawns, and had been built in 1727 by a local mine owner called Stevens, and although Wilkinson may have rented it initially he later took it on a ninety-nine year lease [lxi] from the same George Forester from whom he had leased the Furnaces and mining rights for the New Willey Company. In 1800 by which time the focus of his life had shifted to his Castle Head estate in the north, he assigned the lease to the china manufacturer, John Rose, for thirty guineas a year, “…the said John Rose paying the whole of the window tax…”[lxii], but it was his principal home, his Headquarters, and the centre of his business world for more than thirty years.

His seven-year-old daughter Mary came back to live with him at this point, and formed a strong bond with her new stepmother and with her new half cousins on her stepmother's side, particularly Elizabeth Claughton, and thus ended her father's years of grieving and loneliness.  This happy transformation of his personal life came at an opportune time.  His acclaim as a young ironmaster was growing; he was obtaining ever more control of the expanding New Willey Company; and he was now the senior partner in control of the New Bersham Company.

Chapter 4 - WEALTH AND ACCLAIM.

In 1763 France was defeated by Britain after the Seven Years’ War.   An important factor in this victory was considered to be the superior quality of the British naval cannon, though even at that date it was said that our own naval gunners were more afraid of their cannon exploding on ignition than they were of the fire from enemy guns.  The superior reputation of the British cannon, however, persuaded the French government to send to England in 1764 a young engineer from Lyons, called Gabriel Jars, to report on iron-making methods around the country and to try to establish if it was the quality of the English iron alone that enabled them to make better guns.

The Wilkinsons, by now important ironmasters in the Midland iron-making area, would know of this visit and its purpose, though a meeting between them and this Frenchman is not documented, and they would identify the opportunities the French interest offered, following the end of hostilities, for an increased sale of naval cannon.  Isaac, of course, had already identified the war as such an opportunity and the Bersham works, unlike those of its Quaker competitors, had been involved in the manufacture of guns for some years.  Gun-making was now included at the New Willey works alongside the production of engine cylinders for the old Newcomen engines, and it is clear that the main thrust of the Wilkinsons' iron manufactures in the following years was towards the supply of cannon for government ordnance with steady improvements in the processes involved as they gained more experience, and with good profits accumulating from the sales.  

John Wilkinson’s first patent application in 1765, however, shows his interest in a very different direction.  A summary of the subject matter comes as something of a shock.

"...medicated baths - constructed on frames for floating on water;  floats made of cork in the form of a seaman's waistcoat, to be used to prevent drowning." [lxiii].

What was he doing here?  The application points to his broader involvement with Samuel More and the Royal Society and the contact this would bring him with the social activities of the day, of which taking the waters would be one.  Did he in his shrewd business brain see an opportunity to market a device which would gain him access to a wealthy elite grateful for this support of their physical infirmity, and whose capital might therefore be attracted the more readily into his enterprises?  That of course is speculative, but it was certainly a time of growth and expansion and investment in his affairs, there is evidence that he attracted capital from the Bristol area, which included Bath, and he took every opportunity to advertise his products.

His first contact with Matthew Boulton the following year further illustrates this.   A certain John Florry of Birmingham was obviously an influential and a very satisfied Wilkinson customer and had suggested he approach Boulton with a view to extending his sales of iron castings.  Wilkinson's reply to him dated 5^th December 1766 included the following: "...As I have not the pleasure of being acquainted with Mr Boulton my writing to him on the business you have been so kind as to recommend me in, would not in my opinion have that weight as your application on my behalf, for any castings he may have occasion for.   I should have a particular pleasure in doing business for a Gentleman of such distinguished merit - as by that means I might form an acquaintance with a Genius, that might in future afford me great satisfaction on many accounts.  I need not I hope take notice to you - that you run no risque of disgrace in your recommendation of my abilities to serve him well.  I will undertake to promise that what ever he may want will not, or cannot be better executed by any one.  As to the prices - I can say nothing to 'em until I was to know the nature of the articles wanted - but this may be observed in general, that in all engine work the Dale Co. and I observe one rate and rule..." [lxiv]

It is a letter which rings with confidence and self-possession, recognising the importance of this new customer and using a mixture of flattery and reassurance whilst retaining that shrewd business acumen that marks the Wilkinsons.  It confirms, too, that following Isaac's departure his two sons had cannily retained the price control agreement with the Darbys set up in 1762.  The original manuscript letter contains an additional hand-written forwarding note signed by John Florry and addressed to Mr Matt. Boulton which starts off with the following:  “Sir,  I beg to refer you to the above, also to asure you that I believe there isn't one of the trade understands their business better than Mr Wilkinson …” [lxv]

Unfortunately the immediate follow-up contact with Matthew Boulton is not recorded, but there can be little doubt that John Florry here promoted the single most important piece of business in John Wilkinson’s rise to power, and the absence of any further documentary evidence for a growing link with Boulton in the next few years is very tantalising.

Samuel More also begins to draw attention to improved methods at the Wilkinson's works during this period. From his base in London, and in his journeys far and wide across the country looking for new inventions and ideas, he is extremely well placed to promote his friend.  John Wilkinson had obviously devised a modification and improvement to Isaac's iron bellows, and More is attempting to explain this to his mentor at the Royal Society, Dr Lewis:  “...There can be no objection to my sending you the best account I am able of Mr Wilkinson's improved Water Bellows, as he wanted much to see you to explain it himself to you and if you find any objections to it I shall be glad to hear them that I may let him know your sentiments which I am sure he will pay great regard to.  What first set him about this improvement was that by no bellows yet worked by water could there ever be obtained a cubic foot of air by a cubic foot of water expended in working them.  This he imagines he has remedied, by contriving to convey the water out of the vessell...by means of a syphon…” [lxvi]

          The close friendship with More continued through the next decade and beyond, until More's death in fact in 1797, and his promotion of John Wilkinson goes beyond the support of his works and ideas to an enthusiasm for the man himself, as later events will show.

These years are a period of personal and business consolidation for Wilkinson.      The Lawns at Broseley became his family base and what he increasingly came to refer to as his Headquarters.  Here with Mary Lee now as hostess he entertains his business friends in a home which is comfortable and commodious without being grand, and which is geographically central to his affairs.  It is only a mile or two from his works at New Willey, about thirty miles to Bersham which enabled him to travel there and back in a day and thus offer support to young William's management of affairs there, and well within a day's return journey the other way to Birmingham and the world of Matthew Boulton and his friends, and to Bradley in Bilston, between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, where he had great plans afoot.  In 1767 he bought the estate and the Manor of Bradley and began to build a new blast furnace there.  It was to become another of his great iron-making centres and a place with which he was to be associated until his death.

His daughter, Mary, is now growing up at The Lawns, moving into her teenage years and drawing closer to her stepmother, perhaps as the daughter that Mary Lee herself was never able to bear; and a bond is established at this time between John and his wife and daughter which is to have a powerful effect upon their later lives.    Subsequent letters to James Watt show how much John enjoyed his Broseley home of which his womenfolk were such an integral part, their greetings and salutations always included with his own at the end of his letters.  

Sometime before this he had become acquainted with the architect, Thomas Farnolls Pritchard.  The memorial to his first wife in Wrexham Church is by Pritchard but may not have been erected until some years after her death in 1756, though before his second marriage in 1763.  There is no documentary support for the start of this association but it continued through the early Broseley years as witness a piece of architectural evidence at The Lawns suggesting Pritchard was an intimate in the Wilkinson household at that time.  A monumental marble chimney-piece erected by him still dominates the dining room there.  Ten years later, of course, Pritchard became the architect of the great Iron Bridge over the Severn, a scheme which Wilkinson sponsored and promoted from the very beginning. [lxvii]

Isaac Wilkinson by this time is living in Bristol.  A reference from the Merthyr Tydfil area dated 2 December 1768 lists him as “Gentleman, of the City of Bristol” [lxviii] .   Whether he ever lived in the Merthyr area of South Wales after his move from Bersham, or whether he moved straight to Bristol and conducted his South Wales investments from there in semi-retirement as some sources suggest, is unclear.  He was sixty-three or four years old in 1768. 

Glimpses of Isaac and his relationship with his children can be seen in the references that come from his son-in-law Joseph Priestley who stayed with him at his Bristol home on occasions.  That there had been a serious break-down about this time in relations between Isaac and his eldest son, John, is confirmed in a much later letter (1796) from Dr Priestley in America informing John of the death of Mary, his wife and John's sister.  He says of her: “...She always warmly took your part and would never believe your father's account of your using him ill.” [lxix]

It is an important glimpse of that father-son relationship, and it is significant in the context of Mary's marriage to Joseph Priestley at which ceremony her father was notably absent, but again it is all tantalisingly incomplete.  It gives no date and no details and no indication as to whether the relationship improved, or further deteriorated.  Perhaps John in his rise to power had turned aside from any hopes his father still held of heading a Wilkinson dynasty of iron founders, had dismissed the South Wales venture as too distant from, and irrelevant to, his own plans in the Midlands.  And if  Isaac's South Wales investments were an attempt by him to provide for his own old age in the face of his dismissal from the plans of his eldest son they, too, were unsuccessful.

Writing in 1795 in his A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty miles round Manchester  Aikin says that IsaacWilkinson's Old Bersham Company “...proved unsuccessful, partly in consequence of an expensive scheme to convey a blast by bellows from a considerable distance, to the works by means of tubes underground…” [lxx] and that it was his son John who adapted the device and made it succeed after Isaac had left.  In the next ten years The New Bersham Company under John and William began to market blowing engines for blast furnaces with increasing success, and that alone would have been cause enough for a rift with Isaac particularly if he sought, and was refused, a share in the profits to lessen his financial difficulties in South Wales.

Isaac was ultimately involved in three major iron-making ventures in the Merthyr Tydfil area [lxxi] none of which were a financial success for him yet which made fortunes for later ironmasters after he had withdrawn to Bristol, so his instincts were again correct if his operations on the ground were lacking.  Yet another reference cites the underground air pipes as a contributory failure this time in connection with the Dowlais and Plymouth furnaces:  “...at a considerable distance from this furnace there was a water-wheel which acted as the motive power to a large bellows, supplying the furnace with blast.  The blast again was conveyed through a long clay pipe of a very frail character.  The whole thing soon collapsed and Wilkinson retired from both Dowlais and Plymouth…” [lxxii]

It is likely that Isaac's ultimate financial embarrassment, however, was the result of a ruinous and protracted court case in which three master colliers from the place of his third and final speculation, the Cyfartha ironworks in Glamorgan, claimed for a considerable sum of money owing to them for coal produced under a contract between them. [lxxiii]

Isaac’s financial salvation in his declining years in Bristol is likely to have come from John Guest of Broseley, an early partner in his South Wales speculations, who made a financial success of the Dowlais Ironworks in the years after Isaac left.  Almost twenty years later Guest is described as a creditor of the deceased in Letters of Administration over Isaac's possessions granted to Guest's son, Thomas Guest, following Isaac’s death.  In those same Letters Isaac's surviving children, John, William, Mary and Margaret, renounced all interest in his estate.  He died intestate.

That Isaac retained some dignity and status in his declining years in Bristol is clear both from the Directory listings of him from time to time [lxxiv], and from the notice of his death in 1784[lxxv].  His two youngest daughters left his Bristol home to be married, both to men of some position and standing, Sarah in 1768 to Thomas Jones a surgeon and apothecary in Leeds, and Margaret in 1771 to Thomas Parkinson a glass seller in London.

There is one further piece of evidence relating to John Wilkinson's relations with his father in his declining years.  A letter from Matthew Boulton to James Watt dated 23 September 1781 contains the following:   “…I was prejudiced against W[alker] before I saw him, but that is now vanished and don't think we shall have any cause of complaint.  It was Le Founder (ie John Wilkinson) that grounded my prejudice, but as I learned from old W[alke]r  that he had been appointed an arbitrator between Le Founder and his Father and that after the award was made Jno. would not abide by it, but brought the affair into the King's Bench again, when Lord Mansfield confirmed the award...” [lxxvi]

The patchy evidence certainly points to both the financial failure of Isaac Wilkinson in his South Wales ventures after he left Bersham, and to a quarrel about this time with his eldest son John.  It seems likely the one is related to the other.

There is, however, good evidence for another important yet diverging focus at this time in John's life, his continuing contact with the Castle Head area of Westmoreland just a mile downriver from his old home at Wilson House.[lxxvii]  The information comes in a treasure box of redundant documents purchased some years ago in a solicitors clear-out in Liverpool [lxxviii].  The documents included a long series of lawyers abstracts relating to the later litigation over the will and the disposal of the Castle Head estate following John Wilkinson's death, and rehearsing deeds involving the purchase of land within the estate dating back to 1704.

The secondary sources on Wilkinson mostly published many years after his death repeat the information that he purchased the rocky hill of Castle Head in 1765.   That information is not supported by this bundle of documents which indeed make clear that he did not complete that purchase until 1778.   They do, however, show a link between Wilkinson and the purchase of a property lying adjacent to the hill in 1761.   The property is described as follows:  “...all that messuage or dwelling house at or near Lindale commonly known by the name of The Pot House...and two parcels or arable meadow or pasture adjoining lying together in one enclosure known as...The Intake and Sandy Bridge Parrock...”   and the deed is between,  “...William Canney of Lindale...yeoman of the one part and Thomas Waller late of the same place but now of New Willey Furnace in Shropshire, house carpenter, of the other part...” [lxxix]

The document is important because it proves the link between the Lindale family of Waller and the Wilkinsons in the context of an early land purchase at Castle Head.  It seems likely that the Wallers went with Isaac from this neighbourhood to Bersham in 1753, and subsequently came to work for John at his New Willey Furnace?  Had they prospered?  And were they homesick?  And was this a move to return to the place of their roots?  Or conversely did John Wilkinson make this purchase, through a loyal and trusted servant, who may well have been homesick and whom he intended to install in the property until other plans were ripe?  And did he provide Thomas with the purchase price of £107.3.0d to do it, which would be a huge sum for a house carpenter to find at that time?

Another abstract in the box of documents referring to part of this land raises more questions.  In Agnes Waller’s will dated 23 December 1786 the field called The Intake which had passed to her following Thomas’s death, is specifically left to Mary Wilkinson, wife of John Wilkinson.  There is no reference to The Pot House, or to Sandy Bridge Parrock, just the one field, but it would be unusual for a lowly family like the Wallers to leave land to their masters, the Wilkinsons, unless there was a bond or agreement between them from an earlier date.  The fact that the Wallers left their home to follow the Wilkinsons from Lindale to Shropshire, came back again and continued to serve the family until they died does indicate an enduring and close relationship within which such an arrangement might be made.

By the early 1770s the name of Wilkinson is attracting ever more attention, as a supplier of good quality iron products in a market until then dominated by the Darbys of Coalbrookdale and their Quaker partners in this Midland forefront of the iron-making world.  Little is heard of William Wilkinson at this time.  John is the dominant force, though William's management of the profitable gun-making works at Bersham is making steady contributions to their increasing wealth.  In 1770 William was twenty-six years old.  John was forty-two, and there are important differences between the two brothers as a consequence of this sixteen year gap.

They can have shared little as children.  Apart from any comradeship John found with his younger brother Henry he must have had a lonely childhood at Backbarrow, where he followed ideas and made decisions largely without discussion or consultation.   William on the other hand went through childhood as the only boy in a brood of sisters much closer in age, one older, two younger, and although he could have been dominant in their play, that would also involve responsibilities of negotiation and justification.   Moreover he would be closer to Isaac.  John was absent from the family fold for almost all the five Wilson House years and for those early years at Bersham by which time he was married.  William was with his parents throughout and Plas Grono was the place where William grew to manhood.   It was his home in a way it was never John’s, and he had an intimacy with the Bersham furnace and the people who worked there which went back into his childhood.  As manager, however, because of his youth he would need to prove to the people who looked increasingly to him in John's absence that he was able to make good decisions about staff and markets and production processes to make the business prosper.  For him, too, this was a period of consolidation.

John meantime is experimenting with iron-making ideas and machinery in a practical way at New Willey and at his new Bradley furnace within the various systems producing iron products there, in a questioning, searching manner that is typical of Isaac.  It is a restless questing work-ethic, totally committed to iron as a medium, constantly seeking better processes, better products, better marketing, all of which lead to more power, increased wealth and greater acclaim.

Stockdale [lxxx] quotes from a letter he wrote to Matthew Boulton which not only illustrates this point but also makes clear that in the six years since their initial contact through John Florry the two men are now intimate enough to be sharing information and ideas:  “Bradley, October 11^th, 1772.  I am happy to acquaint you that I have at last succeeded in using coal in my furnace.   The coal is got on my estate, and answers well.  The produce of the furnace weekly is now twenty tons instead of ten as formerly..."

Charcoal in the quantities required for iron furnaces, as industrialisation and therefore demand dramatically expanded, had become increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain.  The Darbys had used a crude form of coke as a furnace fuel since earliest days but it was never entirely satisfactory.  Wilkinson's success in 1772 seems to have come after extended trials with other fuels, one of which had taken him back to his roots at the Backbarrow Furnace where Fell [lxxxi] says he again experimented with peat:  “...In 1770, John Wilkinson carried out some experiments with peat charcoal at Backbarrow, and the furnace was placed at his disposal, but whether successful or otherwise is unknown...”

Again Fell does not disclose his sources, but his information is interesting  because it indicates that there was still a Wilkinson link with the Backbarrow furnace more than twenty years after Isaac left, sufficient for John to be allowed the use of it.  John's name alone by this time might have been enough to grant him this access in his own right of course.  The other important point is that here he is again in the north, not far from Castle Head, for what must have been an extended stay.

The greatest breakthrough in this period was in the Wilkinson method of producing cannon.  Earlier practices, and probably those used at first by Isaac, cast the heavy cannon barrel as a crude iron pipe and then bored out the inner surface with a rotating cutting tool to clean and finish it.  The problem was that the cutting tool jumped about as it cleaned out the core due to inconsistencies in the hardness of the iron and faults in the cast metal, which meant it was near impossible to achieve anything like a true cylinder for the inside of the barrel.  It is not difficult to see why cannon barrels had a tendency to explode in use.

Wilkinson developed a totally different approach to this process.  First he cast the barrel solid to eliminate faults which invariably occurred in the thinner casting of a core.  He then introduced the solid barrel and the cutting tool to each other by an improved and much more rigid system of slides, and instead of rotating a cutting tool into the metal he rotated the barrel and used a rigid cutting bar against which the turning barrel moved. “...It is difficult to overestimate this invention as it was really the introduction of the principle of slideways to large machine tools.  Up to this time the object to be bored, already cast to nearly the intended size, was mounted on a trolley which was drawn on rails towards the rotating boring head.  The cutters took the path of least resistance and although any section might be circular, the hole was not necessarily cylindrical.   Wilkinson dispensed with the core and cast the workpiece solid to eliminate blowholes.   It was then rotated in bearings and the cutter was fed into it along a straight, rigid bar by means of a screw.  Almost before the patent was taken out, Wilkinson modified the mill for engine cylinders...” [lxxxii]

The patent application, Number 1063, was dated 27 January 1774 “…for a new method of boring guns and cannon…”.  It was not long before the French heard about it, probably through Matthew Boulton’s extensive network of trade contacts on the continent; and in July and August of the following year an infantry brigadier in Louis XVI's army, Marchant de la Houliere from Perpignan came to England, his alleged purpose “...to investigate whether the superior quality of English coal and the peculiar nature of English iron ores constituted the reason why they were used together with such a great measure of success in that country to make cast and wrought iron...” [lxxxiii]

He was introduced to John Wilkinson by Matthew Boulton and Samuel Fothergill.  For the next few days Wilkinson was his host and offered him every opportunity to see his own works and those of his friends.  It did not take de la Houliere long to focus his attention on the manufacture of cannon.  He was an informed and observant visitor,  with  recent  experience of  attempts to smelt iron with coke in France.

“...On August 19th at Bersham foundry in Denbighshire in the principality of Wales...80 cwt. of cast iron were placed in four reverberatory furnaces in my presence.   In one of them was placed half a broken cannon which might have weighed 15 cwt., and 5 or 6 cwt. of crude pig iron which had been smelted some time previously in a blast furnace using coke.  In another...was placed a damaged forge hammer...To this was added some of the same iron referred to above in order to bring up the charge of each to between 20 and 21 cwts.   It was 9.30 a.m. by my watch when all four were charged.  By noon these masses of iron were in a state of complete fusion.  The plugs were withdrawn from the tapping holes, and I saw a 32-pounder cannon run into the mould...Cylinders from fire or steam engines are melted up and cast again in the same manner....These reverberatory furnaces are heated with raw coal straight from the mine and are stoked for two hours before they are charged with crude or scrap iron.  This is not done until the vault is white hot, and then pieces of cannon, anvils, hammers, old scrap iron castings or bars of pig iron are put in, and within two hours and a half the whole consignment may be seen passing through the pouring gate to be cast into the desired shape. ” [lxxxiv]

It is an immediate and very detailed description from a man who understood iron-making, and provides today better information on the Wilkinson works at Bersham at that time than any other surviving document.

The second part of Marchant de la Houliere’s report is given in the third person, placing immediately a distance and a veil between himself and his subject.  Why did he do this?  Was it deliberate?  Is he hiding something?  As the guest of John Wilkinson at Broseley he makes clear his purpose which is to bring to France an experienced man to establish the new technology there and says this was a sudden inspiration which came to him in England.   But he is a military man, and the improved cannon is what he really wants and his veiled approach to John Wilkinson meets with a shrewd response.   Wilkinson sees at once beyond Marchant de la Houliere's nods and winks to the real masters in France and instinctively senses the problems.  He tells the Frenchman he is interested but he would need assurances; a guaranteed market for at least twelve years with freedom to export any surpluses anywhere, solid guarantees of payment and exemption from taxes on coal.  De la Houliere had not been expecting anything like this and went to sound out young brother William.   He met a very different response.

“...Next day I was at Bersham foundry which is managed by his younger brother...   I gave him an account of my conversation with his brother.   He appeared to me to agree with all the views expressed, and had a great desire to see France...  I have reason to think that this Englishman would not be long in arriving...” [lxxxv]

He was right.  The following year William went to France.  His brief was to build with the help of a French engineer called Pierre Toufaire, a new State Ironworks and Cannon Foundry at Indret, an island on the River Loire below Nantes.  He built a copy of the Bersham works which had been his responsibility for fourteen years complete with gun-boring lathes and reverberatory furnaces and the first cannon were cast there in 1779.  By then France and England were at war.

The decision that took William Wilkinson to France was made in 1775 however, and it is worth examining his circumstances at the time.  He was 31 years old, a successful young ironmaster but very much in the shadow of his elder brother, at an age when he would feel the need to make his own mark on the world.  The French terms would have to be good enough to match his income and status at Bersham if he was to replace the one for the other, and they were [lxxxvi].  But was that in fact the position?  Did he decide to abandon the Wilkinson empire, at a demanding moment in its development and without regard to the consequences, for something that suited him better at the time? Attractive as the French prospect would be as a focus of style and fashion to a young bachelor, quite apart from the salary and status, it is clear that William left with John's blessing and there was no rift between the brothers at this time.

John’s support of William’s inclination to go to France begs some questions, however.  John had recently supplied a cast iron cylinder bored to truth to replace the cylinder on the old experimental Kinneil engine which James Watt, with Boulton’s help, had salvaged out of Roebuck's bankruptcy in Scotland, and which Boulton and Watt had re-erected at the Soho works in Birmingham as a prototype New Engine.  Because of Boulton’s trading network of contacts the talk of Watt's New Engine was ahead of its production.  But the great association between the three men was beginning and a new emphasis for cylinders as opposed to guns was emerging in John’s priorities.  There would have to be changes at Bersham.

Chapter 5 - THE NEW STEAM ENGINE

By 1775 talk of James Watt's new improved fire engine had been a subject for speculation for almost ten years. As instrument maker at Glasgow University in the early 1760s he had been given a model of a Newcomen Steam Engine to repair which at first he was unable to do to his satisfaction. The brainwave for a separate condenser came suddenly in 1765 and he built a working model of an improved engine which excited attention.

He did not himself have the resources to build a prototype but Dr John Roebuck, a wealthy industrialist from Birmingham with interests in Glasgow, heard about Watt's engine and a friendship developed between the two men. Roebuck subsequently paid off debts Watt had undertaken in an attempt to develop the engine himself in exchange for a two-thirds interest, and provided the resources and encouragement for Watt to build a working model on Roebuck property at Kinneil .

Because of the demands on Watt’s time by then as a busy canal surveyor and engineer in Scotland progress was frustratingly slow and the new model was not completed until 1769. An experimental working engine followed with an eighteen inch cast iron cylinder supplied by Roebuck's Carron Ironworks. It could never be made to work satisfactorily, but Watt was nonetheless encouraged to apply for a patent, which he was granted for a period of eight years on 5 January 1769 and in which he set down his specification and the basic principles on which the new engine depended. [lxxxvii]

But by 1770 Roebuck was in serious financial difficulties.  He knew Matthew Boulton and had already tried to interest him in a partnership in one of his enterprises, but Boulton had been fully committed with his then partner John Fothergill to the building of his new manufactory at Handsworth, the highly acclaimed Soho works.

Following a visit to London on canal business in 1768, Watt had returned to Scotland by way of Birmingham, had stayed with Boulton at Handsworth and seen the sophistication of the new Soho works.  He had been the guest of that informal gathering of scientific men started by Boulton and his friends in 1766 and known as the Lunar Society, so called it seems for no other reason than their need of the full moon to light them home after meetings.  During his stay in Birmingham Watt had been hugely impressed both by the friendship and hospitality extended to him by these men, and by their enthusiasm for his invention.  It is not known if he met John Wilkinson at this time.

The possibility of Boulton being admitted to the Roebuck-Watt partnership had been mooted earlier and it was hardly surprising that in the event of Roebuck's subsequent failure Watt and Boulton, who had by then established a liking and respect for each other, should look for a way forward.  Boulton was tremendously enthusiastic about getting the engine into production, but cannily held off Roebuck's initial proposals knowing he was almost bankrupt, and waited eventually to deal with his creditors.  Watt, never happy with these financial manipulations, was torn between loyalty to Roebuck, and his recognition of Boulton’s Birmingham as the environment in which he might best build his engine.

In the period before Roebuck’s ultimate financial collapse in 1773, Watt wrote a series of letters to Boulton and his new friends in the Lunar Society, particularly to Dr William Small [lxxxviii].  They are extremely illuminating as to his attitude of mind at this time and show him by turns anxious and despondent, with a poor view of his own abilities, his health affected by worry, aware of his own precarious financial position and needing to carry on with the canal survey and engineering work to keep his family in bread; at the same time hugely frustrated that this near full time commitment kept him from further experimental work on the engine.  They also indicate a restless probing intellect which when frustrated in the engine work turned to what he called gimcracks, one of which was a notable improvement to his survey equipment in the form of a new micrometer which he discussed with Small. As Watt’s difficulties dragged on through these years he yet retained a modesty and a generosity of spirit perhaps born out of a faith that his new Birmingham friends would somehow find the way forward.

At the meeting of Roebuck’s creditors early in 1773 Boulton asked Watt to act as his attorney which must have been a trial all round for Watt's loyalties, but his handling of the meeting and its consequences was masterly.  First he discharged Roebuck from all sums that were owing or oustanding under their partnership,  “…in consideration of the mutual friendship existing between Dr Roebuck and myself and because I think the thousand pounds he has paid more than the value of the property of the two-thirds of the invention…” [lxxxix]

Next, because the Kinneil experimental engine was astonishingly valued at nothing by Roebuck's creditors, Watt took it as his property, dismantled it and shipped it in pieces via London to Soho.  This is the first positive decision by Watt to show that he now knew his destiny lay in Birmingham.  The final consequence of the resolution of Roebuck's failure was that Boulton acquired the two-thirds share in the engine in exchange for an amount of £1,200 owing to Boulton & Fothergill.  Fothergill did not want to carry forward a financial commitment to the invention so Boulton next paid him out for his share of this sum.

A consequence of Watt’s own generosity towards Roebuck was further serious strain on his own finances and with his wife heavily pregnant with her fifth child he felt obliged to undertake a new canal survey, which took him to the wilds of northern Scotland between Inverness and Fort William.  It is a measure of the man that at this difficult point in his life, instinctively aware that massive changes were imminent and weighted down by uncertainty and stress, he completed the detailed and accurate survey work, over rough and difficult ground, that was so praised by Telford who in 1801 built this section of the Caledonian Canal.

Tragedy was now about to enter Watt’s life. In that wild country several days journey north of Glasgow he received urgent word that his wife was ill and not expected to live and he should come home with all speed. He was met near Dunbarton by a family friend from Glasgow, Gilbert Hamilton. “…By his black coat and his countenance I saw I had nothing to hope.” [xc]  He couldn't face his own home at first because he “…feared to come where I had lost my kind welcomer…in her I lost the comfort of my life, a dear friend and a faithful wife…” [xci]  A letter to Dr Small in Birmingham a little later emphasises the misery of this time.  “…I know that grief has its period; but I have much to suffer first. I grieve…I am left to mourn…I had a miserable journey home, …through the wildest country I ever saw, and the worst conducted roads; an incessant rain kept me for three days as wet as water could make me. I could hardly preserve my journal-book…” [xcii]

His wife’s death left Watt responsible for their two surviving children, the elder only six. His Glasgow friends, particularly the Hamiltons, looked after them when he resumed his survey work, as he had to do to provide for them.  It was in this melancholy period he met Mrs Hamilton's sister, Ann, who was to become his second wife and whose subsequent letters show the important role she played in helping him later to adapt to his new life in Birmingham.  Small, too, offered tremendous sympathy and support at this time and the two men developed an intimate relationship of trust and confidence unmatched by any other in Watt's life.  “…I have lost much of my attachment to the world, even to my own devices…I long much to see you - to hear your nonsenses and to communicate my own; but so many things are in the way, and I am so poor…I am heartsick of this country; I am indolent to excess …I tremble when I hear the name of a man I have any transactions to settle with….” [xciii]

It was Small as much as Boulton who finally persuaded Watt to break his ties with Scotland and follow his engine to Birmingham where he arrived on 31^st May 1774, but sadly this sustaining friendship was cut short by Small’s sudden death of the ague in the following year.  He and Boulton had persuaded Watt that since six years of the patent had expired without a single working engine being built he should take counsel's opinion as to how the period of the patent could best be extended.  The advice was to obtain an Act of Parliament rather than a new or modified patent and Small had drafted the petition for the Bill shortly before he died.  It met with strong criticism in the House of Commons when it was introduced on 23 February 1775.  “Violent opposition from many of the most powerful people in the house…” [xciv] claimed that the period of twenty-five years applied for was too long and the wording to prevent possible infringements too sweeping.  The shrewd mind of Matthew Boulton with an eye to future profits is writ large in these clauses, and also in the wording of the Memorandum circulated by Watt to members of the House in which he seeks to justify his position.  “…The inventor of these new engines is sorry that gentlemen of knowledge and advowed admirers of his invention should oppose the Bill by putting it in the light of a monopoly.  He never had any intention of circumscribing or claiming the inventions of others; and the Bill is now drawn up in such a manner as sufficiently guards those rights and must oblige him to prove his own right to every part of his invention which may at any time be disputed. …”

The Bill was read for the first time on 9 March 1775. Watt was in London for most of its passage supported by Boulton during the critical stage in May but the Bill was steered safely through Parliament and received the Royal Assent on 22 May 1775[xcv].  The question as to how far this Act prevented other inventive minds from working on further improvements to the new steam engine for the next twenty-five years continues to be asked to this day.

During the year leading up to the passing of the Public Act Patent Watt, now living in Birmingham, had been making further experimental modifications to his engine set up at Soho.  At some point there will have been discussions with Boulton about the quality of the engine’s Carron cylinder which Watt, by his constant and systematic engine testing, had identified as a serious limitation against further improvement.  The need of a better cylinder was urgent. Boulton, because of his status and as a regular Wilkinson customer for castings already, would know about the new cannon-boring experiments ahead of their general publication and might even have persuaded Wilkinson to extend the technology immediately to cylinders.  It would be entirely typical of Wilkinson, of course, to have recognised by this time the excitement focused on Watt's engine as a huge potential market for high quality castings.  The engine, in fact, was the catalyst for Wilkinson's application of the new improved cannon-boring technology to cylinders.

Certainly by early 1775 Wilkinson was working on a new cylinder for Watt, which was delivered to Soho in April, and it is from these beginnings that the important cooperative association of the three men grew; Matthew Boulton, wealthy entrepreneur and highly respected small goods manufacturer with a wide trading network; James Watt, inventor and civil engineer, his new engine yet to be proved; and John Wilkinson, ironmaster and a practical engineer himself with a growing iron empire and reputation. They had one great unifying purpose – to make money.

In the summer of 1775 Watt, now installed in Matthew Boulton’s old Birmingham house at 1 Newhall Walk, went back to Glasgow to collect his children, and perhaps to see Ann McGregor.  He and Boulton had obviously discussed the contractual terms of their business association and in a letter dated 5 July from Glasgow, distanced from the intensity and excitement at Soho and where he had leisure to think about this and discuss it with his friends, Watt rehearses the agreed terms to Boulton “…as you may have possibly mislaid my missive to you concerning our contract…” [xcvi]

It is possible that Boulton with the two-thirds share of the engine in his pocket had been slow to finalise the contract with Watt and that this was a murmur of concern from Scotland.  This is supported by another vibration the following year when Watt returned again to Glasgow to marry Ann Mcgregor with the contract still not formalised. Her father insisted on seeing the contract document before he would agree the marriage settlement. It had not then been executed, but with a huge amount of goodwill on both sides Boulton reassures the old man and promises him sight of the document when his lawyer returns from London.  It is an interesting exchange, the more so since the executed deed has never been found, though it is perhaps unwise to read too much into that. Boulton and Watt from earliest times had each shown a respect and admiration for the other’s very different personality and skills and their continuing relationship as business partners shows, too, that each retained a steady trust in the other’s integrity.

Watt was in direct contact with Wilkinson in 1775 following his delight at the improvement the Wilkinson cylinder had made to the experimental engine at Soho. Plans were soon afoot to build the first working engines for sale, one at the Bloomfield Colliery near Tipton to pump water, the other at John Wilkinson's New Willey works to perform a much more complex operation.  It was to be harnessed to his iron bellows to blow the furnace. It was an anxious time.  Potential purchasers were waiting, and watching. Each engine had to succeed. James Watt is nervous.  Wilkinson writes to him reassuringly.

“John Wilkinson to Mr Watt at Soho, Near Birmingham Broseley 17^th Aug 1775

Dear Sir,

          I have just rec'd your favour with the several drawings. Some gentlemen in this neighbourhood having an engine to erect - I have advised them to build it on your plan. One of the partys that pretends to understand these things has promised to accompany me to Birmingham the first time I come over and as I wish to see you before you go northwards I shall fix him for Monday next and purpose to call at Soho in our road to Birmingham that evening. I shall then mention to you what occurs to me in the business you have so well described in your letter and then forward the instruction to Bersham.  I wish to do all in the best manner and to start fair.  Let us only succeed well in these first engines, particularly in mine, and I will venture to promise you more orders than will be executed in our time.

Am glad you think the cylinder for Mr Bailley & Co will do - am preparing a machine in the new way to finish them with greater truth.  If y will not answer a perpendicular x shall be tried. In short nothing shall be wanting that is in my way which can promote and facilitate your engine.  Our time in this world (at best) is but short and we must be busy if you intend that all the engines in this Kingdom shall be put right in our day.  I have had some thoughts on this matter, and am of opinion that if you dare undertake the drawings I will provide the castings.  Practice will make us perfect, and a score of engines one year hence will be dismissed with more ease than one at present.

I beg my compliments to Mr Boulton and am Dear Sir, Your most obedient Servant, John Wilkinson.” [xcvii]

It is an informative letter.  There is a certain formality of address here showing the two men are not yet on familiar terms, and an unmistakable politeness from Wilkinson towards a man whose intellect and invention command respect and whose drawings he cannot match.  Already Wilkinson is promoting the engine, and seeking to bring to Soho to see it “…one of the partys that pretend to understand these things…”  with a view to procuring an order.  Watt has described certain modifications in an earlier letter which Wilkinson wants to discuss with him in person, perhaps for reasons of security, before sending the final casting instructions to Bersham where engine parts are being made and where he is still improving his cylinder-boring machine.

He is keenly conscious that these first two engines must succeed, and particularly his engine at New Willey.  Each of them has been put to a different job of work, the first one merely to pump water, but the Wilkinson engine is to be used in conjunction with his iron bellows to blow the furnace, a much more sophisticated task.

Here in a nutshell is the future engine market, first an engine that could pump water efficiently, out of flooded mines, or from a lower to an upper pool to be used again by a water wheel; but perhaps more important an engine that could provide economically the motive power to drive all manner of machinery at an industrial site.  Wilkinson has seen the issues.  Here is that tremendous confidence of success so typical of the man and the more remarkable because he is poised right on the leading edge of the new technology.  He recognises Watt as the key figure to the future, but has seen his need of reassurance and support, which he is quick to provide, at the same time shrewdly trying to secure for himself the engine market for castings and cylinders.

That autumn the two men were constantly in contact over the preparatory details of drawings, for valves and small engine parts to be made at Soho, and for the iron castings made under Wilkinson's direct supervision at New Willey for his engine, while the Bloomfield Colliery engine castings were made by his brother at Bersham.  Wilkinson was impatient to get his engine up and then to modify any problems in practice, Boulton was urging care and caution to get it right first time, aware the world was watching.  Watt stood uncomfortably in the middle, seeking to avoid the commercial stress in a full time involvement with the engine.

By the end of January Wilkinson is putting on the pressure.  Watt has gone back to Soho to make some refinement he needs. Wilkinson waits impatiently at New Willey.  There is an imperious note in the letter he sends after Watt, perhaps as a consequence of this frustrating and unwonted dependence on another:  

 “January 26^th, 1776, Broseley.                                   

Dear Sir, Wm Thomas who is now over here from Bilston is ordered to send this forward imediately by William Johnson requesting the imediate dispatch of the needfull to put my engine at work.  The loss I must sustain now every day will be considerable having provided men and stock coming in daily which cannot now be declined on an expectancy that we coud not fail of being at work before this. Simplifying the condenser in the manner you hint at will be a very considerable improvement in my opinion, but as I am circumstanced now I had rather have an engine at work on your old plan than suffer from longer delay.

I have requested Wm Thomas to procure a carriage to bring the articles wanted from you and Bilston directly hither.  I hope we may have them with your company early in this next week. Wm Johnson can explain in part some of the hopes and disapointment that must arise in a furnace situated as mine is now at this place and whatever plan we get to work upon I beg it may be that which will be soonest done.  Any improvements may be added at a future day when I can spare the time better….” [xcviii]

On the 5th April Wilkinson is hurrying back to New Willey following a period at Bersham and is able to tell Watt that “the engine goes very well” [xcix], though they are still watching it carefully and making adjustments.  The Bloomfield Colliery engine is also pumping satisfactorily by this time and it was at this point that Watt took the opportunity to return to Glasgow to marry Ann McGregor and tidy up his affairs in Scotland.  He was away most of the summer during which time orders for engines were beginning to flow and Boulton is impatient for his return, to liaise with Wilkinson and reassure the customers:  “… If we had a hundred wheels [ie rotary engines] ready made and a hundred small engines like Bow engine, and twenty large ones executed, we could readily dispose of them.  Therefore let us make hay while the sun shines, and gather our barns full before the dark cloud of age lowers upon us, as to your absence say nothing about it.  I will forgive it this time provided you promise me never to marry again. …” [c]

In 1776 Boulton was forty-eight years old, the same age as John Wilkinson but eight years older than Watt.  He was perhaps feeling the onset of middle age before the others and his obvious anxiety that delays in executing orders would lead to lost business was to be prophetic.

Meantime Watt returned to Birmingham with his bride and installed her in what can only be described as his bachelor quarters in Newhall Walk, a small town house dominated by servants, noisy with the two young children of his former marriage and cluttered with his papers and projects.  It was not to her liking and within a few months the family had moved to an imposing three-storey house called Regent’s Place at Harper's Hill, conveniently close to Soho.

Wilkinson, too, was under family pressure at this time.  It was some twelve years since his daughter Mary had returned to live with her father and stepmother at The Lawns, Broseley, and she had grown up into a confident educated young woman with poise and presence.  In the absence of anything more than brief references to her in the earlier letters it is yet important in view of later events to try to interpret her father's plans for her at this point.

He had no sons nor could expect any from his second wife Mary in view of her age.  All his great contemporaries including Watt and Boulton had sons.  Wilkinson's power and possessions were growing rapidly, but without a son to inherit how did he regard his daughter?  It must be that he hoped she would marry someone with a good base and good connections in the iron-making industry who would one day be worthy to inherit his empire.  And the education he had provided for Mary, and her closeness to him and his affairs during these important years, was perhaps part of a process which he hoped would help her to choose well.

Time after time during his frequent absences around the country Wilkinson left his wife Mary in charge at Headquarters, as he called his Broseley-New Willey iron-making base, an unusual and important responsibility for a woman in that age and particularly in an industry almost exclusively male.  Daughter Mary would grow to womanhood within that system and would certainly have more experience in treating with men on a day-to-day basis than most young women of her time.  There can be little doubt that Wilkinson encouraged and lauded this independence of mind and spirit.  Was it part of a long term plan?  If so there is evidence it back-fired.

By early 1776 daughter Mary then aged nineteen was engaged to a young and consumptive physician called Richard Blackley.  How much parental opposition there had been to the proposed marriage is not known but that it proceeded to a public betrothal probably means that they were resigned to it.  So much was happening in Wilkinson's business life at the time that it is possible he buried his personal emotions in his work, an escape mechanism he had used before on the death of his first wife, and would use again.  It is tempting therefore to think that the demise of the young doctor before the marriage took place would be regarded by Wilkinson as a blessing, but the ensuing turmoil at The Lawns is not difficult to imagine, compounded unhappily by the rapid decline and death that same summer of his nephew, young Dr Blakeway, the son of his staunch friend and business partner.  The events would inevitably impact on his business life.

There is certainly a noticeable tetchiness in his exchanges with Watt and Boulton at the time, though it was not all down to domestic stress. He is still having trouble with his first engine whilst building a second at New Willey for pumping water back to the upper pool, and he is becoming increasingly frustrated at the delays in providing casting instructions and drawings for other orders which have been placed.  This could only in part be attributed to Watt since Boulton drew up the terms based upon the savings in fuel on new engine against old, a system made for disagreement and which led to continuing dispute, yet which had to be agreed before the final contract could go ahead.  Wilkinson, frequently held responsible for the delay in providing cylinders and castings when in fact he was not a partner in the enterprise but more a sub-contractor, increasingly tried to anticipate these final instructions and have the parts ready for when the authority to provide them came.  It was an unsatisfactory and stressful arrangement, but the rewards were potentially great. The letters of the summer and autumn of 1776 illustrate the difficulties. [ci]

April 28, John Wilkinson at Broseley to James Watt at Soho:  “…I beg we may have drawings or some instructions for the other engines in hand without which we can’t get forward.  The little articles that come often at last retards more than castings…”

April 30, John Wilkinson at Broseley to James Watt at Soho: 

“Yesterday morning about 6-o-clock we stopped and took out the regulators to see if we could make any alterations for the better, at same time examined the junction with the copper bottom and found your joint exceedingly defective, so much so that light may be perceived from a candle placed within the cylinder. You must in future adopt a different method in the joining this part of the steam pipe to the inner bottom as a joint there is not to be come at…”

May 1, John Wilkinson at Broseley to Matthew Boulton at Soho:

“…The cylinder & working barrels for Bedworth are ready. [Wilkinson’s underlining] The pipes are casting.  Nothing shall wait if you only take care I have the needful instructions in time.  If I was a taylor I should be inclined to remark that it was more difficult to get the measure taken than to make the suit of cloths….”

May 7, John Wilkinson at Broseley to Mr Watt at Soho:

“I most heartily concur with you in the cast iron bottom recommended in your favour of the 4th. It would have been a very capital improvement in our present engine had it been adopted.  Don't you think it will yet be best for me to have such a bottom in the room of the copper one here….”

August 9, John Wilkinson to Matthew Boulton Esquire at Soho:

“… I wrote you on Wednesday from Salop with Bill of Lading for sundries for Bow Engine. I now enclose particular charge of the whole.  Had all the order been given at once, the whole would have been up together with the cylinder. In future I wish to have orders for all together.  The small articles for which instructions have been last sent take up most time.  But … a little more practice will put every department in a more expeditious mode…”

November 12, John Wilkinson in London to Messrs Boulton & Watt: “Gentlemen … I have seen Mr More …  The misfortunes at Bow afford great room for exultation among your enemies. Mr More has been told by several that the engine will never answer.  I hope you will lose no time in putting this affair right as soon as may be…”

Wilkinson, and with some justification, feels himself to be a principal participant in the engine business and speaks freely and on equal terms to both Watt and Boulton.  His engines are the exhibition engines on whose workings, as a considerable practical engineer in his own right, he feeds back information and suggestions to Watt.  It is clear that he sees them as working engines which must be good enough to promote further sales and as such should have instant attention if anything is wrong; though his warning here to attend urgently to the breakdown of the engine erected at a distillery at Stratford-le-Bow shows his awareness of all the early engines as important exhibits that must be seen to succeed, most particularly this one in London.

It is Wilkinson, too, who arranges the first sale to Cornwall, an important established mining area with an urgent need of better pumping systems, and a large potential engine market they have been seeking to procure for some time. He is also proposing to Boulton that it is such an important market they should be prepared to take risks and go ahead quickly with this first engine for the West Wheal Virgin Mine without the usual contract securities.  Boulton is cautious; Wilkinson is impatient; Watt listens and goes on producing the drawings. They do secure this market, and over the next few years each of them at different times makes the long hard journey to Cornwall for a protracted stay which they do not enjoy, to promote and erect and then to modify or repair their engines. It must have been worth the trouble.

Wilkinson at this point had sounded out Boulton and Watt about his entering into the partnership on a formal basis, and when the inevitable cash-flow problem attendant on new businesses overtook the partnership in these early years, with capital outlay not yet recouped by income, Watt wrote to Boulton from Cornwall where the biggest capital drain was occurring to remind him of this:  “…You know I am a bad ways & means man, but however, the following thought may merit your consideration. You know Wn. [Wilkinson] has several times hinted a wish to be concerned  in  this scheme, to  which we have had material objections but rather than founder at sea we had  better  run  ashore. …” [cii]

Not once, then, but several times Wilkinson had made approaches to them about being formerly admitted to the partnership, but Boulton had resisted.  Why?  There is often a frisson of tension between these two men.  Was Boulton wary of Wilkinson's confidence and drive? Certainly this rejection will have smouldered with Wilkinson to become another reason for the break-up of their association in the years to come.

In the summer of 1776 contact between Wilkinson and his close friend Samuel More, now the Secretary of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, lead to a visit by More to the area to inspect the various new developments on behalf of the Society. More arrives in Birmingham about midday on 10 July and Wilkinson joins him at his inn during the afternoon.  They look at the canal but do not go to Soho, and both sleep at the inn that night.  It is clear that as two close friends they needed uninterrupted time together to talk through the recent events and plan the visit.

The following day, accompanied by Josiah Wedgwood, they are Boulton’s guests at Soho.  They dine there and Boulton shows them the memorial garden to Dr Small he has laid out in the grounds.  He recounts for More's benefit the history of Watt's engine and they examine the old Kinneil engine now set up at Soho with a Wilkinson cylinder.  And then an astonishing thing happens. The four men take off their coats, roll up their sleeves and dismantle the engine piece by piece to understand the detail of its working, and then re-assemble it and have it running satisfactorily again by evening.  Watt is not there.  They spend that night at Soho.

Next morning, 12 July, Wilkinson and More take their leave and go to Wilkinson's Bradley works to show More a fire engine set up there to blow the furnace through iron bellows.  It is the forerunner of Wilkinson’s New Willey installation and More sees it working and is impressed by the blast that is generated.  The following day he leaves Wilkinson to inspect the Bloomfield Colliery pumping engine.  He is engaged to meet Boulton and Wedgwood there but they fail to appear on time so he persuades the engineer, a Mr Perrins, to show him round and notes his approving remarks.  Boulton and Wedgwood eventually catch up and Boulton takes him in the afternoon to the quarterly meeting of ironmasters at Stourbridge where trade values and prices are to be agreed for the three months ahead.

For the whole of the next week More is Wilkinson's guest at The Lawns, where everyone is in distress at young Dr Blakeway's rapid decline. It takes them about four hours to reach Broseley from Birmingham travelling in a chaise and changing horses at Bridgnorth, and they lose no time in escaping from the unhappy household to see the works at New Willey in full production.  Over the next few days More, with Wilkinson as his guide and mentor, examines every aspect of the New Willey Works and his Journal provides important details of the installations. He also visits Wilkinson's lime pits nearby and sees his cast iron rail-roads which link the works to the Severn, and they discuss Wedgwood’s idea for ten miles of double track cast-iron rails from Derby limestone quarries to his house, costing £1,000 per mile.  During his stay at Broseley More crosses the river on the ferry to visit the Darby’s works in Coalbrookdale and the Reynolds’ works at Horsehay and Ketley.  He dines with the Reynolds and meets young William whose laboratory and collection of ores impress him.

It is an extremely busy itinerary, a build-up by Wilkinson for what is to come on their last day together when he takes More to see the model of the Iron Bridge.  Unfortunately Abraham Darby is not at home and they are unable to view the model itself but the day is spent looking at the site for the bridge and discussing the need for a better, quicker link between the different works on opposite sides of the river. Wilkinson's advocacy of the bridge is clear in More’s Journal.  By using cast-iron everything can be got ready with minimum interruption to the navigation when the work starts.  There is to be one arch forty feet high to further facilitate the passage of masted vessels with a roadway sixteen feet wide across one hundred and twenty feet of river. This bridge, they believe, will lead to other bridges which will further benefit the area's important works.  If no-one can tender for less than £2,000 Mr Wilkinson “has engaged to compleat it for that sum” [ciii].

Here is that confidence again, and an enthusiasm for the project that comes through the dry words of the Journal.  The next day More leaves Broseley for a visit to Wedgwood’s works at Etruria before returning to London, and Wilkinson sets him on his way as far as Shrewsbury.  They clearly still had much to talk through before Wilkinson returned to his sorrowing household and to another significant threshold in his life.

Following the visit of Marchant de la Houliere the previous year William Wilkinson is about to go to France, with all this implied for the continuing management of the Bersham Furnace. He is still in charge at Bersham in early May, consulting with his brother at Broseley before casting a cylinder bottom of a new design [civ] , and he is at Broseley for part of Samuel More’s visit [cv]; but by early September he has gone and John is by then constantly on the move between his three main works at New Willey (Broseley), Bradley, and Bersham, actually supervising some of the work at Bersham himself in September, and suffering “…a burn caught at the casting of a brass plate, which is likely to confine me for some time…” [cvi]

His sheer appetite for work and new business is staggering. With William in France, and in a good position to secure more orders there, John is yet prepared to add the Bersham work to his burthen, though perhaps he is not unhappy at again securing close control of that large iron-making establishment at a time when orders for iron castings as well as guns were climbing steadily and which then meant the three large Wilkinson works were under his direct control.

Chapter 6 – THE IRON BRIDGE

By the early 1770s John Wilkinson had three large works producing iron[cvii] and from the position of authority and influence this gave him among the Midland ironmasters he missed no opportunity to promote iron and enthuse about it.  His detractors called it his iron madness.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when the increase in industrial and commercial activity between opposite sides of the Severn Gorge in the Coalbrookdale area demanded better communications in the form of a bridge, that Wilkinson should press for it to be built of iron.

The summer of 1774 saw discussions gaining momentum between the ironmasters and those who owned land on either side of the river or who had regular need of the existing ferry, sufficient to produce reports in the West Midlands press at the time, and the first formal meeting of interested parties took place on 15 September 1775 in Broseley, where Wilkinson lived.   From this point forward the chronicle of events leading to the building of the bridge and its early period of operation is laid out step by step in an insignificant little red minute book now in the keeping of Shropshire Archives, in which a certain Thomas Addenbrooke in a clear careful hand records every detail [cviii].

Wilkinson was involved from the beginning, and though some commentators have been deceived into thinking that a conventional bridge was first planned, by the use of words like intended bridge or proposed bridge and by the absence of the word iron to describe the bridge until well into the chronicle, there is evidence that this was not so.  As early as 1773 Thomas Farnolds Pritchard, the subsequent architect for the Iron Bridge and by then Wilkinson’s friend of some fifteen years standing, discussed  in a  letter to him [cix] the prospect of an iron bridge in the Severn Gorge.  And there is the wording of a draft of the Petition to the House of Commons for obtaining the Act of Parliament to build the bridge, hand-written in the very back of the little red Minute Book.

“To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled the honourable Petition of the Gentlemen Clergy Merchants Manufacturers and Tradesmen residing in or near Coalbrookdale Madeley Wood Benthall and Broseley in the County of Salop whose names all hereunto subscribe SHOWETH that a very considerable traffic is carried on at Coalbrookdale Madeley Wood Benthall Broseley and places adjacent in iron lime pottery clay and coals and that the persons carrying on the same are frequently put to great inconveniences delays and obstructions by reason of the insufficiency of the present ferry over the River Severn…particularly in the winter season in which time it is frequently dangerous and sometimes impassable…the trade would be much improved as also the communication between the several places beforementioned…if a bridge was erected across the said river…the said bridge to be constructed with cast iron…”[cx]

No date is affixed to this draft but the Act of Parliament was on the statute before 15 May 1776 [cxi], which given the time required for its introduction and the various readings in The Commons puts a date on the draft of early 1776 and possibly late 1775.  In fact at the very first recorded meeting of the Subscribers a minute is passed to appoint a lawyer to obtain the Act of Parliament.  The draft is likely to be the consequence of this meeting, and leaves little room for doubt that from the very beginning the Subscribers were planning to build in cast iron.  Abraham Darby III was chose treasurer though not present at the meeting, with Pritchard commissioned to prepare estimates of the cost of the bridge, the former the head of the large Darby iron-making complex in Coalbrookdale, the latter with a stated interest already in building in iron.

Pritchard lost no time in preparing the necessary details.  An architect’s drawing entitled Design for a Cast Iron Bridge between Madeley and Broseley and carrying the details F Pritchard.  Salop Oct 1775 is reproduced in an 1832 publication by a man called John White [cxii].  The original drawing has been lost but was obviously available to White and the details tie in closely with an important minute in the little red book dated 17 October 1775.  “Agreed that the sum of three thousand one hundred and fifty pounds already subscribed be paid to Mr Abraham Darby, he the said Mr Abraham Darby in consideration thereof to defray all expenses in erecting the intended bridge in a substantial manner according to a plan this day produced by Mr Thomas Farnolds Pritchard or as near it as may be for the best and safest manner for making roads at both ends of the said bridge and obtaining the Act of Parliament for the same, he the said Mr Darby having any and all further sum or sums of money that shall be given towards building the said bridge or obtaining the Act over and above the said sum of £3,150 but in case there shall be any opposition to the obtaining of the Act then the said Subscribers agree to defray the additional expense…” [cxiii]

It is worth examining how the money collected from the Subscribers was gathered up. At the second formal meeting on 28 September 1775 a list of seventeen names, destined  to be closely involved with the future planning and management of the bridge and with John Wilkinson and two friends at the head, subscribed the relatively small amount of £23.5.11d on a call of 10 per cent.  A further sum of £18.0.6d  total, was later additionally collected from four of these names and one new name.  On the next page in the Minute Book is another list which includes nine names already listed plus five new names including Wilkinson’s landlord at New Willey, Squire Forester, and Sir Harry Bridgeman who subscribe £50 each.  Wilkinson matches their contributions with another £50 making him the principal subscriber in the total of £283.1.11d  collected and recorded so far.  This looks like the necessary administrative fund to get the project started.  It is a long way short of the £3,150 handed over to Abraham Darby less than three weeks later which will have been collected from the subscribers on the basis of their shareholdings, sixty shares total at £50 a share.  It might have been supplemented from an impressive list of more than fifty names headed by Lord Craven, Earl Gower and Lord Pigot  who were added to a minute agreeing “…that the following noblemen, gentlemen, etc, be named as Commissioners…”[cxiv].  They would of course give the new project prestige and status outside of any financial contributions they might make.

Two questions emerge, now that a substantial sum of money is available and a group of Subscribers formally identified to carry the work forward.  If Wilkinson, with Pritchard, conceived the revolutionary idea of an iron bridge in the first place why did he not at this stage undertake the iron work of the bridge himself?  And was Abraham Darby, a comparative youngster, capable and confident enough to cast the huge spans that Pritchard’s design demanded even with all the experience of the Coalbrookdale Company behind him?

Wilkinson’s position is not difficult to explain.  Concurrent with the bridge planning is the introduction of Watt’s New Steam Engine and the rapidly expanding demand for iron cylinders and castings from Wilkinson’s works, in addition to steady government orders for his guns.  He is at full stretch to supply existing demand for iron products on top of which his brother is about to leave Bersham for France increasing his supervisory and management responsibilities.  He is shrewd enough to see that compromise is required, that his influence must be behind an iron bridge but that someone else would build it. 

The Darbys were the obvious choice.  Their works were close to the proposed site for the bridge and they had generations of experience as ironmasters; and there was a tenuous link with them going back more than twenty years to Isaac’s arrival in the district and his lease of a Darby furnace.  There might even have been an element of patronage in Wilkinson’s approach to young Abraham the Third though exactly how young Darby came to be proposed and chosen as the bridge builder is not recorded.

From the beginning there is evidence of an anxiety in the Darby camp that the money would not be enough and that they were engaging in frontier technology the cost of which could not be precisely forecast.  Abraham’s fears are not articulated in so many words in the minutes but the subscribers are at great trouble to reassure him.  Yes, they concede that if there is opposition to the Act there will be more expense, and they will defray that cost.  Yes, certainly any further subscriptions received should be paid to the Darbys.[cxv] 

How far the reassurances were successful has to be in doubt as a consequence of an entry in the Minute Book three months later which is surprising and irregular.   A meeting is recorded as taking place on 22 January 1776 at Abraham Cannadine’s, which was Wilkinson’s choice for a Broseley meeting place.

“It was agreed that a new subscription paper be prepared with a new preamble setting forth that the several subscribers advance a proportion of their money subscribed towards obtaining an Act of Parliament for building a bridge from Benthall to Madeley Wood at the place first agreed.  It was likewise agreed that no opposition or intention of an opposition was or is intended to be made to the erecting a bridge over the Severn at the Sheepwash by any of the proprietors of the intended bridge from Benthall to Madeley Wood.” [cxvi]

No list of persons present is given.  The minute is not signed.  There are no other minutes.  Moreover the handwriting of the first long sentence looks suspiciously like John Wilkinson’s flowing well formed hand.  The handwriting of the remainder is clearly by someone else.

What is happening here?  A new subscription paper called for, allocating only a proportion of the money already subscribed to the original bridge;  and another bridge proposed lower down the river, to which no opposition or intention of an opposition was or is intended, by the Subscribers presumably?  It can only be designed to put pressure on someone, but whom?   And who exactly is applying the pressure?  Are the Subscribers now split?

The next two meetings make things a little clearer and provide further evidence that Abraham Darby continues to be worried about costs.  On 25 April 1776 they discuss ways of limiting the competition to the bridge in the form of boats and ferries; and in the important meeting of 15 May 1776 a further charge on the Proprietors is agreed to repair approach roads though this had been specifically included in Abraham Darby’s overall responsibility when he was given the money more than six months previously.  But that is not all.  Two further minutes come as a shock.

“It was agreed to rescind minutes entered into with Mr Darby for erecting an Iron bridge over the Severn between Benthall and Madeley the 17^th October 1775.” and “Agreed that an advertisement be inserted in the next Birmingham and Shrewsbury newspapers to be continued three times, that any person willing to undertake the building of the intended bridge from Benthall to Madeley Wood, one arch 120 feet span, the superstructure 18 feet in the clear and the centre 35 feet above low water, the proposals to be sent to Thomas Addenbrooke before the 20th June next.” [cxvii]

Abraham Darby clearly wishes to be free of his commitment to build an iron bridge and the committee agree to release him.   At the same time they choose to go ahead with a bridge as planned  and to the original specifications but since iron is not mentioned they seem prepared to consider a conventional design.  There is a further development at the next meeting on 28 July 1776.   Presumably no satisfactory tenders have been received by the deadline of 20 June and there have been further discussions resulting in a modified plan for the bridge again produced by Pritchard [cxviii].  This plan has not survived.  How far it differed from his original is not known, but the committee now agree “…that advertisements be inserted in the Birmingham and Shrewsbury newspapers for persons to undertake the stone and brickwork…” [cxix].

There is now a ten week gap in the record.   It would be invaluable to know how the decisions and dealings of the committee up to this point affected the relationship between John Wilkinson and Abraham Darby III.  They were so far the only ironmasters involved with the resources to erect an iron bridge.   It is also important to remember that Abraham Darby III was only twenty-five years old, not yet fully come into his powers, not yet confident perhaps to treat with a man like John Wilkinson, forty-eight years old, a shrewd businessman and a very experienced ironmaster.  It may be that the later appearance of Richard Reynolds on the committee of subscribers was a studied move on the Darby side to support young Abraham.  Reynolds had earlier been totally responsible for the Coalbrookdale Company and was a highly respected figure in the area.  He was also an ironmaster with business knowledge and experience to match Wilkinson.

It is not difficult to imagine the frustrations surrounding Wilkinson at this time, urgent in his enthusiasm to see the iron bridge built, unable to commit more of his energies and resources to it, determined to see the project through and casting around for a way to get it started.  From what happens next it seems clear that he found a formula to persuade, perhaps even to compel, Abraham Darby and the Coalbrookdale Company to undertake the work and to get on with it quickly.  The next meeting after the ten week delay has this minute;

“Mr Jennings and Mr Wilkinson agree to let Mr Darby have their shares in consideration of his giving them security that an iron bridge shall be erected from Madeley Wood to Benthall in two years from Christmas next and Mr Darby agrees to take the said shares on that condition.” [cxx]

Leonard Jennings, a local miller and a wealthy business man, is the third name in the original list of subscribers coming immediately after John Wilkinson and Edward Blakeway.  Blakeway was absent from this meeting and so retained his shares.  Who knows what behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings prepared the ground for this agreement?   It costs Wilkinson and Jennings their shares in the scheme and gives Abraham Darby control of the whole enterprise with thirty-seven of the sixty shares; but it also requires him to undertake the building of the bridge, to build in iron, and to complete it in the next two years.

The details are compellingly tied down at the next meeting less than three weeks later in a manner typical of Wilkinson’s business dealings elsewhere.  First provision is made for those lesser subscribers on the committee who are anxious about escalating costs by obtaining from Abraham Darby an indemnity for them against any further charges on their shares.  The subscribers concerned are identified in the Minute Book and are given further reassurance by a security from Darby to pay 5% per annum on their shares from the tolls once the bridge is built.  Their full voting rights as subscribers remain unaffected.

The need to raise any further money is then limited to a call on the remaining shareholders.  Abraham Darby and friends hold thirty-seven shares, Wilkinson’s remaining friends hold only five, which means that if further money is required to complete the bridge Abraham and friends will have to find most of it themselves.   The whole arrangement is vintage Wilkinson, but there is more.  The most important detail in these minutes concerns the building of the bridge itself.  It is couched in precise legal language and ties down Abraham Darby very closely:  “…the said Mr Abraham Darby doth agree to erect an iron bridge in one arch 120 feet span and the superstructure not less than 18 feet wide from Benthall to Madeley Wood to be completely finished with roads and avenues leading to and from the same as described in the Act of Parliament on or before the 25^th day of December one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight…” [cxxi] 

The meeting closed with agreement that proper assignments of the share allocations as specified in the minutes should be made the next time they met.  Having surrendered his shares John Wilkinson cannot now vote at this meeting but there at the end of the minutes alongside the signature of Thomas Addenbrooke, Secretary, is his own bold signature as Witness.

Nothing now happens until 31 March 1777 almost six months later, though two earlier meetings have been postponed which might be evidence of new manoeuvrings.   In the interim someone who is not identified has questioned the legal validity of agreements and share allocations drawn up at the meeting of 18 October 1776.  It is unlikely to have come from the Darby camp, in view of remarks in a letter written in November 1776 from one of the Darbys to a relative in Sunderland and which suggests Abraham Darby had taken his commitments in that October meeting seriously and was already making plans. “…The Bridge, that is to be made over the Severn at the bottom of the Dale is now fix’d upon to be an Iron one, wch. certainly when completed will be one of the great curiosities yt this Nation or any other can boast of…I suppose it will all be cast in the Dale for Cousin Abram. will have the whole direction…”[cxxii] There is an evident pride in these words; no sign here of a young man seeking an escape from an onerous undertaking, indeed the reverse.

If  then Wilkinson initiated the questions did he seek a new share allocation in which he could again participate, and did he and Jennings surrender their shares to Darby knowing that this would be possible?  The questions might have come from the nervous group of lesser subscribers who sought to have the promised 5% per annum on their shares absolutely guaranteed by legal opinion.  If so they were to be disappointed.

Thomas Addenbrooke was authorised by the committee[cxxiii] to attend on Mr Thomas Mitton of Cleobury so that the agreements and allocations of the earlier meeting could be drawn up in proper legal form to be signed and made binding.  There were unspecified difficulties which he brought back for discussion by the committee and which led to the following minute: “Mr Mitton’s opinion on the cases referred to him at the last meeting were produced but not being quite satisfactory to some of the Proprietors present, Mr S Roden, Mr Blakeway, Mr Morris and the Secretary are desired to draw up a case in such manner as appears most eligible to themselves and bring his opinion to our next meeting.” [cxxiv]

Mr Mitton then made things very clear.  No security to pay interest on shares could be given under the Act.  The only way interest could be paid to shareholders was in the form of a dividend of the tolls from the completed bridge and approach roads.  The whole minute of the 18 October 1776 in which the new agreements and allocations had been made should be rescinded.

This took the basis of the shareholding back to the sixty shares originally subscribed and paid for with a proviso that four more shares should be raised.  Legal assignments for this disposition of shares were to be drawn up immediately which of course brought John Wilkinson and Leonard Jennings back into the frame as potential shareholders.  Had John Wilkinson foreseen this?  It is likely he would have gone to great trouble to find out what was possible, and what was not, under the Act.  It is probable that he would know, and that young Darby in all likelihood would not know, that what appeared to be a total surrendering of Wilkinson shares and power in exchange for the undertaking to build the bridge in iron, was in fact a cunning short-term device which would serve his purpose at the time to start things moving, but which could not be supported in the long term by law.

If it were so there will have been one big question troubling him now.  Did this new reversal mean that the agreement for Abraham Darby to build in iron to a time limit, established at that same meeting on 18 October 1776, was as invalid as the attempt to guarantee an annual percentage payment on the subscriptions?  Wilkinson will have argued that the legal wording, the whole minute, referred to the shareholdings and proposed interest payments alone which is what Mr Mitton had been asked to pronounce on, and not to the bridge-building contract with Abraham Darby.  However, it is also probable that Abraham Darby would not wish to be seen to procrastinate further once his financial  security  could  be reasonably  established, and the rest of this important meeting [cxxv] is given over to the terms under which he is to proceed.

He must build in iron, though now to a slightly altered specification.  The span of the arch is reduced to 90 feet from 120, and the width of the superstructure increased to 24 feet from 18 feet.  There is to be a proper towing path under the bridge, and Darby is responsible for all roads leading to the bridge at either side and for all Toll Gates and Turnpike Houses required.  He is still tied to the same time schedule even though nine months of the twenty six have elapsed since he first agreed it, and a penalty is now attached under which he must pay 5% on all monies paid to him from the time he received them if he fails to complete the bridge by Christmas Day of the year following.

Provided these terms are fulfilled he can retain the money arising from the shares including the four additional shares.  A further five per cent is to be raised immediately from forty-six of the shares and two-and-a-half per cent from the remaining eighteen shares, the nervous subscribers.  But then comes a generous additional clause.  Another 10% on all shareholdings is to be paid to Abraham Darby as soon as the bridge abutments are finished with an additional 10% every three months thereafter until the bridge is complete; and all monies received from the Toll Gate and the Ferry before the bridge is ready for use are to go to him.

All the members present at this meeting have signed the Minute Book in their own hand.  It is the first time this has been done and obviously marks a significant occasion.  The committee have gone a long way towards removing Abraham Darby’s financial concerns by allowing him to retain all the money so far received and by providing a further small income flow if that should prove necessary.  At the same time they re-establish the pressure on him to complete the bridge and associated works in the strict manner proposed and to a strict time limit, with penalties if the time limit is not met.  Why such a rigid contract is considered necessary is not made clear.

The purpose of the next meeting [cxxvi] was to formalise the agreed business of the last.  Sixty-four share assignments were signed and sealed, though Thomas Addenbrooke lists only sixty-one of them in the minutes[cxxvii].  Of these John Wilkinson has twelve and Leonard Jennings ten with Edward Blakeway and Pritchard taking two each.  Abraham Darby himself has fifteen shares and one of the four new shares goes to his brother Samuel.  The only other substantial shareholder is the Reverend Mr Edward Harries who owns the land on the Benthall side of the river, the remaining shares in ones and twos belonging to the nervous subscribers.  

Thomas Farnolds Pritchard died about this time and never saw the completion of his design, and his shareholding went to his brother.  Wilkinson and his friends are again the dominant shareholders and remain in a powerful position to influence decisions about the bridge, but shortly after this John Wilkinson’s name disappears from the Minute Book and he does not attend the meetings of Trustees for the next four and a half years.  His brother-in-law, Edward Blakeway, continues to be involved and as he lived in Broseley Hall just across the road from The Lawns he would obviously keep Wilkinson closely informed of developments throughout those years, which were going to be some of the busiest years of Wilkinson’s life.

During this period the Iron Bridge is completed by Abraham Darby and to enormous acclaim.  It was not completed by the deadline of Christmas Day 1778, though no penalties seem to have been exacted from him on this account which perhaps reflects the satisfaction, even admiration, of the subscribers, including Wilkinson, for the manner in which he tackled and completed the work.  There is, however, an arrangement in the minutes[cxxviii] for providing the nervous shareholders with extra money for road building and repairs, in part from Abraham Darby and in part from the road tolls, and perhaps this was an alternative to penalties acceptable to all.

The recent discovery in a museum in Stockholm of a painting by Elias Martin, an eighteenth century Swedish Professor of Art, has thrown new light on theories as to precisely how Abraham Darby raised into position the huge castings which support the bridge, about which process no written or diagrammatic record has survived.  This painting shows the bridge under construction with three of the great spans in position, secured there by simple scaffolding and apparently raised into that position by no more than wooden ships’ derricks.  With a system of pulleys, which along with simple derricks would be the essential tackle of any eighteenth century naval or merchant shipyard, the only ingredient lacking would be manpower, men, lots of them, hauling on ropes, controlled by other men, with established stop/start signals, slowly and carefully hauling into position high above the river those huge spans of iron, to be finally fixed there by the few who took their lives in their hands as they moved nimbly over the spare wooden scaffolding to secure them.  A false move and the castings, of a size never seen before in Coalbrookdale or anywhere else in England, could have slipped and crashed down destroying scaffolding, derricks and the gangs of men below.  Small wonder that there was evident pride in the achievement, which would be shared by workmen and subscribers alike.  Few in the area would be untouched by it.  No subscriber would wish to exact a contractual penalty from Darby for not completing the project on time.

Further evidence to support this method of constructing the Iron Bridge has now been supplied by the erection of a half-size replica of the bridge at Blists Hill in the Severn Gorge, using no more than simple eighteenth century technology and manpower supplied by the army under the direction of an engineer commissioned by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust Ltd.  During the successful completion of this project, which was filmed by the BBC2 Timewatch Programme, the research team were impressed by the understanding of applied physics and geometry required by Darby in the various stages of construction, and were able to understand why it was necessary to have available the large quantities of rope and timber listed in his Account Books and Inventories.

From the time of the legal assignation of the shares in the autumn of 1777, Thomas Addenbrooke’s record of meetings of shareholders in the Minute Book refers without exception to the intended bridge, until the 22 July 1779, when it becomes the iron bridge, which indicates that their bridge is now a fact and is in position, though the bridge roadway and the linking roads are not yet complete.  Twice during the next fifteen months there are calls on the shareholders for small additional sums of money as per their agreement with Abraham Darby if there were delays in completing the bridge.  It is finally opened to traffic on New Year’s Day 1781 at a stated cost to that date of £2,737.4.4d.  Since the Toll House and other gates and roads had yet to be completed the figure is probably for the bridge and abutments only.

The pride and independent spirit of men like the Quaker Darbys, indeed of all the shareholders, is evident in the wording at the bottom of the TABLE of TOLLS mounted on the bridge soon afterwards:  “N.B.  This Bridge being private property, every Officer or Soldier, whether on duty or not, is liable to pay toll for passing over, as well as any baggage wagon, Mail-coach or the Royal Family.”  It will have been particularly satisfying to John Wilkinson to see those words posted for he firmly believed that manufactures and commerce “…will always flourish most where Church and King interfere least…” [cxxix].

The business conducted by the Trustees at their subsequent meetings gives vivid glimpses into the daily life of late eighteenth century England, most of them concerning issues still with us today.  Bills are posted offering rewards for information about persons evading the tolls; or, “… for the discovery of the person or persons who broke the two ballustrades of the cast iron bridge in the night;” and, “…the Constables who summoned the persons for evading the tolls…” are “…to be allowed two shillings and sixpence each day they attend the Justices…”  George Armstrong’s hogsty must “…be removed to a proper place...”   The proprietors of the fast coach between Shrewsbury and London, The Diligence, negotiate a special rate with the Trustees to be paid quarterly in arrears and then have to be pursued for payment.  Messrs Banks and Onions continue to allow the spillage of “…cinders, ashes and other obstructions…” to pile up beside their furnace on the approach roadway on the slopes on the Benthall side and have to be cautioned by the Trustees.  There are difficulties about taking down a popular Brew House which the Trustees eventually agree to pay to re-erect “…in a place that will not incommode the road leading to the bridge…”; but then they have to ask the owner to “…remove his pig and pig troughs out of the road…”.  Mr Bishop, the Distributor of Stamps, goes direct to the Commissioners to inform on the gatekeepers at the bridge who have been taking tickets from post chaise drivers, and the Trustees want to know what he has said, and why he has gone over their heads.

Chapter 7 – THE NORTHERN SANCTUARY

Since Isaac Wilkinson retained the property at Wilson House near Grange-over-Sands when he moved to Bersham in 1753 it is likely he intended to maintain contact with the people and the places of his northern beginnings, possibly for business reasons.   Good quality iron ore was available in Furness with the coastal route south to the Dee ports providing convenient access to his new ironworks at Bersham; but Isaac’s focus soon changed to South Wales and there is no record of his ever returning to the north.

Not so with John.  In the twenty years following his arrival in Bersham in 1756 it is clear he retained a bond with the place of his youth and there are a number of documented returns with property purchases[cxxx] around Wilson House which were perhaps intended initially to do little more than extend the holding there.  But in the summer of 1778, with the building of the Iron Bridge by then assured, other plans were forming.  He returned to Wilson House for a stay of five months and set up an experimental iron-smelting base there using one of the early Watt steam engines.  His letters to James Watt at that time are revealing:

“…Getting sufficient steam with peat was what I wanted most.  That suspicion is totally removed, for I observe we can work with any rubbish whatever.  The making of iron with this sort of fuel will be the next concern, and of which I hope to be able to give you some account in a fortnight or three weeks…

If our regulating beam had been longer I fancy we should have done better with our mechanism as to opening and shutting the regulators.  We are too near the stroke with our plug.  We had a good deal of trouble with the perpendicular hanging valve at the hot water pump and was obliged to alter it before we could get it to draw sufficient hot water…

Mrs Wilkinson and my daughter are with me.   They desire their best respects to you and Mrs Watt…” [cxxxi]

Wilkinson is using this opportunity arising out of the setting up of another new Watt steam engine to observe and comment on the progress and difficulties he experiences, and with James Watt at the time on a protracted stay in Cornwall doing precisely the same thing with their Cornish engines the exchanges between the two men at this time carry additional point.  It seems likely, too, that with Watt absent for a long period in Cornwall Wilkinson had decided it was a good time to be away from Birmingham to further his own plans in the north, yet the two men maintain a steady, if slow, exchange of information by letter.  Wilkinson to Watt again:

“…We began to blow again here on the 25th past with half charpeat, half charcoal and make good strong metal though it comes very dear [Wilkinson’s underlining].  This day all peat coal is put on.   Next trial will be half peat coal half raw peat, then charcoal and raw peat ringing all the changes I can think of [to] procure a metal strong as bar iron if possible.  The cost I shall not mind if I do but succeed in my pursuit of the strongest cast metal, which I flatter myself I shall find out tho’ as I observed before it will  be very dear.

Your company for a week here at this time would be very pleasing.  The different fluxes – and cinders – together with the different metal would I think be a high treat to you – exclusive of the engine which goes very pleasantly with any kind of rubbish peat or even peat mull.  Thomas has been proposing today to try whins and savin, from which you may infer that we can manage any sort of light fuel – and that this engine may pave the way more readily for erections where coal is not to be had…I am satisfied one of these engines may be worked with Heath if no other fuel offered.  A new boiler might also be constructed to answer light fuel still better – tho’ this exceeds my expectations…

If Mr Boulton is with you I desire my best compliments, and here give me leave to congratulate you both on the prospect of your harvest in Cornwall.  That is the country which will produce the best crop and is most worth your attention.  Mrs Wilkinson and my daughter desire to be remembered to you all…” [cxxxii]

The timing of these experiments to produce the strongest cast metal is concurrent with Abraham Darby’s trials to make the castings for the iron bridge of a size and weight that had never been attempted before and it would be fascinating to know whether or not there was any liaison between the two men at this time, or conversely whether Wilkinson’s removal of his experimental base to this northern outpost was planned to make it easier for him to keep any new discoveries to himself.  That seems unlikely in view of his letters to Watt, though there is no documented information on a co-operation with Darby either, and absolutely no reference to him or the bridge in these letters.  They do however provide useful information on Wilkinson.

His wife and daughter accompany him on this extended stay in the north, his wife fifty-five years old, daughter Mary twenty-three.  Both are clearly familiars in the Watt and Boulton households and attach their greetings to his in the letters.  For the time being Headquarters has been moved temporarily from the comforts of Broseley to Wilson House, but this is also an indication of how important the two women have become to him.  Was he also measuring their responses to this place to which he was so drawn himself?  Were they part of another plan?

He is of course making himself tremendously busy with his experimental work at this time, a strategy which he had adopted at other stressful moments in his life and which he will use again.  And he is missing James Watt, in whom he recognises a kindred spirit, an innovator and thinker who could complement his own experimental approach and enjoy the newness and excitement of what he was doing regardless of their different values and ideas as human beings on other issues.

The placing of this distance between himself and the Midlands iron-making world at this time for so long is itself significant.  The great successes were falling to others – Boulton and Watt, Abraham Darby, even to young brother William in France.  The years of growth and consolidation had made Wilkinson a wealthy and acclaimed Ironmaster in his own right, yet were his achievements of a lesser order destined only to feed the greater successes of others?  Was he disillusioned?  Did he need time to reflect, as well as to experiment?   And was it out of this that his next great project emerged?

On 19 August 1778, as this important period of engine and furnace experimentation was beginning, Wilkinson signed an agreement with six yeoman of Lindale which gave him control of a large tract of salt marsh between Wilson House and the sea and lying close under Castle Head hill.  It was inter-tidal land known locally as the Lindale Pool on which the six yeoman had grazing rights at low tide, but which was inundated at high spring tides along with some of their low-lying permanent grazing close to the marsh.  Wilkinson clearly wished to control the land between Wilson House and Castle Head and around Castle Head hill itself and he had appraised the situation very shrewdly.  The agreement is masterly.  Everyone gains advantage.  No money changes hands. 

“19^th August 1778.  By a Paper Writing or Memorandum dated this day After reciting that they whose names were thereunto subscribed, being owners of the Lands and Meadows adjoining to Lindal pool had from time to time suffered great damage by the Tides running up the pool and overflowing their lands and meadows AND that Mr. John Wilkinson Iron Master had proposed to make a Bank from Castlehead across the pool to Low Meathop Land at his own expense to stop the Tides flowing up the said pool any longer UPON CONDITION that they gave up their right to him in the pool from Castlehead to Wilson House –

They taking the circumstances into consideration Did thereby for themselves and their Heirs give and grant to the said John Wilkinson All their right in the said pool or in the Sand-Land or Ground thereof so that the said John Wilkinson and his Heirs might enjoy the same for ever thereafter from side to side within the then Banks of the said pool without molestation from them or any of them – PROVIDED that the said John Wilkinson should the then next Spring make the said Bank across the said pool to stop the Tide from flowing up and should repair and support it for the future at his own expence

Signed by Thos.Settle, William Turner, George Carter, Thos. Ryding, Edward Herbert & Thos.Hodgson.”[cxxxiii]

All those qualities of character associated with Wilkinson’s business life in the Midlands are here again demonstrated; shrewd appraisal of the situation and a nice balance of advantage to either side, imaginative foresight, and again enormous boldness and confidence.  There are ten metre tides at equinoctal Springs in Morecambe Bay and the Lindale Pool was open to prevailing south-westerly gales.  A combination of the two produces a powerful and destructive sea and Wilkinson was going to hold this back in the mouth of the Winster valley on a one mile front to the east of Castle Head hill and across half a mile to the west.  Moreover for the agreement to stand he had committed himself to completing the bank during the six months of the winter between the big autumn and spring tides, a bank, too, which would have to include some kind of bridge with tidal doors to open and let through the flow of the river Winster at low water but which would be pushed and closed by the rising tide.

He would not have undertaken this enormous task lightly.  There is no direct evidence that he studied the building of sea banks either around Morecambe Bay or elsewhere in the country but he had a close knowledge of this coast, and the advantage of observing over many years the changing patterns of sand and silt in tidal scour and build-up in this corner of Morecambe Bay.  A huge work-force would have to be assembled of men with horses and carts to move the sheer volume of material required for the bank, but Wilkinson will have established by then that it would not have to be carted far.  The sand and silt banks of the marsh itself will have provided much of it, stiffened by pinnel, the local name for the glacial debris of gravel and cobbles bedded in sand or clay and lying in easily accessible banks all along this shore.  Nonetheless it was an epic undertaking to be completed in the six months of winter, in a place which by its very location is exposed at this time of year to raw wet bitter winds that drive man and beast to seek shelter, and Wilkinson would have needed to see the work well under way before he moved south again just before Christmas.

Only after this agreement with the six yeomen was signed and he was sure the bank would be built in time did he secure the land where he had now decided to build for himself and his family a house of some style and pretensions.  In a deed dated 2^nd December1778 he purchased from William Turner, one of the men in the Lindale pool transaction, Castle Head hill described as:  “…all that parcel of woody and waste ground lying at or near Lindale called and commonly known by the name of Castle Head…and amounting to six acres or therabouts…”  and the sale included,  “…the two closes of meadow ground amounting to two acres…situate at the west side of Castle Head called Castle Head Meadows…” [cxxxiv].

How far this purchase depended upon the completion of the Lindale Pool transaction is a matter of speculation, though Wilkinson did pay William Turner the then substantial sum of £350 for this land and took on the responsibility for a number of annual payments attached to the freehold like the small stipend to be paid yearly to the curate of Lindale.  Four of the six yeomen of Lindale sold land around Castle Head to Wilkinson in subsequent years, providing evidence that his side of the agreement had been kept and the bank had been completed on time.  It served its purpose and kept out the sea for almost eighty years and parts of it can still be seen in the valley to this day, though in 1856 it was superseded as a sea wall by the causeway and embankment for the new railway at the very mouth of the Winster valley.

Wilkinson decided to build his house at the sheltered north-eastern foot of Castle Head hill looking eastward along the line of his main sea bank towards Low Meathop and the rising sun.  A few miles to the north east stood the limestone massif of Whitbarrow with its white south-facing scarp, and beyond it on the skyline the ancient rounded tops of the Howgill Fells.  Northward beyond the head of the Winster valley stood the high fells of the Lake District, hidden northwestward by the nearer slopes of Cartmel Fell, and close about this isolated hill of Castle Head  the sides and floor of the valley were verdant and well wooded.  Southward the valley opened to the sea and to the wide arc of the sun for sixteen hours in summer, perhaps six at midwinter.  It was, and remains, an isolated corner of great scenic beauty, cut off from the main north-south routes of those days by a difficult journey westward across the mosses and some villainous roads, unless you came from Lancaster across the Sands and without a guide that journey was fraught with danger.  It was a magnificent position for a house and by constructing his sea bank from the rocky hill east and west to the valley sides Wilkinson created his own spectacular seaside location.  No plans of the original building have yet been found and it has been substantially altered by its Victorian owner, but the place retains the calm and beauty Wilkinson continued to find there until he died.

Two days before Christmas 1778, the deadline for Abraham Darby’s completion of the Iron Bridge and a date that would draw Wilkinson south again from his activities at Castle Head, he is writing an apologetic letter to his friend and business partner, James Stockdale of Cark-in-Cartmel [cxxxv] , for not meeting him as planned before he left.  He writes from The Court, sometimes interestingly just Court, now his Bersham home since the lease of Plas Grono was relinquished in 1774.  Stockdale was very much his man on the spot for most of the Castle Head enterprises at this stage, acting as family friend, advisor, enabler, consultant, banker and agent by turn.  Wilkinson trusted him implicitly to make decisions and handle business in his long absences in the Midlands, and may even have felt under a substantial obligation to him as later events will show.

Both men had been frustrated by the difficulties of securing shipping transport for their goods in and out of the North West ports, particularly for large iron castings which were sometimes too big to be lowered through the deck hatchways and often damaged the planking in the attempt.  A letter from Wilkinson’s shipping agent in Chester, Hugh Jones, describes just such a nightmare loading:     “…I think in my last I mentioned to you that the Sloop was arriv’d that was to take in the Castings for Cornwall.  Last Saturday I began to ship in her and have continued to do so even to this day – and not yet loaded.  Yesterday I putt in the large Cylinder all safe and well, it was with the utmost difficulty got in after 5 hours attempts at it and cutting away all the deck on the larboard side, even the waterway planks, and breaking a knee.  This day we have attempted to gett in the 9 foot Cylinder and have been from 10 this morning untill now past four and not yet completed in the hold – besides taking up part of the Starboard side of the Deck.  There is no Room in her – the large Cylinder lays in the way of the 9 foot Cylinder – the Vessel is too small and the most unfit thing for the purpose ever yet appear’d here on such an Occasion – its now past 5 – its left half in and out of the hold – the Master says the smaller Cylinder must be remov’d with Screws before this can go down.” [cxxxvi]

Wilkinson in frustration had already purchased his own ship, The Mary, which was by then in use on these routes and on his way south he also secured for himself and Stockdale a quarter share in the fortunes of a privateer, The Hawke, about to sail down the French coast round Spain and into the Mediterranean.  By purchasing a substantial interest in a vessel which knew the French ports he may have been hoping to secure continuing transport for any business coming through his brother in France now that England and France were at war, whatever the legal niceties might have been; but there is also the possibility that he saw the arrangement simply as a speculative business venture which could show good profits in booty.  Certainly there is evidence of both British naval and private vessels preying on merchantmen returning well loaded to the ports of the European powers with whom Britain was at war as witness the following interesting letter:  “…A Selborne man was aboard the Porcupine sloop when she took the French India rich ship.   I saw a letter from him this morning, in which he says that his share will come to £300.   This will be some recompense to the poor fellow, who was kidnapped in an ale-house at Botley by a press-gang, as he was refreshing himself in a journey to this place.   The young man was bred a carter, and never had any connection with sea-affairs…” [cxxxvii]

The letter gives some idea of the profits Wilkinson might have made for his quarter share in The Hawke, but this venture was a disaster.   The Hawke was lost at sea and he carried no insurance, though James Stockdale did.  He must have been convinced there was money to be made this way in time of war, however, for he took up similar options in other vessels after that.  “…Such a train of mischief attends this war that a comparison of the evils is wanting to square them by.  Not a merchant ship or Coaster sails out of Liverpool but what the owners know must sink money considerably – unless on  the privateering scheme and fortunate.  No prospect but in plunder which is a most unpleasing reflection…”[cxxxviii]  Unless, of course, you had a share in the plunder yourself!  But throughout 1779 the recurring problem for him is a consequence in part of his success as an ironmaster, the sheer volume of iron products needing transport from his several works.  With water transport the only real option for longer distances it is not difficult to understand his pre-occupation with coastal shipping, and subsequently of course with canals.

The first large order from France had in fact arrived.   William had been feeding information and orders back to his brother from the beginning[cxxxix] and had now learned of a new scheme approved by Louis XVI to raise water from the River Seine to be pumped along some forty miles of iron pipes to supply Paris.  His meetings in Paris with the man granted an exclusive privilege by the French King to undertake this work, Jaques Constantin Perier, a well-known French engineer, not only procured the order for pipework for his brother in England but also brought Perier to Bersham in search of a new Watt steam engine to do the pumping.  The pipework was required immediately;  the engines – two were eventually ordered – could wait awhile.  In addition to orders for cylinders and castings for Boulton & Watt, and for guns for the government now a priority in time of war, all Wilkinson’s works, including the furnaces at his lesser works like Wilson House were now at full stretch making cast iron pipes, a large proportion of twelve inch bore and six foot length.

It was a frantically busy period during which a tangle of conflicting issues had to be managed.  As he timed his shipments of guns for the British government from Bersham out to Chester and the Dee ports, or from New Willey down the Severn to Chepstow, to coincide with the arrival of the naval escorts which provided the protection from French men-o-war round the Lizard and up the Channel to Portsmouth or London, so also was he negotiating with the French for passports to allow his vessels into the Seine with the iron pipes.  There were inevitably delays in securing transport [cxl], and the stacks of pipes piled and waiting on the quaysides at Chepstow and Chester led to the stories, no doubt embellished in the telling, of iron-mad Wilkinson ruthless for profit selling guns to both sides in the opposing war.

Commentators have been disparaging about John Wilkinson continuing to supply goods to an enemy in time of war and shamelessly exploiting the position of having his brother close to the corridors of power in France and therefore able to secure the necessary passports and access for his goods.   It may be that the criticism could be more reasonably levelled at William, who had taken the Wilkinsons’ Bersham gun-boring expertise to France and set up a modern cannon manufactory for the French Government there to great acclaim, admittedly before the war had started initially but then continuing under his management into the war years.  Boulton and Watt were not slow to exploit these Wilkinson French connections when they needed passports and licences for the new Watt engines which were finding a market there.  In April 1778 two months after the French had signed a supportive Treaty with America in the Wars of Independence and just two months before France formerly declared war against Britain, Matthew Boulton showed again the immaculate timing and judgement that had made him such a successful businessman and secured with William Wilkinson’s help and through the good offices of his contact in France, Comte d’Heronville, a Decree from the Government from which the following clause is taken:  “…The King and his Council have permitted and do so permit Messrs Boulton and Watt to manufacture, sell and distribute within the whole extent of the Kingdom, with full agreement for a period of 15 years, exclusive of all others, the new Fire Engines of their invention assuming that the test will have been made notwithstanding, either in Paris, or in the Marshes of Dunkirk, in the presence of whichever Commissioners the Council will nominate and after which the said Engine will have been recognised as superior in efficiency and economy to the old Fire Engines…[cxli]

The Decree opened for them an important market in France subject to the success of their first engines.

Early in 1779 Wilkinson is writing in frustration to Stockdale in the north at his inability to get back there to further his Castle Head project:   “I am not likely to get over into the North this summer so soon as I intended.  At present have no idea when I can spare so much time – not before August.  With dues to you and yours remain etc…” [cxlii]

That is the whole letter.   Its brevity and its clipped language provide a further measure of the time pressures surrounding Wilkinson, particularly in the context of James Stockdale’s role as his agent at that time in the purchase of some of the Cartmel commons around Castle Head, concerning which he was in strong disagreement on valuations.   He refers to a letter forwarded from Stockdale’s son, acting for the Cartmel Vestry (and Wilkinson) in dealings with the Commissioners:  “…The valuation therein transmitted appears a very extraordinary one but as I submitted that entirely to Messrs Richardson, Crossfield and yourself with the Vestry I shall abide by such opinion as they form of the valuation in question.   Not doubting that the Vestry will have more candour in their determination appears to have influenced Mr Hutton and Joseph Bispham in the business.   Indeed, unless they think very differently to the valuers they have appointed I shall decline enclosing the most valuable part of it next W. House rated at £16.9.2d, and as such part is certainly the best land and most convenient to me it may be considered as the best protest I can offer against the valuation made of that which is fenced off, viz. 

          Land enclosed – 2 acres, 3 roods, 25 perches @ 30/-     £87.3.9d

          Land enclosed – 3 acres, 1 rood, 22 perches @ 4/-        £13.11.0d

                                                                   Total       £100.14.9d

 served in this part with respect to valuers of land for rent or purchase in similar cases which is this:-  The Surveyor engages to take himself or to procure a chap at his valuation for the premises appointed to be adjudged.  Now if either Hutton or his partner in this value will engage to give a rent for the same on a lease of 21 years subject to the expense of enclosing it, I will cheerfully pay 30 years’ purchase as a consideration for such land or sand [Wilkinson’s underlining] and in this proposal it can not be suggested that I want it under its full value…However, if you with the Gentlemen already named and others that may compose a Vestry do in the meantime decide on this business, I shall certainly abide by such determination concerning that part already taken up…” [cxliii] 

This letter is written in a clerk’s best copperplate and provides a good example of the clerical support system Wilkinson began to use as his business pressures increased and which was to be condemned as a discourtesy by some of his later business associates.  It is likely his clerk drew up the letter from a rough Wilkinson draft, perhaps jotted down in his carriage on one of the necessary regular journeys between his various works.  It was a time when he would be alone to consider his problems and find solutions.  It is in fact the eighteenth century equivalent of the modern day use of a car dictaphone, or a laptop on a commuter train.  Yet in spite of the distance the use of a clerk places between the two correspondents the letter still conveys Wilkinson’s position very well; irritation at an outrageous valuation; complete confidence in Stockdale’s determination to do the best for him; and an absolute commitment to the purchases already made, or about to be made, by Stockdale on his behalf.

At a time when the intensity of Wilkinson’s business affairs in the Midland iron-making world demanded his presence there Stockdale’s role in the Castle Head project is obviously central.  The two men are in regular contact by letter but Stockdale needs him in the North more often at this important time to make decisions.  In July Wilkinson replies that he’ll try to get there if only for a day but doubts it will be before September.   In fact it was mid-November 1779 before he was able to return to Castle Head and almost a year had passed in the interim.  The sea bank had been completed on time and was withstanding all weathers and tides.  Land purchases and enclosures had been made in the immediate area of Castle Head and work had started on the house and the landscaping of the hill.  

The importance of this visit was to assess progress made during the year and to plan the programme for the following summer.  He was there for about three weeks which included a visit to the Coniston area as the guest of Mr Knott of Waterhead, almost certainly to order slate for the large amount of roof work he was about to undertake, though also to see at first hand the Coniston copper-mining complex and assess its business potential.  The visit is also significant in the context of Stockdale’s report [cxliv] that the original roof at Wilkinson’s Castle Head mansion house was made of copper, though Wilkinson by this time was also a friend and business associate of Thomas Williams, the Anglesey Copper King, and shipment of copper from North Wales up the Irish sea and through Morecambe Bay directly to Castle Head itself would not have been difficult.

Building a solid four-square three-story structure like the original mansion house at Castle Head was a considerable undertaking.  It probably required an architect and plans and it is surprising that so far such documentary evidence has not been found, the more so since James Stockdale was closely involved and many of his papers have been preserved.  The original building was rendered, making it difficult to identify the source of stone, though Wilkinson’s close knowledge of the area would have identified good sources of building stone in at least two of the Carboniferous limestone horizons outcropping within a mile or two of Castle Head.  The visible coping stones and sills are likely to have come from the only sandstone outcrop in this limestone landscape, at Quarry Flat a few miles west along the coast from Castle Head, an ancient quarry that provided in the 12th and 13th centuries most of the building stone for Cartmel Priory.  It was very close to James Stockdale’s residence at Cark-in-Cartmel and easily accessible from Castle Head by coastal barge.  There is however one piece of evidence to indicate the sandstone in the building might have come from a different location.  In Samuel More’s Journal entry for 8 September 1783, he meets again two men from Hutton Roof  who had been employed as masons about the building.  Hutton Roof, some ten miles east of Castle Head, had at that time an important sandstone quarry producing freestone for the building trade.

Very satisfactory foundations for the large structure were found on the north east side of the rocky hill at Castle Head where the older Silurian rocks are alongside the faulted limestones;  and although a large geological fault cuts through this ground not a hundred metres from the house modern tell-tale indicators in position for twenty years have shown no movement.  Wilkinson’s close association with Joseph Priestley and Samuel More and other scientists of the Birmingham-based Lunar Society, many of whom were regular guests at Castle Head subsequently, suggests he would know of the fault and take advice on the positioning of his house on the north-facing slope, where less sun exposure was compensated by better foundations and protection from prevailing south-westerly gales.

An important part of the Castle Head scheme was the landscaping of the rocky hill to form viewpoints and arbours inter-connected by walks, which involved cutting the rock in places and building up the slope in others.  Spiral pathways circled the hill, linked in places by rock-cut steps, all gradually ascending to a magnificent view from the top southward across Morecambe Bay to the Lancashire coast and hills.  The planning and execution of this work, often in the company of James Stockdale, ran concurrent with the building of the house and continued for some years afterwards.  It was a source of great pleasure and interest to Wilkinson and his regular expressions of exasperation when Midlands business delayed his planned returns confirms this.  There was undoubtedly, too, a deeply satisfying creative, and recreative, quality involved in working with nature in that spectacular location, and an awareness that the pressures of his business life needed this balance.  A letter to James Watt written from Castle Head in the summer of 1780[cxlv] says as much:   “…This is a very improper time of year for you to be stoved up in a room writing and drawing and by adhering to that way of life without occasional relaxation the machine for writing as well as drawing may be demolished, which will be of worse consequence than a fire burning only a part of your labours…”

Wilkinson spent a large part of the summer and early autumn of 1780 at Castle Head, writing regularly to James Watt in Birmingham, and to Matthew Boulton gone this year to Cornwall, about the sea transport details for shipments to France, and their proposed investments in the Cornish Mines; but his dominating preoccupation was the building of his house and pleasure gardens.  “…I am very busy in my new box here – hope to have it habitable and convenient for a friend next summer and whish it may prove convenient for you and Mrs Watt to pay us a visit in this part – it would give great pleasure to Mrs W (who desires her compliments)…” [cxlvi]

Standing tall and square above the west end of his house he built at an early stage a fine detached bell and clock tower, a campanile of continental elegance and style, influenced perhaps by his brother’s domicile in France or his own journeys in Europe.   The tower still stands today though it loses something of the detached strength and presence of the original by its incorporation into a Victorian extension of the house.  Local folk memory has it that the tolling of the bell called from their beds in the morning the large workforce assembled by Wilkinson for his building project and the bell controlled their daily round.  Instructions to James Watt for the clock to be “directed to Mr James Roberts Upholsterer in Lancaster” were given in a letter dated 10 March 1781, which indicates that it was made in Birmingham.  The broken mechanism of an ancient clock, possibly the original, can still be found in the tower today.

Something like a squatters’ camp of migrant labour will have grown up round the hill in the summer of 1780 continuing through into the following year.  It is difficult to visualise in these days of strict hygiene and building controls such a haphazard collection of shanties with pigs and poultry wandering about and crude enclosures for working draught and pack horses.  James Stockdale’s grandson, however, provides a glimpse into this activity:  “…Mr Wilkinson built a house on the north side of Castlehead Rock, and covered it with a novel kind of roof – one of copper;  which, however, did not answer the purpose intended, and was therefore changed for a roof of lead.  He covered this bare rock, in almost inaccessible places, with soil, carried up on the backs of horses in panniers, at great cost, and thus converted a barren waste  into  beautiful  gardens and  shrubberies…” [cxlvii]

Samuel More, who made regular visits to stay with his friend at Castle Head throughout the building period and almost annually thereafter, has the vividness of first hand observation in his descriptions added to the benefit of a clear understanding of Wilkinson’s purpose.  He describes   “…erecting a Wall of Circular Form enclosing a Garden on the Top of the Hill.   Several Fruit Trees have been planted on the outside of the Wall and are to be trained through holes left for that purpose by this means the fruit will have different Exposures on the same Trees…” ,[cxlviii]   and later  “…a considerable part of the Rock which faces the Sea to the Eastward has been covered with green Turf forming a fine Contrast to the stoney and rough places which hang over it and having mixed among the Verdure some large Stones projecting which have a very romantic and beautiful Effect…the grafts made on old and apparently decayed stocks thrive, and by way of Experiment it is proposed to engraft Liburnums and Lilacks on some of the Ash Trees and Currants on the Buck Thorn which grows wild in Abundance here.  In the upper Ground the Peaches and Nectarines thrive exceedingly…the Country People are continually coming to look at it and this day several People Came and when they were gone some fruit was missed…” [cxlix]

That both More and Wilkinson were sensitive to the restorative spiritual power in the beauty and the silence of this place cannot be doubted.  More describes [cl] “the beauty of the Evening, the flowing of the Tide, the brightness of the Moon” and the effect of a “curious echo” which had an unreal haunting quality.  On another evening he describes the moon just rising through fleecy clouds over the eastern hills with the western sky still red from the setting sun and the only sound the ripple of the tides, which induced in him a sense of total isolation and “reverential Awe” from which he   “…awoke as from a Dream and recollecting myself returned to the House highly satisfied with the Sensation I had felt in my Mind during this Solitary Excursion which were truly such as I had never before experienced and which only those Magnificent Objects that every Where Surrounded me…can inspire…”

It must be significant too, that whenever Wilkinson in subsequent years returned to Castle Head from his frantic business life of furnace fires and molten metal, smoke and fumes and the continual pounding clamour of his Fire Engines, he tried whenever possible to come over the Sands from Lancaster.  It may be that he touched an important spiritual quality in this crossing, an element of transition, a passing over from one life into something other, a journey into a calm and beautiful world not accomplished without difficulty and danger.  As the buildings and warehouses of Lancaster faded into distance along the wide skyline behind him the Lake District hills began to beckon ahead.   More describes one such journey:  “…we set out in 3 Chaises to cross the Sands to Castle Head, Miss W [ilkinson], Miss C [layton]  and the Servant Maid in the first, Mrs M [ore] and myself in the second, Mr W [ilkinson] and Mrs F[lint] in the third…Soon after we had crossed the Channel we parted from the Rest of the People who were crossing at the same Time and who were going to Flookburgh and other places in the Western Coast and turning to the Northward bent our Course toward Castle Head.  Soon after we had passed the Holme Island it was necessary for us to go through another Water called the Pool which is the Tail of the River Winster, this by the Rapidity of the Freshes was cut into a deep Gully and the first Chaise which was only a few Yards before us sunk in it so much that I concluded they were all lost and was preparing to get out in order to endeavour to assist them but the Driver and Horses exerting themselves I saw them again rise out of the Water on the Sands.  It was impossible in our Situation to retreat ordering therefore our Driver to Whip on we passed the Gully in the same Manner not without the imminent Hazard of our Lives, the last Chaise keeping nearer the Shore escaped somewhat better, yet not without danger…” [cli]

It is interesting that in their responses to Castle Head and its surroundings, in their sense of identification with the place, More and Wilkinson anticipated by more than twenty years a conviction conveyed in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge from their own experiences in this wild and beautiful landscape, that man is richer in spirit, more whole, better able to ponder the great unanswered questions, when he is open to the earth and its simple untouched beauty.  The difference of course is that the Romantic Poets embraced and lauded the world of Nature unchanged.  Wilkinson and More improved theirs and made it fit their own view of the world in creating their version of paradise.

Not all the plans for the pleasure gardens came to fruition.  The realities of that other world kept impinging.  In the spring of 1781 with the planting of the hill and gardens well advanced Wilkinson realised he needed a water-supply on the hilltop and wrote to Watt with details:  “…Busy as we are with engines I must have one at this place to raise water up to the top of the hill.  I compute the hill (for it is not measured) at 50 yards high from low water mark.  To make provision for a Jett at top to play water round the top of the hill let us call it 60 yards (rating ?) a Pump 4½  inches diameter – 4½ feet stroke.   The engine will be set on a part of the hill that is perpendicular about …yards high…[Measurement is omitted from original letter,  suggesting either Wilkinson had not calculated the height, or had not finally decided the place.] At Jack Head which will be upon the side of the hill provision to be made for discharging Salt Water occasionally – which will be wanted for a warm salt water bath – in which the hot water may be made serviceable.  The use of this engine (which will only be worked occasionally in summer) is to raise water to a large cistern at top of the hill and at times to exhibit a Fountain – this will be at low water mark – when the river is quite fresh and good water – also to raise Salt Water when the tide is in – this will be very light work – and at that time a Salt Water Jet may be playd off to have a grand effect…Under these general hints what Cylinder would you recommend – and what occurs to you on the whole of this Watering Pan Scheme.   This dry weather during planting on a dry hill like a Sugar Loaf which wants nothing but water at the Top to render it pleasing in many respects has put me on the plan of being independent – and nothing but a small Fire Engine can secure it…” [clii]

In spite of Wilkinson’s urgency there are delays, and the letters hint at a measure of irritation from Boulton and Watt over his long absence.   Six weeks later and still at Castle Head, in a letter struggling to address their continuing transport difficulties and which manages to avoid fixing a date and time for his return, he sends Watt a reminder and further details of his engine requirement:   “…Respecting my engine to be erected here give me leave to remark that at 15 yards high I must place the house upon a precipice, must lift the water into a Cistern at that altitude from which it must be forced to the top of the Hill which is about 35 more or 45 yards height in all, the inclined length for the pipes somewhere about 120 yards.   At your leisure [?] you [must] not forget this engine which I would house very compleat…”[cliii]

In spite of Wilkinson’s enthusiasm for this Watering Pan Scheme the engine was never installed and the scheme was abandoned.  The 1783 and 1784 Journals of Samuel More provide this information and a great deal more besides.  They confirm the enduring friendship between the two men and perhaps more significantly the respect and admiration of More for Wilkinson.  That is important for More was no fawning sycophant.  Mr More of the Adelphi was a name to conjure with in late 18th century England;  his travels throughout the country on behalf of the Royal Society (for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) brought him into professional and social contact with the important scientists and businessmen of the day.  It was his responsibility to examine and assess their inventions and innovations preparatory to recognition by, and possible grant aid from, the Society.  His assessment of Wilkinson in this context carries weight and provides a necessary balance in any judgement of the man’s character two hundred years later, the more so in view of the confrontations and quarrels which bedevilled Wilkinson’s later life.  On 30 September 1783 writing in his Journal and obviously sorry to be leaving  Castle Head after a month’s stay More is reflective:  “…My Friend Mr. W. who in all he undertakes endeavours at the utmost possible Perfection has since I was last at Castle Head continued his Improvements with his wonted Assiduity such as Planting Fruit Trees, Grafting the old Stocks, Cutting Walks, making Terraces and Walling the Garden at the Summit of the Hill all which seem to answer the Purposes intended very well and will render this Spot when completed truly delectable…” [cliv] The descriptions in the Castle Head sales particulars drawn up at intervals many years later after Wilkinson’s death, with due allowance for the hyperbole of auctioneers and agents, prove that More was right.

Of the several houses Wilkinson owned or leased at this time, the peak of his prosperity and success, it was Castle Head above all others that rejoiced his soul and gave him the peace and relaxation that his life in the industrial world of the Midlands could not provide.  Only a few special people from that other world penetrated this sanctuary.  Mary Lee, the much-loved wife of his later life, moved from The Lawns at Broseley to Castle Head as soon as it was habitable and was mistress there until she died.  She was a matchless hostess according to Samuel More who visited every year.   The Stockdales lived nearby at Cark and were frequent guests.  Wilkinson’s sister, Mary, and her husband Joseph Priestley often visited.  James Watt came with his second wife, Ann, and also the Flints from Shrewsbury, who had looked after daughter Mary from the time of her mother’s death until her father married Mary Lee seven years later.

Chapter 8 - DAUGHTER MARY

Mary was born at Rigmaden in the Lune Valley in Westmorland and baptised on the 12 April 1756 at Kirkby Lonsdale parish church [clv].  Her mother Ann was the first love of John Wilkinson’s life.  Later that summer the family moved from Westmorland to Wrexham where Ann died on the 17 November.   Mary was then seven months old so she never really knew her mother, and the grief and misery this tragedy caused her father meant she knew little of him either during the first seven years of her life when she was brought up by Mr and Mrs John Flint in Shrewsbury.  Mr Flint was the post master there and a man of some standing, though what his link with the Wilkinsons was before this time is not clear.  The Flints became Mary’s substitute parents and obviously loved her, a love she returned until she died, but there are no recorded details of her early life in Shrewsbury.

          When she was seven years old her father married Mary Lee, a spinster aged 40 from Wroxeter, and she then went to live with them in the fine house he had recently leased, The Lawns at Broseley.  It was to be her home for almost twenty years, in fact until Castle Head was built and habitable.  She grew up in Broseley where it is clear that Mary Lee also loved this daughter of her new husband who became the child she was by then unable to have herself.  In spite of the tragedy of her real mother’s death and the effect this had at first upon her father, daughter Mary appears to have been fortunate in the adults that influenced her early life and helped her grow to womanhood.

          Mary Lee’s sister, Elizabeth, had married another Broseley business man called Edward Blakeway and they lived literally just across the road from The Lawns at Broseley Hall, so that daughter Mary’s upbringing from the time she went to live in Broseley was one of position and privilege within the extended families of the Lees, the Blakeways and the Wilkinsons.  There are letter references to family visits and outings and to a particular friendship that developed between daughter Mary and a cousin Elizabeth on the Lee side.

          Details of Mary’s education are not known, nor the names of governess or tutor if she had either.  It is likely that Mrs Flint herself was responsible for her early social and domestic education, and that Mary Lee took on this responsibility later, continuing through Mary's teenage years.  But it is also clear from her father’s pleasure in her company as she grew to womanhood, when she accompanied him on business trips in this country and on the continent, that she had certainly been put through a formal education sufficient to understand the essentials of his affairs and that was unusual for a woman at that time.  It is likely that in the absence of a son, and with no prospect of one from Mary Lee because of her age, Wilkinson was schooling his daughter for a marriage within his iron-making world that would bring his business added strength and a son-in-law worthy to inherit it.

          If this is so there are early signs that he was to be disappointed in his expectations.  In 1775 when her father was seized with the excitement and time-consuming experiments involved in the launching of James Watt’s new steam engine, Mary, at the age of 19, became engaged to a young consumptive doctor called Richard Blackley [clvi].  The event provides some cause for speculation in the absence of any detailed references.  That Mary should agree to marry a young man so far removed from her father’s ideal of a son-in-law suggests that at this point in her life she was either unaware of his expectations, or else she chose to reject them.  Whereas the former is unlikely in what had become a close relationship between father and daughter, there is some circumstantial evidence to support the latter.  She would see little of her father at this time and be left to make her own amusements with her extensive range of friends and family contacts.  He would not therefore have monitored her activities as closely as at other times.  Did Mary, starved of the enjoyment of her father’s attention, find a gentle young man who adored her and listened to her and made her happy?  How much did her father, or indeed her step-mother, know of it?  Was it a relationship of long-standing that developed rapidly in this period of her father’s long absences?  Or was it a sudden and passionate love affair which matured quickly to a proposal of marriage and an acceptance?  

          Whatever the truth of this, the event did not lead at this stage, as might have been expected,  to an enduring confrontation between father and daughter.  The young doctor died before the marriage could be solemnised, which Wilkinson might have regarded as a blessed release.  His  correspondence for 1775, the year daughter Mary became nineteen, is sparse but contains no reference to a Dr Blackley which is surprising for an event of such significance in the family.  However, on the 14 July 1776 Samuel More, visiting Broseley as Wilkinson’s guest “found the family much distressed, A Young Gentleman (Dr Blakeway) being extremely ill and his death expected every Day…” [clvii];  and Wilkinson records the death in a business letter to Matthew Boulton dated 9 August 1776 apologising for the consequent delay to their meeting.  “We are in great distress here on the loss of Dr Blakeway who died yesterday…” [clviii]

          It is tempting to assume that this is the Dr Blackley engaged to Mary and that the difficulties of handwriting had produced an alternative transcription.   The young Dr Blakeway was of course Mary’s cousin on her stepmother’s side.  The Blakeways lived at Broseley Hall very close to the Wilkinsons.  If this were the man to whom Mary had become engaged the two would have known each other from childhood.  The consumption might have developed late, and rapidly; and it is unlikely there would have been any parental objection to such a marriage which could explain why there was no enduring confrontation between father and daughter about what in father’s view would nonetheless be an unprofitable match…but all this is speculative.

          During the next few years there is good evidence of increasing closeness between father and daughter, and particularly at the time of his land purchases in the Castle Head area in the late 1770s.  In the summer and autumn of 1778 they are all there together, father, daughter and step-mother,  involved in the excitement of Wilkinson’s plans for the building of his northern sanctuary.  They are there continuously for 4 months, staying at Wilson House, the Wilkinson family home when John was a young man and which had obviously remained in the family following the earlier move to the Midlands.  It subsequently became the home farm of Wilkinson’s Castle Head estate.  Daughter Mary loved the area which would be important to her father, and Samuel More’s Journal tells of her labours to create a garden and grotto of her own in the rocky outcrops close to Wilson House [clix]. 

          Throughout this long stay in the north Wilkinson yet remains in regular contact by letter with Boulton and Watt and his business affairs elsewhere in the Midlands, and the need of his presence there eventually becomes essential.  Leaving Castle Head affairs under the supervision of his trusted friend James Stockdale he travelled south just before the Christmas of 1778 with his wife and daughter.  Mary left them in Warrington to visit friends in Liverpool.  He and Mrs Wilkinson journey on to his house at The Court close to the Bersham works, before returning to Headquarters at Broseley early in the New Year where Mary eventually rejoins them.  In the interim her father has bought a ship in Liverpool, frustrated by difficulties and delays in the shipping of his large cylinders and castings up and down the west coast and through the Channel.  It must be significant that he called her “The Mary”, and perhaps an omen that she was to be involved in uncertain voyages to the French coast in the following year.

          During the spring and summer of 1779 daughter Mary’s time seemed to be divided between Broseley and Shrewsbury, where she obviously had another close circle of friends.  For the first time there are hints of an uncertainty and restlessness in her behaviour, noted by her father in his letters:   “…My daughter is now at Shrewsbury – has some thought of going to France if proper company offers – but there are so many difficulties that it’s much if she can get away this year…”  [clx] 

          Wilkinson is prevented by business pressures from returning to Castle Head for a long stay that summer anxious though he is about the work afoot there, but he manages to escape for a three week visit with Mrs Wilkinson in November and December.  Mary does not accompany them.  References to her in the letters indicate she is away from home visiting friends.

          They are back at Broseley by Christmas, and during the spring and summer of 1780  Wilkinson’s frustrations and pre-occupations become near desperate in attempts by himself, his brother William now resident in France, and Boulton and Watt, to obtain documentation from both French and English governments, at this time of hostilities between them, for shipping engines and engine parts to a French port.  Hurrying from one business centre to another and needing to maintain contact with Boulton and Watt, he  outlines his intended movements carefully. He tells us that  on  Monday, 22^nd April 1780, on a journey between Bersham, Snedshill and Broseley he will  “…return home by way of Drayton where my daughter is upon a Visit at Mr Feltons…” [clxi].  Henry Felton was an Attorney-at-Law in Market Drayton.   It is the first time that Drayton, or Market Drayton, has been mentioned as a focus of Mary’s friendships and in view of what is to come it is important.  It seems that her father simply picked her up from there to take her back home via his works at Snedshill and nothing further is mentioned of that visit.

          That summer The Wilkinsons return to Castle Head for an extended stay.  He is still frustrated in the business of passports for goods to France, and also in extending what they all believe will be very profitable engine business into the well-established mining areas of Cornwall.  It is not a good time for him to be distant from his business world which is a measure of the importance and enjoyment attached to his project at Castle Head, even without his daughter, who does not join them there on this visit until the end of October.  She had been almost three months without them, either at home in Broseley or with friends.  The family returned to Bersham, in time for an important meeting with James Watt at the end of November, but not for long.

          By early February 1781 they are back at Castle Head.  From the absence of any reference to his daughter in the compliments he includes to the Watts family at the end of subsequent letters it seems likely that daughter Mary did not accompany them.  This is the year Wilkinson had hoped to have his new residence finished and habitable and he had already invited the Watts to spend some time with them there in the summer.  It is clear he planned to be there from early spring and to stay there until the house was ready.  Soon after his arrival, however, there is an unavoidable diversion to Kirkby Lonsdale.  Writing to apologise to Boulton and Watt over delay in answering their business letters he explains:  “Gentlemen, The sudden Death of an old Lady, Grandmother to my Daughter, about 15 miles from hence…has involv’d Me in additional Business and occasion’d my being absent from hence 3 Days…” [clxii]

            The old lady in question was Margaret Mawdesley, the surviving widow of Thomas Mawdesley and by then the mistress of Rigmaden Hall.    In his next letter a few days later he explains further:  “…She has left us without a Will and being an undivided Manor and Estate in which my daughter has one half, the active part in adjusting her affairs falls to my part…” [clxiii]

            Wilkinson, in spite of the other pressures on him at this time, did what was necessary to secure this inheritance for his daughter.  On 4 April 1781, at a formal meeting held at Rigmaden of  “The Court Baron and General Court of Dimissions” the necessary General Fine due upon the death of Margaret Mawdesley to secure the succession of her inheritance to her grand-daughter, Mary Wilkinson, and to her only surviving daughter, Mrs Margaret Robinson, a Widow and Mary’s aunt, were levied on fourteen tenants of the estate and the money paid over by the Court Steward to John Wilkinson [clxiv].  There is no direct evidence that Mary was present on this occasion, nor indeed that she was at Castle Head at all throughout this year.

          Urgent business takes Wilkinson back to Bersham, Broseley and Birmingham during the late summer but he hurries back to Castle Head to supervise the finishing work at the end of September and remains there for another six weeks.  From the letter references, it seems that Mrs Wilkinson stayed behind at Castle Head in charge of affairs during this brief excursion south.

          The next mention of daughter Mary is in a letter to James Stockdale just after Christmas  [clxv].   It is written from London where he has arrived after an excursion into Cornwall:  “My daughter is very well and sends dues.   We think to leave town on Friday if weather permits.   I hope we shall in a few days be on the other side.   My Headquarters will be in Brussels…”

          The decision for father and daughter to travel together to the continent at this time of unrest in France will have been carefully considered.  Mary’s restlessness and her expressed wish to travel in France will have been part of it.  It would also be typical of her father, in his present difficulties with passports for engines and pipework, to want to assess the problems on the other side for himself.  The best accommodation for them both would be to travel together, with the added insurance of the company and the fluent French of brother William, who meets them in Ostend to accompany them as interpreter.   Wilkinson expects to be there until March, though he is not impressed with what he finds.   “Nobility Priests and Beggars constitute the greatest part of the people here…”;  though he also notes that:  “…Here appears to be a very large field open for Fire Engines at some future date…They are at present in a most miserable situation in these engines…not equal to the worst [Wilkinson’s underlining] in England 20 years ago…” 

            He also mentions in a further letter that his daughter  “…has met with a very decent young woman of this place for a servant yet as she only speaks French and Flemish Mary must set about learning French in good earnest…” [clxvi]  Uncle William, much nearer to her in age than her father, a bachelor aged 38 and resident in France, would almost certainly have been her tutor.   Mary was 26. 

          There is an absence of Mrs Wilkinson’s compliments at the end of letters written from Broseley in the spring and summer of 1782 which suggests she has remained at Castle Head to supervise the fitting out of the house.  Wilkinson is involved with the itineraries of visiting French and Swedish ironmasters at this time and pre-occupied with the business of bringing his new Bradley works into production, and the teething troubles in setting up a Hammer Forge there powered by a new Watt engine.  By early October, however, he is back at Castle Head, flying south again to attend to business before returning to Castle Head for Christmas.

          There is no mention of Mary in the letters until 5 March.   Writing from Broseley to James Stockdale at Cark there is a revealing postscript: “Last letter from my daughter and my brother since I came here is from Genoa, February 3^rd – all well.”   There had obviously been earlier letters, but what is not clear from the evidence is for how long had they been travelling on the continent together?  Did Mary remain behind with William when her father returned to England from Brussels in the spring of the previous year, to take advantage of her uncle’s protection for the excursion in France she had said two years previously she wanted to make?  And did her father approve this arrangement, as a feminine equivalent of the Grand Tour that would increase the poise and presence of his daughter and enable her to learn French?  Had the two been together for the whole year?  

          It is important to remember here that William, aged 39, was 16 years John’s junior and perhaps his step-brother rather than a full brother.   Since he went to France in 1776 he had built from virtually nothing a modern cannon forge at Indret for the French Government and was respected in France and very well paid.  As a young bachelor he would have acquired French poise and polish with his increasing fluency in the language, and he would be a very attractive travelling companion for the 27-year-old Mary.  It is tempting to speculate that their relationship might have developed through a long period of close contact into something deeper.  The bitter quarrel between the brothers, which developed some three years later when William returned from France, is evidence that could support this; but the evidence of the letters of the time is that John and William were still on friendly terms in that period following Mary’s return from France.

          Wilkinson, however, is clearly anxious about his daughter.   In July 1783 he extends a business visit to London, a place he did not like, “…not knowing how soon I may be summoned across the water to meet my daughter…” [clxvii]   There was an arrangement in place for William to bring Mary to Calais and for her father to meet them there to bring her home [clxviii].   He did not have long to wait and, much relieved, is back in London with his daughter some ten days later:    “…Mr More attended me to Calais and we had a very agreeable time there four days, a pleasant passage there and back and all safe back the eighth day from our leaving London…” [clxix]  This same letter also contains mention of business matters discussed with his brother and suggests that the re-union in Calais had been a happy occasion and the brothers had parted friends.

          On the 7 August Samuel More and his wife join Wilkinson and his daughter on the journey home from London on the Post Coach.  There is a celebratory reunion in Birmingham with the Priestley branch of the family, together with the Watts and other of Wilkinson’s old friends from the Lunar Society.  There is a party feeling about Mary’s return, which continues the next day on arrival at Broseley. Her Uncle Blakeway and his new young wife, and Mary’s close friend and cousin Elizabeth Clayton, wait to welcome her.  A couple of days later the Flints come over from Shrewsbury, there are dinners with the Reynolds and plans are laid for them all to join Richard Reynolds’ annual picnic onto The Wrekin the following week.

          Arriving in Broseley on the 15 August to join in these celebrations comes a young man, a friend of Richard Reynolds, who for the next two years becomes central to the Wilkinson story.  Samuel More describes his arrival:  “…This Day Mr Holbrooke a Clergy Man from Draiton came to Broseley and with him our Afternoon was spent agreably,  He is an intelligent Sensible Man and has withdrawn himself from the Church of England on Account of his not approving the Doctrine of the Trinity.” [clxx]

          Theophilus Holbrooke is much younger than the Quaker Ironmaster Reynolds, at whose invitation he had come to Broseley for the annual Wrekin picnic.  The friendship is clearly of special significance for Reynolds.  In a handwritten personal list of business deals, purchases and family births, marriages and deaths Reynolds had recorded, “1783 Acquaintance with Theo Houlbrooke commenced.”  [clxxi].

          The two men were both thinkers and intellectuals, both interested in religion albeit from different bases, and lived quite close to one another.  Was it the Quaker Reynolds who had led the young Holbrooke to question the Church of England doctrine of the Trinity, a process with which Wilkinson himself perhaps would have had some sympathy?  There is no evidence, however, that Wilkinson and Holbrouke had met before the day of the Wrekin picnic.

          There is an excited happy atmosphere about this occasion, which More captures in detail in his Journal as the various participants arrive at the top on foot or on horseback from all points of the compass, Wilkinson and his daughter in the Reynolds’ party which included Holbrooke.  “…We sat down to the cold Collation which was spreas on the green Turf and regaled ourselves heartily with it..” [clxxii]  A tour of the summit follows and Richard Reynolds and Samuel More then demonstrate an easy way to save the four mile walk back to the waiting carriages by sliding down the steep mossy slopes on their backsides.  It must have been fun.

          Holbrook made a special appearance at the Willey Furnace  on  the evening  of  20 August to take leave of Wilkinson and More before he set off back to Market Drayton early the following morning; and a couple of days later  Wilkinson and More left on horseback for Bersham en route for  Castle Head.  On 1 September they are joined at Wilkinson’s house, The Court, by the ladies who are to accompany them, Mary Wilkinson and her friend Elizabeth Clayton, and the two older ladies, Mrs More and Mrs Flint.  Over the next three days the party travelled on to Castle Head in two chaises and are given a great welcome there by Mrs Wilkinson on arrival.  

          It was during this visit, on their way to Cark for breakfast one morning, that Wilkinson discussed with More, and probably with James Stockdale too, the question of a relationship between Mary and Holbrooke.  The reference in the Journal is teasingly spare.   “…It was on our Way hither that Mr W. first mentioned to me any Thing relating to Miss & Mr H..” [clxxiii].  The tone of More’s brief remark suggests there is something in the wind, and it is the first clear evidence of a concern by Wilkinson over the behaviour of his daughter.

          The party stayed at Castle Head until the end of the month, and Mary and Miss Clayton were not with the others when they left.  The two young women had either left earlier, or else they remained behind with Mrs Wilkinson.  Either alternative suggests a rift in relations between Mary and her father.  His was a very direct, even aggressive, personality and it is likely there were serious tensions between them during this visit, perhaps even open conflict.  From what is known so far of Mrs Wilkinson she would try to mediate.  Mary would be grateful to have the support of her close friend, Elizabeth Clayton, Mrs Wilkinson’s niece, Wilkinson glad of the opportunity to discuss his problems with trusted friends of long standing.  He knew how tensions like this were likely to affect him:   “…Peace is a most desireable thing and the more so to one of my constitution who cannot be angry by halves.  Resentment with me becomes a matter of business and stimulates to action  beyond any profit whatever…” [clxxiv]

          Three business letters[clxxv] written during this period by Wilkinson to James Watt in Birmingham are revealing.  They are different from his former friendly letters to Watt and have a restless, irritated, even carping tone about quite small irregularities and changes in his works, with hints of injustice and a determination not to be subject to the persuasions of others.  The specific compliments of Mrs Wilkinson and his daughter to the Watt family, included in all previous letters when his family were with him, are missing.

          The same tone continues in subsequent letters to Watt, and at the end of what is clearly a difficult time for him when for some reason he must remain at home at Broseley until the 6 November, and following a further period of business frustrations and conflicts, he writes, “…We are come at a part of the truth, but the whole is wanting to form any judgement by…” [clxxvi]

          Wilkinson is back at Castle Head for about six weeks over Christmas, accompanied by his brother, William.  Mrs Wilkinson has obviously remained there, and it becomes clear that she now regards this new residence as her home.  There is no mention of Mary until the following August when she returns to Castle Head for the summer visit.  The brief reference in a letter of 1 August suggests she has followed her father to Castle Head and did not travel with him.  Nor does she accompany him south on 5 September when he meets Samuel More and Thomas Williams, the Copper King from Anglesey, in Wigan for an excursion into Wales.

          It is probable that Mary took advantage of her summer excursion to the north to visit Kirkby Lonsdale and Rigmaden, and perhaps to see her aunt, preparatory to the disposal of the Rigmaden estates, which had now been posted for 28 October 1784 [clxxvii], and in which property each held a half share.  Her father clearly planned to attend this meeting which is perhaps the reason why he cut short his Welsh tour and took ship from Anglesey for Liverpool which shortened the ongoing journey to Castle Head by chaise.  He, too, would need to familiarise himself with the sale documents and arrangements.  Samuel More travelled with him for this brief ten-day visit to Castle Head but, unusually, found his own entertainment, visiting Kendal and Barrow without Wilkinson who clearly had more urgent business to attend.  The two men left by chaise on 29 September.  Again Mrs Wilkinson remained behind.  Mary travelled with them for the two days to Wrexham  but “…was in haste to get to Shrewsbury…” [clxxviii] and obtained a lift onwards in the carriage hired by a lady known to More.  After two days close confinement in a chaise with her father it seems she was anxious to part company with him.

          More gives no details in his Journal of what passed between father and daughter but he would have been party to it all.  Again there are only teasingly brief references.  Following her flight from Bersham Mary has taken refuge with the Flints in Shrewsbury, where the two men catch up with her four days later and obviously persuade her to travel on to Broseley with them in the Post Chariot.  She does so but insists they call on her friend Elizabeth Clayton in Wroxeter on the way.  After dinner together at The Lawns that evening Mary again makes her escape, this time across the river to The Dale and in all likelihood to the Reynolds’ house where Holbrooke would be waiting.  Over the next four days Wilkinson immerses himself in his Willey Furnace affairs and does not accompany More on what are largely social visits in the area, though they are both staying at The Lawns where Edward Blakeway joins them for dinner in the evenings.  The talk of the three men would have been interesting.  It is possible to catch something of Wilkinson’s frustration with the Quaker intellectual world in which his daughter had become involved in an echo from More on a visit to the small cottage where he  “…met Miss Hanah Reynolds who here indulges herself too much in Contemplation when her Accomplishments and beautiful Person should lead her to Shine an Example to the other Young Women of her Acquaintance…” [clxxix]

          This of course was Richard Reynolds’ daughter, but possibly More had Mary Wilkinson in mind, too.  His last mention of her comes on the day he left Broseley at the end of this visit, Wilkinson accompanying him in the Post Chaise as far as Birmingham.  It is a last opportunity for some time for the two friends to talk confidentially together:  “…Passing over the Wooden Bridge the Conversation turning on the Conduct of Miss W…”  [clxxx]  The Wooden Bridge is the bridge over the Severn, downstream of the new Iron Bridge, which then provided the shortest route from Broseley to the Reynolds’ property on the other side.

          If  Mary Wilkinson was in turmoil because of her feelings for Theophilus Holbrooke and the consequent conflict with her father, Holbrooke was equally disturbed.  Earlier that year his written correspondence with Richard Reynolds, who was away from The Dale at the time on his summer excursions, explores ideas concerning Christian understanding, happiness, friendship, love.  Unfortunately only Richard Reynolds’ side of this exchange has been preserved[clxxxi] but he is responding to ideas raised by Holbrooke and extends and deepens the intellectual discussion.  Reynolds letters clearly indicate first that Holbrooke is in a state of rapturous happiness but is troubled by an accompanying shadow.  There is evidence that he has confided in Reynolds about his love for Mary Wilkinson which provides the context for these replies.  They show a closeness of spirit between the two men and a massive respect for Holbrooke from Reynolds.  They also reflect a wide reading background and show Reynolds to be a master of the English language, capable of expressing complex ideas fluently in excellent prose.

          If the shadow to Holbrooke’s happiness was Wilkinson’s response to Holbrooke’s love for Mary then Reynolds would have some difficulty with this.  He had been a friend of Wilkinson since his widower days back in the early 1760s.  These two extremely  capable ironmasters had a respect for each other born of experience and long association as every known contact between them in the interim  indicates.  Yet Reynolds is about to support Holbrooke against Wilkinson.  It is a decision that would have involved him in mature reflection, even prayer, and is a measure of his regard for this new young friend.

          The projected meeting at Kirkby Lonsdale on 28 October 1784, in which the succession to the Rigmaden estate was passed equally to Mary Wilkinson and her aunt, was obviously completed satisfactorily since the following summer Mary’s title to a half share in this property features in a new indenture[clxxxii].   It is a very informative document dated 23 July 1785 and shows that by then Mary and Theophilus Holbrooke were engaged to be married.  Mary’s share in the estate is clearly intended as her marriage dowry and by this indenture is passed in trust to Richard Reynolds and William Tayleur of Buntingsdale in Shropshire, Holbrooke’s long-standing friend, until the marriage is solemnised.  There is no reference to Mary’s father in the document.

          It becomes clear then that Wilkinson’s opposition to this love match had reached the point where he refused to support Mary financially in the marriage, and that Mary, equally obdurate, had found a way to use her Rigmaden inheritance for this purpose which came to her quite independent of her father.  She also had the support of influential friends to help her to implement this; Richard Reynolds of course, but also the Henry Felton, attorney-at-law of Market Drayton with whose family Mary was on visiting terms, and two further attornies from that place.  Henry Felton and a mercer in Market Drayton called Thomas Grant witnessed William Tayleur’s signature as trustee in the indenture, and two ladies of the Reynolds family, his daughter Hannah Maria, and his cousin Mary Ann witnessed that of Richard Reynolds.  It is likely that because all the signatories came from the Market Drayton area the document was drawn up and signed there and was not dealt with at Kirkby Lonsdale.  Whether Wilkinson knew of it in advance is not known.

          Theophilus Holbrooke and Mary Wilkinson were married without Banns by special Licence on 8 October 1785 [clxxxiii], in the diocese if not in the parish where at one time he had been curate.  It seems to have been a lonely affair.  William Tayleur was there as witness for his friend.  The Minister’s wife witnessed Mary Wilkinson’s signature which suggests she had no-one standing beside her.  Perhaps the whole occasion was kept quiet to make it difficult for Mary’s father to arrange a protest.  

          Three miles from Market Drayton lies the pretty hamlet of Moreton Say with its unusual  church and delightful vicarage and garden just across the road.  It is the place where, in 1781, Theophilus Holbrook, an Oxford scholar but a Shropshire lad himself, began his Ministry.  In spite of his subsequent relapse from grace over his difficulties with the Doctrine of the Trinity, and since the tragic sequel to this marriage is focussed here, it is tempting to assume that following the marriage he chose to return to this idyllic place with his young bride.

          The transfer of the dowry from the trustees to Holbrooke took place the following February[clxxxiv] by which time Mary was heavily pregnant.  They had by then decided to sell Mary’s half of the Rigmaden inheritance rather than to keep it and use the substantial rents as income.  Mary’s Aunt Margaret had made the same decision though there is no record of discussions between them on this matter.  A buyer was found called John Satterthwaite from Lancaster who wished to have the whole estate and the transaction to purchase the two halves together was completed on 10 February 1786.   Mary’s share in the proceeds amounted to £3,900 which would have solved any immediate financial difficulties they might have had following the withdrawal of her father’s support.

          For long periods in the summer and autumn of 1785, through the winter and into the spring of 1786 Wilkinson remained at Castle Head with only short trips south around Quarter Days on business matters.  The Wilkinsons are entertaining family and friends in their new residence during much of this time.  Ann Watt makes a brave journey south from Glasgow with her children by post chaise to see for the first time in months her husband who travels up from Birmingham to meet her at Castle Head.  Wilkinson informs his friend of their safe arrival:   “…5-o-clock – Mrs Watt and Co are just arrived – all well and will not be permitted to quit this Castle until you come and set them free…” [clxxxv]   The Priestley family, also from Birmingham, were there too, and there must have been great reunions and rejoicings during that winter of 1785-86.  Mary is never mentioned in the letters, and it may be that Wilkinson’s long residences at his northern sanctuary throughout this time were an escape.

          Mary Holbrooke, nee Wilkinson, gave birth to a baby girl the following May.  The child died immediately after birth and was buried at Moreton Say on the 25 May 1786 [clxxxvi].  Imagine the contrast of this bleak misery with the love and hope the young couple had brought to this beautiful place, fragrant then with flowers and May blossom.  They named the dead child Mary.  Worse was to come.  There must have been complications at the birth for in less than a month Mary the mother was also dead, buried with her dead child at Moreton Say on 18 June 1786[clxxxvii].  The grieving Theo placed a stark memorial tablet recording the details simply in Latin on the external, sunless, north wall of the Church.  It remains there today, forever in shadow, with space below the names of his wife and daughter for his own one day to be carved.  

          There is an interesting discrepancy in the evidence relating to the death and burial of Mary and her baby.  The Market Drayton church registers record that the infant daughter died immediately after birth and was buried at Moreton Say on 25 May 1786, and that Mary was also buried there on 18 June 1786.  Theo’s memorial tablet, in classical Latin with standard abbreviations, has a different story.  It says that a funeral service took place in which Mary and her dead baby were interred in the same tomb at the same time. [clxxxviii]

          In the month that Mary lay dying no-one knows if she and her father were ever reconciled, or indeed if Wilkinson and Holbrooke, who lived on for more than thirty years, ever spoke to each other again.  There are clear similarities in the fortunes of both men in their first marriages, and the present tragedy must have woken in Wilkinson memories of his early life.  Both men loved their women deeply and after a brief period of happiness both lost them soon after childbirth.  Both met family resistance to their marriages.  Wilkinson’s marriage lasted just long enough for him to overcome this and be reconciled with his first wife’s family.  The Holbrookes met harder resistance and their marriage was  brief.  The tragic irony for Wilkinson was that his child had survived the first tragedy to become the principal in the second.  Did he ever ponder these things?  Was he sorry to lose in the prime of her womanhood this strong-willed daughter, one time the light of his life, or had he, as with other uncomfortable things around him, cut himself free of  her to concentrate on what he could influence and change?

          Whatever the truth of this his long friendship with Richard Reynolds continued and there is no evidence that he held any grudge against Reynolds for the part he had played in assisting the Holbrooke marriage.  Did he forgive Reynolds, or was forgiveness not an issue?  Perhaps he understood that there is an hierarchy of friendship and Reynolds’ loyalty to Holbrooke was higher than any loyalty to him.  Wilkinson was always a pragmatist even in matters close to his heart, and it is likely that after this tragedy he paused and reflected for a while, was sad yes, but then set a new course and started his life again.

          He was now 58 years old and this time it was not so easy.  He was still without an heir and had lost the means of begetting one of his own blood.  As his business world expanded the pressures on him increased and the incidence of frustrations and quarrels within that world became more frequent.  The sale of engines to Cornwall and the devious manipulations of the Cornishmen was a particular source of friction, and the delay in supplying Watt engines, particularly to his friends when he as the founder was supplying all the parts, clearly infuriated him.  Boulton and Watt continued to refuse him a partnership in the new engine enterprise, and though he still regarded Watt with affection there is evidence of a new friction with Boulton.  A letter written shortly after  Mary’s death enclosing an overdue account from Cornwall shows a different Wilkinson:

“Messrs Boulton & Watt, Gentlemen, …Be so good as to Attend to the above Accounts and Dates with the Balance due thereon.  Your Mr Boulton can recollect what I said upon this scrawling business when he and I were together at Marizion.  If he does not I will here repeat it – that after such Treatment I could never Trust my property a second time with the Adventurers in Hallamanin or Wheel Union…”  and on a specified delay in providing engine parts: “I need not mention to you the reason why these last were not ready sooner.  They have wrought at Bersham night as well as day, Sundays included.  They continue to do so and your last orders will be expedited as fast as is in our power – and as it is so much easier for Mr B to execute than to order I shall beg the favour of a lecture from him in the Foundry line the next time I see him…” [clxxxix]

           There is anger here, and unveiled sarcasm towards Matthew Boulton, and a sense of struggle and injustice as he defends his workmen and procedures against unreasonable complaint.  It marks a change in his relations with Boulton and Watt, and the beginning of a determination to depend no longer on others but to bring all aspects of his iron-making manufacture and sales under his own control.  It is a hinge point in his life, at which he needed to make a statement about himself and his work, as deteriorating personal and business relationships threatened to confound him.  That statement came in the form of an iron boat. [cxc]

          As early as 1777, at which time Wilkinson’s life was almost consumed by the process of refining the first few of James Watt’s new Fire Engines, he will yet have noted the successful use of a small iron pleasure boat on the River Foss in York, enthusiastically reported in the local newspapers.  That information appears to have surfaced again in 1785 or 1786 when Stockdale reports, using letters written to his grandfather from John Wilkinson which he then held but which are since lost, that experiments were going forward at the Bradley Ironworks to build an iron boat.  That timing is concurrent with the quarrels and traumas in Wilkinson’s personal life described above.

          To build his iron boat at the Bradley Ironworks with immediate access to the Birmingham Canal made sense if he was building a canal boat, a narrow boat something under seven feet wide, not so much sense if he was building a river barge with twice the beam for use on the River Severn.  Since it was a narrow boat that he successfully launched the following year on 9 July 1787, but on the river at Willey Wharf rather than on the canal, it must be that for some reason his Bradley Ironworks were not as suitable for this experimental building project as his New Willey works which had iron rail access to the Severn at Willey Wharf, and that this first iron boat was transferred from the river to the canal at a later date.

          By the end of the following year, however, three more iron boats had been launched, one of them certainly a river barge which was reported to be still on the Severn in 1803.   That sighting is evidence that Wilkinson’s iron barge at least was able to withstand the heavy stresses of grounding in the shallows and of being beached which reduced the useful life of other iron boats by then appearing on the river.  It is clear that the canal boats which suffered much less damage in this respect had a longer working life.

          The pride with which Wilkinson reported the launching of these boats to his friend James Stockdale of Cark, near Castle Head, is evident:   “Broseley, 14^th July, 1787.

Dear Sir,  Yesterday week my Iron Boat was launched.  It answers all my expectations, and has convinced the unbelievers, who were 999 in 1,000.   It will be a nine days’ wonder, and then be like Columbus’s egg…” [cxci]  And later, apparently in response to a request from his friend for information :  “Bradley Ironworks, 20^th October, 1787.…There have been two iron vessels launched in my service since 1st September, one is a canal boat for this navigation – the other a barge of 40 tons for the river Severn.  The last was floated on Monday, and is I expect now at Stourport with a lading of bar iron.  My clerk at Broseley advises me that she swims remarkably light, and exceeds even my own expectations…” [cxcii]

          The evidence from these letters is that these were Wilkinson’s first iron boats and must therefore seriously question claims made eighty years later by Stockdale’s grandson of an iron boat on the river Winster at Wilson House near Castle Head in the 1750s.  It is also significant that modern attempts to locate the earlier boat using sophisticated search equipment and co-ordinated by the Windermere Nautical Trust have produced nothing.

Chapter 9 – BROTHER WILLIAM AND FRANCE

The question has been posed by Challoner[cxciii], in the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, as to whether William Wilkinson was John’s full blood brother of the same parents, or indeed a step brother with a different mother.  The apparent twelve-year gap between Henry and the next sibling Mary, and the possibility that Henry was damaged in some way thus discouraging further child-bearing, is the cited evidence for this.  It suggests that Isaac’s first wife had died sometime after John and Henry were born and that a long barren period followed before he married another woman and emerged into the sunlight again.

Some research by Janet Butler, however, has constructed a family tree [cxciv] which indicates that no such twelve-year gap occurred and in that period two further children were born to Isaac and his wife, Margaret first and then Johnson.  Isaac’s wife is here listed as Mary, formerly Mary Johnston; and a daughter Margaret is included in the settlement details following Isaac's death.  Also,“…my late sister, Margaret…” is subsequently mentioned in the will of his son, William [cxcv].

Isaac’s Backbarrow years after the birth of John and before Mary were busy years in terms of his work as an emerging ironmaster.  It was a period of great inventiveness and energy when his new box iron appeared and when he erected the first iron bellows at the Backbarrow Company’s furnace and forge to the acclaim of his employers[cxcvi].  It may be of course, that the pattern of behaviour which emerged later in his son John at times of great personal stress in his life, when he poured all his creative energy into his iron-making world and stood back from close personal contact with family and friends, was a pattern transferring from father to son and here exhibited by Isaac.   However, to date there is no more than circumstantial evidence for the death of a first wife, and no record of a marriage to a second, and that what might have been his first and only marriage, to Mary Johnston, endured into old age[cxcvii].

It yet remains clear that John and William, who in their mature years were each to make so great an impact on the eighteenth century iron-making world, grew up apart as a consequence of the sixteen year age difference between them, sharing little or nothing of their childhood and teenage lives, and this may be more significant in their subsequent relations as men than whether they were full brothers, or step-brothers.

William’s childhood years were spent at Wilson House in Cumbria when Isaac moved there from Backbarrow in 1748, where he grew up with sisters much closer to him in age than John, who by then had almost certainly left the family home anyway.  When Isaac moved to Bersham with the rest of the family in 1753 John remained behind for a further three years at Kirkby Lonsdale during which time he married Ann Mawdsley and established his own iron merchanting business there; and as William entered his teenage years at Bersham in a family dominated by girls, it is likely that he enjoyed more of Isaac’s favours and attention than either his sisters or his absent elder brother.  Isaac subsequently sent him to school at the Dissenting Academy of the young Reverend Doctor Joseph Priestly who later married his daughter Mary and who provided William, as Isaac clearly intended, with the best education available to a Dissenter outside of the church-controlled schools and universities.  As a stripling of 16 or 17 William then returned to Bersham to learn iron-making under his father and his elder brother, John, who by that time had followed Isaac into Shropshire from the north.

The relationship between the brothers at the time, with John twice William’s age, would be that of man to youth, teacher to taught, with John by then a widower and a man of some worldly experience, perhaps a touch jealous of the favours and attention bestowed on William by their father.  There is however, no immediate evidence of a rift between the brothers, rather the reverse.  Though John was now beginning to forge a way for himself in the iron-making world independent of his father,[cxcviii] he clearly relied increasingly on William to manage affairs at Bersham to their mutual advantage, and when Isaac left Bersham a few years later the business was re-established without him under the joint control of the two brothers as the New Bersham Company.  William was not immediately accepted as a partner in the New Bersham Company and had to wait until 1774 for this preferment when he was granted only a 1/8 share by his brother [cxcix], and it is from this later date that their differences began.  However, that there was a quarrel in the earlier separation of father and sons is certain, though it appears to have been between Isaac and the sons, certainly between Isaac and John, and not at this time between the brothers.

The beginnings of this quarrel are found in a legal battle [cc] in the Company first set up by Isaac and then called the Bersham Ironworks, between Isaac and one of his partners, William Johnston, his nephew, the son of his wife’s younger brother [cci], over shares purchased in 1761 from William Johnston by Isaac but never satisfactorily transferred to Isaac’s name.  The dispute became so bitter and protracted it discouraged two proposed new partners from joining the company thereby depriving it of further capital that was clearly needed at the time.

Some time after joining his father at Bersham in 1756 John became “…a principal manager and acting person in the affairs of the said company…” [ccii] though not until 1763 a shareholder.  In that year, 7 years after the death of his first wife, he married for a second time.  His new wife, Mary Lee, was already a shareholder with Isaac in the old Bersham Ironworks and since her shares transferred to her husband on her marriage John thus acquired her 1/3 shareholding in the company, equal to that of his father.  It may be that this was the trigger to the subsequent conflict over shares between Isaac and William Johnston in which Isaac, through the acquisition of these further shares, fought to retain control as principal shareholder of the company he had founded.  John will have pointed out that these shares had never been properly transferred to Isaac so that in the event of any disagreement between them his father's vote carried no more weight than his own.  It is another early example of the shrewd business manoeuvring that came to be associated with John.

William Johnston held the remaining 1/3 share in the company equally with a fourth partner called Samuel Green.  It is clear from the incomplete Chancery record that William Johnston believed it was Isaac’s conduct and temper that led to the break down of the old Bersham Company, but it is not clear how far William Johnston’s sympathies lay with John nor how far the dispute might have been provoked and engineered by John in an attempt to gain control himself.  As cousins and near contemporaries John and William Johnston would have something in common, and as John’s wealth and influence grew in later years William Johnston’s name certainly recurs as a trusted friend and employee within his business empire.  If Isaac believed he had been betrayed by them then the basis was laid for future uneasy relations between father and son, and for the litigation which eventually followed.

How far Isaac had encouraged the marriage between his son and his business partner, Mary Lee, through those seven years of John’s grieving for his first wife also has to be speculative, but it seems clear that Isaac had known Mary Lee from his earliest years in Bersham, that she was his business partner from the beginning of the old Bersham Ironworks and that he knew her long before his son did and might have introduced them, however much the subsequent marriage worked against his own interests.

Through the late 1760s and early 1770s William Wilkinson’s name does not feature in these family quarrels and it seems he immersed himself in the business of learning the secrets of iron-making and the iron trade, with some success [cciii].  These are his salad days, his years between the age of 20 and 30, but no woman emerges during this time as a significant influence or companion and little is known about his personal life.  It may be that in the single-minded way of a Wilkinson he had dedicated himself to becoming as competent an ironmaster as his brother and his father and had put aside the indulgences until later.

His immediate and enthusiastic reception at the end of this period of Marchant de la Houliere’s proposals[cciv] for him to go to France and build a new iron foundry for the French government suggests that he recognised his time had come.  He would be aware of the wider social opportunities the invitation opened to him, but perhaps more important was the chance to do something in his own right away from the dominant influences of his elder brother.

In a first contract with the French Government, [ccv] which carried the hallmark of a seasoned negotiator and suggests that brother John had been involved, William committed himself for no more than a two-year period initially.  The contract is specifically for the preparatory survey and the setting up of a cannon foundry at Indret on the Seine below Nantes.  William is to be paid 120,000 Livres, just less than £5,000 in the then values, for two years work to be paid at six-monthly intervals in advance.    In comparison with the £50 a year plus house, board and expenses he had been paid as manager at Bersham this was riches indeed.  There was more.  All his travelling expenses were to be covered, he was to be paid a lodging and subsistence allowance of 1000 Livres a month and on salary and allowances he would pay no French taxes.  If the work was completed in less than two years William was still to be paid the 120,000 Livres; if it took longer he would be paid pro-rata for the additional time.

There is an interesting final item in the contract.  William reserved the liberty to return to England, on two counts, first if the Government demanded it, second if his brother died.  He undertook, however, to provide a substitute to cover the work in France if this proved necessary.  It is an astute point, providing evidence of an awareness of the state of tension between the two governments at the time, and proof for the British Government should it be required, of where the priorities of this established firm of ironmasters lay in the event of war.  John would not wish his assets and property in this country to be confiscated while his young brother lived royally in France and waited for better times.  And if he helped create the terms of this contract he clearly saw his brother William as his successor in England in the event of his own demise.  John was approaching 50 at this time, William was 34, and there is still no clear evidence of a breach in their relationship.

It is easy to underestimate William at this point in his life, but if his brother had no part in the negotiation of this contract and did not know the detail of it things may be interpreted very differently.  First it would indicate that William in his Bersham years had acquired not only the confidence to take full responsibility for a daunting business commitment in a foreign country but also the perceptive business acumen of his brother and father.  The provision of a substitute to cover his work in France then suggests a temporary return whilst retaining his interest there, until he can establish which way the British government will move with regard to his dual responsibilities, or on the other hand, until he has done what would be necessary to secure his succession in the event of his brother’s death.  His thinking in either instance may not have been known to John.

William left for France from Bersham at the end of 1776 apparently with his brother’s blessing.  He took with him a detailed knowledge of all the new technology of the Bersham Cannon Foundry much of which, during his years as manager, he had helped his brother to perfect.  It included the latest gun-boring lathe, patented by John Wilkinson in 1774, and details of James Watt’s New Steam Engine, the first examples of which were just coming into use, the second one in production at his brother’s works at New Willey.

An indication of William’s competence is the sure and measured way in which he constructed the Indret Cannon Foundry and brought it into production, working in close co-operation with a French engineer called Pierre Toufaire.[ccvi]  The Bersham technology built and installed there included gun-boring lathes, reverberatory air furnaces to enable him to use molten metal from scrap in the final casting, with power provided initially, according to a 1788 eye-witness, by water wheels turned by the tidal ebb and flow of the river, and only later by a Watt-type steam engine:  “Messrs. Espivent had the goodness to attend me on a water expedition, to view the establishment of Mr. Wilkinson for boring cannon, in an island in the Loire below Nantes.  Until that well-known English manufacturer arrived the French knew nothing of the art of casting cannon solid, and then boring them.  Mr Wilkinson’s machinery for boring four cannon is now at work, moved by tide wheels but they have erected a steam engine, with a new apparatus for boring seven more.  M. De La Motte, who has the direction of the whole, showed us a model of this engine, about six feet long, five high and four or five broad:  which he worked for us by making a small fire under the boiler that is no bigger than a large tea kettle:  one of the best machines that I have seen…” [ccvii]

The first cannon were cast at Indret from melted scrap in 1779.  William thus fulfilled the terms of his contract, which then appears to have been extended to cover the arrival there of the first French manager of the works, the son of an important family of Lorraine industrialists, Francois Ignace de Wendel, who was granted a fifteen year lease from 1780.  They were two wealthy young bachelors of about the same age, de Wendel a few years William’s senior, and they formed a friendship which would introduce William to some of the most influential people in the country.  It is not difficult to imagine the social opportunities open at that time to two such eligible bachelors.

Throughout this period William had kept in contact with his brother John, a valuable kinship which will have given him status in the developing industrial world of France, and he was able to feed him with information which led to new Steam Engine sales for Boulton and Watt and enabled John to tender successfully for the huge quantity of cast iron pipework, with bores up to twelve inches, and the associated pumping engines, that were required in the French Government contract to provide a new water supply to Paris from the Seine.[ccviii]

By this time France had aligned with the American states in the American Wars and was thus at war with England, but no Government recall had come for William, who indeed may have been seen as a valuable source of inside information on enemy affairs.  It would be a difficult course for William to steer though there is no evidence that at this early stage in his French career he acted as a spy.

Much has been made of the Wilkinsons’ dealings with France at this time of hostilities between the two countries and extravagant accusations levied against them, from merely treacherous sympathies with an enemy power to charges of actively selling guns to both British and French Governments during the war.  Huge quantities of iron piping in bores of three, six and twelve inches and in lengths of six and twelve feet, required for the new Paris water supply, lay on quaysides at both the Severn and the Dee ports for long periods waiting for transport across the Channel.  This trade had been sanctioned and it is probable that the pipes were mistaken for cannon, and although John made huge profits in the heavy wartime demand for his new improved cannon from the British government there is no evidence that he was involved in direct sales of cannon to the French at the same time.

However, a measure of the government attitude, to continuing trade in time of hostilities between the two nations, is shown in a letter reporting political gossip to John Wilkinson from Joseph Priestley when he was living in London close to the corridors of power as war threatened again during the early 1790s.

“…That the French do not fear the war is evident enough though it is as evident that they wish to avoid it and are sincerely desirous for our friendship.   It is said that the last ambassador, M Manet, was instructed that in case he could not make peace to propose that during the war merchandise should not be captured…” [ccix]

Certainly new steam engines were exported to France in William’s time as a consequence of sales he engineered and approved under passports provided by both governments.  It is at first surprising, though it is not difficult to find examples of it in the modern world, that business activity of this kind continued between two countries at war and was sanctioned by both governments.  The transactions are however well documented.[ccx]

The fact remains that during the war William was making improved cannon at Indret for the French with clear access to his brother’s works at Bersham.   It contributed to the wilder accusations and might have provided a basis for charges of treason, which is perhaps why William had carefully written into his contract with the French the point that he must be at liberty to return to England if his government demanded it.

Far from returning home at this time however, William took on further work for the French Government.  He was after all well known and well regarded in France following the success of the Indret works, spoke fluent French, and moved easily in the highest social circles.  It is significant that when a second cannon foundry was planned by the French Government to be built in Burgundy, known as Louis XVI’s New Cannon Foundry, William Wilkinson was asked to undertake the initial survey and bring the works into production.  It suggests that William was known to, and approved of, by the King himself.  Such credentials would give him immediate authority in his new area of operations and the detail and thoroughness of his initial survey will have enhanced his reputation further.

Recent research [ccxi] has located the original manuscript document in Le Creusot, signed by William and read and approved by his former colleague Pierre Toufaire, the French engineer who helped him set up the Indret works.  It is an impressive catalogue of requirements showing precisely how the preparatory work should be staged; where investigations should begin to locate the available ores, the local clays for brick-making and the building timber resources of the region; what labour, materials and buildings would be needed on site at each stage of the process with cost estimates provided; how substantial savings might be made by good preparation; and how the latest knowledge on iron-making processes from England might be incorporated into the scheme.  The survey is presented in sections with sub-headings, is sequential and systematic and concludes with the following:  “…Slag from Forges.  For some years it has been recognised in England that the slag from fineries or bloomeries mixed with the ore for blending in the blast furnace produces great advantages as much in the yield as in the quality of the iron, especially when one is aiming to make wrought iron.  I believe it essential to establish this method of working in the furnaces here and for that I request that we acquire slag from the forges of Mesvrin and La Mothe and that it should be brought to the works before the furnaces are lit.

It will be necessary to negotiate with the Masters of these forges in order to secure these slags for the future, for in all likelihood when they see the use that will be made of them, they will be tempted to put up the price or to keep them for themselves. 

At Montcenis the 16th October 1781              WILKINSON

Read and approved                                        P TOUFAIRE”

The intention was to use coke as a furnace fuel under Francoise Ignace de Wendel’s supervision as at Indret and William lists in the survey report how the coking experiments on local coal supplies must be carried out and stocks of coke accumulated before iron production could begin.  It is also another pointer toward an aspect of William’s character that the management team at Le Creusot is composed of the same professional colleagues he worked with so successfully at Indret.  He was paid 50,000 livres a year, just over £2000 at then rates of exchange, for the period of the survey which took place between 1779 and 1781, and 72,000 livres (£3000) a year from the time he was appointed manager of the Le Creusot works in that year until he finally returned to England in 1789.[ccxii]  William’s total salary in France over a period of nearly thirteen years therefore amounted to almost £30,000 at then values, with allowances, expenses and tax benefits in addition. But the approaching Revolution and the danger to life and property of people in his position threatened this livelihood and broke up his circle of friends.  De Wendel fled to Germany.  Others were not so fortunate.  Arthur Young travelling in France just before the storm broke visited both the Indret and the Le Creusot works after William had left:  “Nantes is as enflamme in the cause of liberty as any town in France can be; the conversations that I witnessed here prove how great a change is effected in the minds of the French, nor do I believe it will be possible for the present government to last half a century longer, unless the clearest and most dedicated talents be at the helm…”   [ccxiii]

In Montcenis near Le Creusot on the 3rd August 1789 three weeks after the storming of the Bastille in Paris and less than two hundred miles distant Arthur Young yet found men speaking approvingly of “Monsieur Weelkainsong” whom they knew to be a brother-in-law of Dr Priestley and therefore a friend of mankind and that he taught them to bore cannon in order to give liberty to America.  In that context there is however, a note of warning in Young’s description of the Le Creusot works: “…The establishment is very considerable;  there are from 500 to 600 men employed, besides colliers;  five steam engines are erected for giving the blasts and for boring;  and a new one building…” [ccxiv]

When he returned to England William had clearly become accustomed to wealth and status, and had proved that he was capable of bringing into production and successfully managing ironworks to match those of his brother.  He would be looking for an opportunity within his brother’s empire appropriate to his French standing and success.  Almost immediately friction developed between them.

The question arises then as to whether John Wilkinson saw William’s return as a threat to his own position, and how far the attitude and expectations of William provoked this.  Undoubtedly the William who returned would be a prouder, more assured, more sophisticated man than the William who had left thirteen years before, and it would be difficult for John to treat the new William as an equal.  Of itself that would be enough for differences of opinion immediately, and tension, ultimately friction.  Their sister, Mary, from evidence in the Priestley letters, also quarrelled with William at this time.  Reporting her death in America in 1796 her husband, Dr Joseph Priestley, wrote to her brother John: “…She always warmly took your part and would never believe your father’s account of your using him ill.  To your brother William she had the affection of a mother but his behaviour to her on his return from France shocked her in such a manner as I cannot describe and she never recovered it…” [ccxv]

It is likely therefore, that there was arrogance and insensitive braggadocio in the attitude and posture of William on his return to England which family and friends besides John found difficult to accept.

There is however evidence of a failure by John to pay William his due share of profits as a partner in the Bersham works throughout the period of his stay in France [ccxvi] .  John might have thought that William with his huge French salary did not need the money but had acknowledged, somewhat ungraciously, that profits were owing to him from 1777, when William raised the matter at a meeting in Belgium in 1782.  William had asked for a written acknowledgement of this and confirmation of his 1/8 share in the Bersham works, and this seems to have been provided.  Since nothing had been paid to William up to the time he returned temporarily in 1784 he went through the Bersham accounts and found many irregularities, which he took up with John who then agreed that £800 should be taken from the Bersham profits and paid into their private accounts in the ratio 7 to 1.  William said no money had been paid to him up to the time he left France for good in 1789.

An earlier return from France by William is recorded by Anne Watt in a letter to her husband in August 1786, [ccxvii] when William dined with her before setting off for Castle Head, and it seems clear that during the three years between 1786 and 1789 he moved frequently between France and the Wilkinson properties in this country.  It was during this period that he made a detailed inventory of the various  Ironworks in France and of the tonnage and type of iron made there[ccxviii].  The document dated 5^th February 1787 is not signed and is not addressed to any person or concern, and it might have been simply for William’s own reference on his return to England which he clearly saw as imminent, his prospects becoming uncertain as the Revolution neared.  Such detailed information would be extremely useful to any future employer.

William took the opportunity during these return visits to examine further his brother’s Books of Accounts, which in the case of the Bersham and the Snedshill Works was his right as a shareholder.  The complaints of irregularities he made to his brother clearly fell on stony ground and their differences then festered until the point of his final return.

Chapter 10 - DISAGREEMENT, DISPUTE AND LITIGATION.

As the dispute with his brother deteriorated into bitter recriminations on each side John must have realised that the days of the New Bersham Company, as a hugely profitable enterprise effectively under his sole control, were numbered. He began to look around for alternatives.  With his preference for locating in one place as many of the processes attendant upon iron-making as possible he would be seeking a small estate in an area with its own mineral resources.  In 1791 he bought such an estate at Hadley, in East Shropshire, though perhaps at that time with a view to replacing his Willey works as his lease there ended, and in fact he did not immediately build a furnace and ironworks there.

In June 1792 he bought the Brymbo estate in Denbighshire.    It came with an impressive Mansion House designed by Inigo Jones [ccxxi] and lands which provided him not only with a source of iron ore but also with coal deposits.  He clearly intended to develop another large industrial complex here just five miles to the north of Bersham.  The estate cost £14,000 [ccxxii] and he had to call in credit to pay for it; and an indication of a waning confidence in his affairs began to show in a new attitude by tradesmen to his money tokens by then circulating freely in local markets [ccxxiii].

The worsening dispute with his brother can be traced in the letters during this period between John Wilkinson and his young protégé from Kendal, then his Clerk of Works at Bersham, Gilbert Gilpin.  With an obvious regard for both brothers while yet employed by John, Gilbert’s position was a difficult one and his letters make clear that in attempts to manage the extreme positions of each of them he lost the confidence of both.   As the dispute progressed his attitude to John, his employer, became less sympathetic while continuing to protest his loyalty and support, though it was William who would eventually threaten him with litigation for what he perceived to be an obstructive interference to his interests.  Clearly both brothers made him listen to their own side of the case so that Gilbert was perhaps better informed about their dispute than anyone else.  In what amounted to his resignation letter he made one last determined attempt to mediate. [ccxxiv] 

“Sir, As near as I can recollect the last time that W.W. was at the works was the 15^th of last month.  He did come into the counting hse but not attempt to look into the books.  He was in the counting house when your letter ordering that he was not to see the books in future arrived, & I in course showed it to him.  He intimated that such refusal was then of no consequence because he had paid sufficient attention to those matters for some years past; & that though you had denied him access to the books (which you had no right to do even if he was possessed of only a hundredth part of the concern) he would have all the information he wanted brought into court.

Untill very lately he used to come to the work as usual, & in all the conversations which we have had on the subjects of the dispute which exists between you and him he declared, that as you and him could not agree to settle it yourselves, he had proposed some years ago to refer the whole to Dr Priestley, but that you declined it, and wrote a note which is now in his possession (a copy of which will form a part of the amendment to the Bersham Bill) saying that you could not agree to have the business settled in that manner untill you had sent J. Priestley to the continent to learn what engagements he had entered into there that might be binding upon you.  He had repeatedly requested that the matter might be settled by arbitration but that you always evaded it & which would be proved by your own hand writing at a proper time.  That seeing no other method of procuring a settlement, and you having particularly advised him to (………?) he had been under the disagreeable necessity of endeavouring to obtain it by the laws of his country.

His reason for not answering Mr Harper’s letters was, that as you seemed determined to have no correspondence with him but through some organ of the law you should have an answer in that way at a proper time.  Had you wrote to him yourself, or were you to do so now, I am persuaded you would have an answer immediately; and I am pretty certain that he would have no manner of objection even now to have the matter referred to your mutual friends…

           I have come to a determination to try my fortune in the new world.   The time of my departure I wish to make as convenient as possible to you, & could I get off with the ships that sail in the latter end of April or the beginning of May I should be perfectly satisfied.

          I am sir, Yr. hble ser.     G.G.”

Gilbert’s attempt at reconciliation was to no avail.  He was summoned by John to Castle Head in April 1794, taking the Bersham books and papers to study William’s Bills of Complaint and help to provide some answers.

This conference will have contributed to the strategy John evolved to deal with William’s complaints, in which he sold, or tried to sell, his interest in the Bersham works[ccxxv] to three of his relations in exchange for a Bond from each of them.  They were Richard Watson, grandson of his father’s eldest brother and by then his agent at Castle Head; Thomas Jones, son of his sister Sarah and closely involved with the Bersham management up to this time; and William Johnston, son of his mother’s brother and then manager of the Bradley Ironworks.[ccxxvi]  From what Gilbert Gilpin says in a later letter it seems unlikely that any money actually changed hands at the time and in fact the transaction in the later litigation would have put the affairs of all three of them at risk.[ccxxvii]  John continued to refuse to deal with William direct, however, referring to him as “…a self created & violent turbulent Person bent upon Mischief…”    In the summer of 1795 the Hearings began.

William’s Bill of Complaint to Chancery was detailed and carefully presented.  He was owed a 1/8 share of the profits in the Bersham Company from 1777 to that date, and a 1/8 share of the profits in the Snedshill Works from 1778 to the end of the lease in 1793.  None of this money had been credited to him and his attempts to establish his claim by reference to the Company Records had now been frustrated by his brother’s denying him access to the Books.  However his earlier examination of the Books had showed that the Bersham Works were very profitable and that the recent lead smelting furnaces there had increased profits; that John continued to shift money between his various businesses at his own financial convenience without proper accounting; that he had used £16,000 of Bersham profits to increase the Company capital without reference to William who as a partner had been billed for 1/8 of this amount when he should have been paid it; that he had concealed transfers out of the Bersham accounts to his other businesses when the Bersham profits were high, particularly to the London Lead Company at Rotherhithe, thus avoiding tax and depriving William of his dues; and that Clerks of Works at all his business premises were now instructed not to allow William access to their Books.

In his reply, predominantly with reference to William’s 1/8 share in the Snedshill company which he acknowledged, John dismissed this “…swaggering epistle…” as clear evidence that William did not understand the detail of company accounting procedures.  Since the Snedshill Company affairs were not finally settled and a closing Balance Sheet was not yet available to enable profits to be paid out his claims were premature and unnecessary.   Moreover, William had deliberately tried to create confusion between the two companies, “…the said Furnace at Snedshill being always considered as part of and appendage to the said concern at Bersham…”  This appears reasonable until John “..humbly hopes…” the Court will not require his “..General Books of Account…which contain much irrelevant matter…” though he agrees to produce his Weighing Books which show weights IN of raw materials and Weights OUT of Iron Deliveries from the furnace.

John then denies to the Court any recollection of writing any of the letters attributed to him of which William has produced copies, and of the verbatim quotes used by William in support of his claim.  He answers William’s claims of financial malpractice point by point, acknowledging his 1/8 share in the Bersham Company but denying any fraudulent accounting, claiming again William had not understood the accounting procedures.  The impression remains at the end of the evidence in this claim and counter-claim, however, that Bersham had been hugely profitable and that nothing had been paid to William for his 1/8 share between 1777 and 1794.

Throughout the period of litigation John tried to frustrate the Court directions again and again by delays in responding and requests for more time.  The eventual outcome was an agreement from each side to go to arbitration.  Since this had been urged from William’s side before the costly litigation began it must be that at this late stage John could see a decision of the Court going against him.  Four arbitrators were agreed, William Fawcett, Thomas Bennion, William Robertson and William Reynolds.  Their award, though largely in favour of William,[ccxxviii] did try to strike a balance.

The costs of the arbitration were to be paid out of the Bersham Company business.  John objected to this since the value of their holdings in the business were 7 to 1 in his favour and this meant effectively that John was paying most of William’s arbitration costs.  Next William’s claim for back payment of monies due to him out of the Partnership was accepted.  He was awarded £8850 to be paid in two equal instalments direct to him from the Partnership Bank, Messrs Eyton, Reynolds & Wilkinson, at six-monthly intervals over the following year.  Each side was to bear it’s own litigation costs at Law and in Equity, including the costs of getting their respective Bills and Claims against each other dismissed by the end of the next (Trinity) Term.  Finally William was to be available as a future signatory to any outstanding Partnership transactions that required it with any costs involved to be paid by John.  The Award was dated 2 May 1796.

In a letter to Boulton & Watt enclosing these details [ccxxix] William says it is “… the first Meeting of the Arbitrators …” , and that it indicates “…their Determination to sell the Works and dissolve the Partnership. And in the Mean Time to convert the divers Effects into Cash. …”  Since this is what ultimately happened it seems that at least one further meeting was held.  William’s account in the same letter of what happened at the meeting of 2 May 1796 is revealing:  “…The Meeting was very amicable as far as the Arbitrators were concerned but My Brother would not join us,  and he sat in an Adjoining Room where he had everything conveyed to him by Mr Reynolds and his Meat was sent him from our Table so that all heat was prevented and the Meeting was as pleasant as a Business of this Nature could be…”[ccxxx]

It did not end there.  William had to go back to the Court for a further order against John’s non-compliance with the Arbitration Award before the matter was resolved [ccxxxi] and there are interesting references in other letters of the mid-1790s to this bitter quarrel between the brothers, which endured until they died.

Gilbert Gilpin, whose sympathies in the dispute increasingly lay with William, left John’s employ shortly after judgement had been given with neither his permission nor his blessing.  It was a cause of anxiety to Gilbert over the next few years as he tried to find another position among rumours that John intended to take action against him.  Gilbert’s rambling gossipy letters, mostly to William Wilkinson, may be neither entirely reliable nor impartial but they reflect a close knowledge of the late 18th century Iron Trade and the inter-connected personalities involved:  “…In respect to your brother’s assertion…He may perhaps still have it in idea to prevent any person, or persons, who do not keep upon good terms with him from doing anything in the iron line in England, France or America…But the most material matter which gave rise to my conjecture was the report of a Mr Wilson of Sheffield who I met with in the coffee room at the Shakespear in Birmingham about three weeks ago.  On hearing that I had been an agent of Mr W he informed me that on coming through Wrexham he heard two men discoursing on the subject of a Mr Gilpin who had lately left the employment of Mr W against his consent, & that it was the intention of the said Mr W to do him all the injury in his power…” [ccxxxii]

It is perhaps not surprising therefore that Gilbert rejoiced whenever he heard anything to the discredit of his former master and reported it to his correspondents at every opportunity.  The subject of the following conversation is Mr Reynolds who will be the William Reynolds of the Arbitration Board and thought to be sympathetic to John rather than William: “…I…then mentioned the offer of Mr Fawcett, which he recommended me by all means to accept, & then mentioned the probability of an opposition from J.W. in such case.  This he made a laugh at & said, ‘What does any of his oppositions effect ?  He is now selling his rods at 16/- & we ours at 22/-…”  [ccxxxiii].

In the summer of 1794 Dr Joseph Priestley and his family had emigrated to America.  He was financially beholden to both brothers-in-law but more so to John who had supported him for many years.  Throughout the following year he received at least three reports from Richard Watson about the progress of the lawsuit, clearly on John’s instruction, as well as sets of accounts and complaints from both brothers [ccxxxiv].

His sympathies clearly lay with John, applauding what he sees as “…the judgement and still more the excellent temper…of your several attempts to bring the dispute to an amicable reference…”  He had tried to reason with William from whom he had received “…only short letters on the subject…from which it is impossible to form any clear idea of the nature of his complaints…”  all to no avail.  He then urged them to find a mediator who could lead them back from recourse to litigation and the ruin that he feared would ensue.  Financial ruin for the Wilkinsons meant, of course, an end to the financial subsidies he received from them himself and he clearly felt very exposed on this count as a pioneer settler in America.  He mentions Samuel More as a possible mediator but he by then was seriously ill and not expected to live.

There is an interesting glimpse into a significant moment in the dispute in one of the Priestley letters [ccxxxv].   After  words of  solace and  re-assurance to John, Priestley says:

“…The same ship that brought Mr Watson’s letter of June 26th brought me one from your brother of May 26th, a copy of my answer to which I enclose though I wish you would not give him any intimation that I have done so.   What he says (and what you want to know) concerning your proposal to him to take back …(?) is as follows:   ‘At the end of six days when he found things to go against him he decided I would take the whole works at Bersham and Bradley into his – he must have meant my – hands and that he would give up all the direction and give me a bond not to interfere and would even withdraw his name from the concern.  To this indignant offer I replied I would sooner put my hand into a fire than accede…”

Priestley’s anxieties about the danger to his financial support from John Wilkinson if the dispute came to Trial were justified.  News of the settlement which he clearly thought was too heavily in William’s favour and unfair to John was quickly followed by a letter from Richard Watson declaring that Priestley was more than £6,000 in debt to John, this reckoning almost certainly a result of the legal process and the consequent listing of John’s assets.  With the spectre of further litigation looming he seeks re-assurance from John about Richard Watson’s letter and urges him to accept the result with resignation and sue for peace.  It did not happen.

Either in anticipation, or as a consequence, of the arbitration award John first tried to dispose of his shareholding to his relations as described already, clearly with the intention of retaining ultimate control.  William would have none of it and his dismissal of this plan appears to have been one of the issues the arbitrators had to settle.

A sale of Bersham to take place at the end of November 1795 was arranged by the Arbitrators.  In the weeks beforehand William appears confident of his position and  increasingly disposed to bid for the Bersham Works himself [ccxxxvi].  He secretly involves himself in a plan with James Watt Jnr. to smuggle into the works a man “…who you are sure my brother or his satellites did not know…” to make an inventory of the goods and machinery on site, the better to enable William to make his bid.  One can imagine all machinery stopped at the great ironworks at this time, the furnaces blown out, and the place largely deserted and silent, locked up and under guard.

In the event William did purchase the Bersham Ironworks and so became responsible once more for the works where he began his career as an ironmaster.    There is sadness, disappointment, even bitterness in his brother’s letter to Matthew Boulton the following week:  “…8^th December 1795.    Dear Sir,   Your favour of the 29th ult. was delivered me by your son but my engagements during the sale of Bersham and the things attendant upon it, which put that place once more into the hands of its old Possessor, took so much of my thoughts that I had it not in my power to answer it on his return…There is now an end of all connection between W.W. and me, except in closing the Accounts which will be done prior to the meeting of the Arbitrators in April next…”[ccxxxvii]

John by this time had his new works at Brymbo in production and his policy before and after the sale to William would have been to claim the major part of the Bersham moveable goods and machinery as his own and transfer them the five miles to Brymbo as indeed he was permitted to do under the arbitration award.  It would nonetheless be a further cause of continuing bitterness between them.

Both brothers appeared anxious to retain the goodwill of Boulton and Watt, who were now old men like themselves.  John’s approach, in sincere and measured language, is to reassure them as creditors of the New Bersham Company up to the time of the sale, with a concern to see their unpaid bills transferred out of the arbitration process direct to him for payment.  He refers to the long standing trust and friendship between them threatened in this dispute with his brother, and hopes that “…the Unity of the Trinity which once subsisted may probably again take place…”  He re-assures them of his earnest wish to resolve all grievances between them and receives in turn from them the wish “…to preserve that friendship, peace and harmony…” of  earlier days.  

William had a different approach.  As soon as the Bersham works were sold he began the invidious process of turning opinion against his brother, particularly through his contact with the Boulton & Watt operations.  He felt he had good allies there in Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Junior, who had been deputed by their parents to find up and down the country the New Watt Steam engines that had been erected without licenses and known as Pirate Engines.  Because of the delays in obtaining the licenses and the consequent frustration to intended purchasers John Wilkinson had been advising his friends, and notably James Stockdale of Cark, to proceed independently of Boulton and Watt.[ccxxxviii]  He then provided the iron cylinders and parts for the engines either himself or through his contacts direct to the purchaser with the services of an engine erector thrown in but without the knowledge of  Boulton and Watt.

In granting a license to use their engines Boulton & Watt contracted to receive premiums at half-yearly intervals for the remaining duration of their Patent calculated on the basis of a one third fuel saving on the old Newcomen engine.  These pirate engines therefore cheated them of substantial revenue since no premiums were paid.  Soon after joining the company the two sons with the help of William Wilkinson and other spies were commissioned to find the pirate engines and by recourse to litigation, though often the threat of it was sufficient, to secure the necessary premiums for the company and backdate them.[ccxxxix]  William exploited these opportunities to discredit his brother in the mid 1790s and even succeeded in driving a wedge between John and his old friend and agent, James Stockdale of Cark.  It came about in a curious way.

On New Year’s Day 1791 William, then 47 years old, had married for the first time a widow, Mrs Elizabeth Kirkes, then living in Liverpool, a daughter of James Stockdale of Cark.  This meant that as the dispute with his brother grew in strength and bitterness William had close and regular access, as an intimate within the Stockdale family, to one of his brother’s oldest friends.  It is known that he provided information to Boulton and Watt about his brother’s pirate engines but then came the curious twist in the story.

Boulton and Watt found a clear breach of their patent in the Cark engine and took action against the company.  Although he might not have known until late that the Cark engine was a pirate engine ,William had clearly decided to keep quiet about it anyway.  He then realised the difficulties of his position.  On the one hand he had supported Boulton & Watt in their campaign against these engines and was particularly friendly with the two sons who were leading the prosecutions.  On the other his own father-in-law, a well-respected figure in the industrial and commercial affairs of the day and an old friend of Boulton and Watt senior, now stood accused.

When it was clear that Boulton & Watt intended to proceed against Thackeray Stockdale & Co William moved quickly.  First he summoned his father-in-law to his home at Court near Wrexham:  “…I am particularly desirous of seeing you here upon a Business which I cannot write you upon and which concerns you.  I think I can be of service to you therein and the sooner you come here the better…” [ccxl]

The letter has an urgent, even imperious, tone.  William’s intention was to set up a face to face meeting with James Watt Junior to try to settle the affair quietly and so protect his father-in-law.  Perhaps surprisingly there was massive goodwill towards their old friend from the Boulton & Watt camp who chose to proceed against Thackeray, and Bradley, the maker of the pirate engine parts, without naming James Stockdale in the litigation.  This decision is confirmed in a letter from James Watt Junior shortly after the meeting [ccxli] and a month later his father is also writing to thank William for his “friendly interference”.

“…We are very much concerned that Mr Stockdale should be implicated anyways in this matter…no unfriendly steps should be taken against him or the other innocent members of the Cark Company…” [ccxlii]

William was able to be of further service to his father-in-law when Thackeray after due procrastination finally agreed to accept Boulton & Watt’s nomination of him as arbitrator to establish what money was due in settlement, and managed to reduce their claim from £762.10s to £550 which Boulton & Watt accepted “with perfect satisfaction”.

It would be helpful to know how William and his father-in-law related to one another at this time.  The slightly high-handed tone of William’s letter summoning his father-in-law to Wrexham could suggest William’s dominance and an impatience and embarrassment through his connection.  On the other hand his wife had just produced their first baby girl, and it might have been a kindly intervention to support a well-respected old man who was failing.  Certainly it will have given William some influence with James Stockdale, confirmed in a letter about this time to Matthew Boulton about the approaching Arbitrators’ meeting in his own dispute with his brother.

“Dear Sir,     I am desired by Mr James Stockdale of Cark to acquaint you that He and my Brother are about getting quit of each other and settling their Transactions in Business.   They have…copper at Stourport one half of which…Mr Stockdale has ordered to be delivered to your care……My Brother wants to postpone the Settlement of our Disputes until another year and objects to let me have access to the Books.   As this is expressly provided for by the rule of Court I shall see Mr Reynolds on the way and in Case I cannot have that right without an Appeal to the Court of Kings Bench that must take place the next Term.   I am more and more convinced that Nothing but Compulsion will ever induce JW to settle our disputes however I am not afraid of him…” [ccxliii]

The Arbitrators meeting listed for the middle of April 1796 to close the Bersham books was further delayed at John’s request but with William’s concurrence, which means he, too, wasn’t quite ready for the denoument.  He had been busy in the spring and early summer breaking up the old loyalties to his brother at the Bersham Works by getting rid of key figures like Abram Storey, clearly a man of some authority there, Thomas Matthews, a borer and turner at Bersham for 26 years, and one Kendrick who seemed to be completing orders that had been in hand at the time of the sale.  Most of these men he tried to place in the Boulton & Watt empire.  By July Abram Storey was already there: “…A.Storey by writing to Kendrick might have the choice of any men at Bersham as they are chiefly leaving it…  (and then a new attempt to discredit his brother) …Abram’s successor was at Brymbo ten days but as he never was so sober as to get up and dress himself he has been discharged and is to be replaced by a family from South Wales whom Crawshay has discharged for being drunk and insolent.  JW will have no other iron than that of Brymbo which on being remelted into guns is so hard as not to be bor’d, but none else will be purchased…” [ccxliv]

It seems likely that by this time William had decided to sell the Bersham Ironworks and would have had Boulton & Watt in mind as prospective purchasers.   He was dealing with a canny businessman of course, and Matthew Boulton would have no scruples about accepting any early benefits of a potential transaction without committing himself.   William meantime clearly wished to play down both the Bersham ironworks and his brother’s reduced empire as any kind of competition.

By this time the Arbitrators had pronounced on the complications of the Bersham accounts, with the financial settlement between the brothers in the final closing of the books very substantially in favour of William.  He is well pleased with himself:  “…JW is no Economist of harsh terms in respect to the Arbitrators whom he blames as having acted very unjustly, and sent for Mr Fawcett since you saw him at Soho to get him to sign a Voluminous Number of Observations drawn up by JW and Watson, all tending to accuse the Arbitrators himself and Gilpin of partiality for me in the settlement.  Fawcett went home much displeased at JW’s ideas of his consistency as he informed me that he could not do it if he had given him £20,000.  JW stated the necessity of it saying in the present state it appeared he had acted unjustly and that he should be dishonoured amongst his acquaintance to whom he wished to shew Mr Fawcett’s Approbation of his Statement of the case between us.  This I hope will amuse you as well as that he sends the Creditors of the late concern to Me for Payment.  I have wrote Weston and expect we shall be obliged to move the Court for an Attachment against him for Contempt as the Time for his objecting to the Award is past and now he objects to the Performance (of) it in certain respects.  He won’t pay the Expenses of Fawcett or the Travell Charges of the Arbitrators which he is ordered to do.  Watson and he are like to quarrel as he won’t give him anything for his Time or pay him for his Living with him for he has not got the better of Me.  His conduct is at once Mean and laughable…” [ccxlv]

It is clear from William’s letter that John was bitter about the Arbitrators decisions and had begun a process of attrition to waste William’s resources by forcing him repeatedly back to the Court for new and confirmatory judgements.  The case of the Maas-y-fynnon lead mine is a good illustration.  John Wilkinson had been the principal for thirteen years in this concern which had provided lead ore prior to the sale of Bersham to the very profitable lead furnaces he had established there.

On the 29 October 1796, following the Arbitrators settlement in the spring and what was clearly a very stormy General Meeting with opposing sides present held that day at the Eagle Inn, Wrexham, John posted handbills[ccxlvi] in the area of the mine dismissing Robert Burton as mine agent and appointing a Mr William Jones of Pwlygo in his place.  John’s supporters included Richard Watson and Thomas Jones, his nephew, who was alleged to have Power of Attorney for the votes of Joseph Thackeray and Benjamin Satterthwaite, principal defendants in the Cark Engine litigation.

William riposted immediately with another Handbill in which  “…The Public are hereby informed that the above Hand-bill is a total misrepresentation of facts, as John Wilkinson, Thomas Jones, John Jones, Richard Watson, Joseph Thackeray, and Benjamin Satterthwaite are no longer Partners in the Concern, having severally forfeited their shares therein for neglect in paying their quotas of a call to reimburse the expenses incurred in prosecuting the work, being first thereunto required by notice in the London Gazette of the 17^th of September last…The Public are also informed that at the meeting alluded to in the Hand-bill, Mr Burton was continued the Agent and Treasurer of the Concern by a majority in value of the real Partners present;  and it was the opinion of such Partners that it was unadvisable in them to admit Mr John Wilkinson director of the Concern, he having to the present time refused to render satisfactory Accounts during the space of thirteen years he was entrusted with the management thereof, or even to permit the Partners to inspect and investigate the same, altho’ required by several of their resolutions so to do;  and for which legal proceedings are instituting against him.  We shall now be silent and wait the event of a legal investigation…” [ccxlvii]

John Wilkinson’s newly appointed acting agent to the mine, William Jones, posts yet another Handbill dated the following day [ccxlviii] saying this is all nonsense.  His principals paid their share of the costs in full, the account books show this and will be kept in a safe place until Robert Burton clears up his own accounts of expenses in the mine “…and which there appears no other Means of making him do but by Legal Proceedings…”.   The stage is therefore set for yet another expensive legal battle which will waste the energies and resources of both sides.

John Wilkinson’s differences with Boulton and Watt were only partly due to the problems of disentangling his accounts with them at Bersham in the escalation of his dispute with William, who now clearly wished to sour their long-standing business relationship if he could.  With weasel words of derogation here and there in his own letters to Boulton and Watt and particularly to their sons he took every opportunity to do so and made no secret of it.   John was certainly aware of what was happening but hoped the relationship with his old business associates would be strong enough to survive such tactics.  As his dispute with William reached a climax he writes to Matthew Boulton: “…When the disagreeable business which at present takes up too much of my time is ended I hope to have an opportunity of seeing you, and am persuaded that all apparent clashing of sentiments and interests can easily be rectified, and that you will be convinced I have at all times been much more your friend than the person who has taken such pains to injure me in your opinion, and to blow up if possible a flame between us.   I trust however he will always fail in the attempt, and that when we meet a plan may be adopted by which our interests may be more closely than ever united, both in the engine and foundry business….” [ccxlix]

Their long association had never been completely harmonious and survived largely because it was mutually useful and brought good profits to both sides.   They were never friends in the way that John Wilkinson and Samuel More were friends, and although they had social and family contact at each other’s homes theirs was primarily a business relationship.

From earliest days within the so-called Trinity there were tensions.   Watt, the engineer and inventor, was never happy with the business pressures of profit and loss and supply and demand, which of course was Boulton’s strength though he had a good understanding of ironmaking and furnace systems, too.   Wilkinson related strongly to the practical side of Watt whom he also liked as a man.    Boulton he respected for his entrepreneurial and marketing skills with an acknowledged status, and a ruthlessness, as a businessman to match his own.   Perhaps because of it there was always a reserve between the two.   Watt’s second wife, Anne, records some early signs of disagreement between them all in the mid 1780s:   “… I am sorry to hear so dismal an account of the mines and am afraid Mr B is not the man to reform them.   He talks too much.   Mr Wilkinson is the man to go among them.   Perhaps Mr B is like some doctors who strive to make the case they are to undertake to cure a desperate one that their fame may be the greater…” [ccl]

The letter suggests that the Watts by this time have already shared some reservations about Matthew Boulton, and they continued to do so:  “…You say Mr B has great hopes of the year 86 tho I like you don’t build much on his airy views…(he) is not to be trusted with money for had he millions he would find ways to spend it…” [ccli] and a week later,  “…I can not say but I am very sorry to hear Dr Withering is going to the opposite side of the town from us & in my rage for the loss of so valuable a neighbour abused Mr B in my own mind worse than a dog for him I look on as the sole cause of it don’t you think…I am really very angry and think he has acted a very unfriendly part.  Had we been a Lord or Duke he would have strained every nerve to have served us.  I now almost hate the man…” [cclii]

By the following month their mistrust of Matthew Boulton has become a serious issue.  Watt has obviously shared confidences with his wife about Boulton’s entrepreneurial activities.  Knowing her husband to be a worrier and a depressive she tries to steady him:  “…You must lay down some new plan with regard to your conduct with Mr B but that matter we will talk over when we meet if you will but camly (sic) talk on a subject that so nearly concerns your peace – for what is all the world without contentment - & he seems to be hurrying on from one scheme to another and will forever drain you of all your cash…” [ccliii]

Since the Watts were about to meet at Castle Head for an extended stay as John Wilkinson’s guests it must follow that the chances were high of their joint discussions of the conduct of Matthew Boulton referred to in this letter.

It was about this time, as Boulton & Watt began to realise that their investments in Cornwall were not going to yield the returns they had hoped for and their cash-flow was in serious trouble, that Watt again raised with Matthew Boulton the question of bringing in John Wilkinson as a partner.  It did not happen and Boulton must therefore have been against it.   In spite of John’s central importance to the production of the new steam engines by supplying cylinders and fittings for this expanding Boulton & Watt business he received no share in their profits from these sales, and depended for his own profits on the sale of the parts to the company.  A measure of the difficulties they were under in this process on account of their different priorities is  indicated  by  Watt himself:

“…Whenever an opportunity occurred of getting an order for a considerable set of castings Mr. W’n was earnest with us to come to conclusion with the customer whether it appeared to us to be for our interest or not – this was the case with Jary from whom Mr Wil’n had a good order and was paid, we had much trouble & a small premium which was never paid – if it had was not compensation for our trouble…” [ccliv]

When delays built up in the orders for engines, because Boulton insisted on having an engine contract, with premiums to be paid, agreed and signed before he would allow it to be erected, Wilkinson became increasingly frustrated.  It meant that he often anticipated the process and obtained the drawings and specifications from Watt before the contract was agreed and had the parts ready and waiting because he realised that further delay would lead to loss of business.  The whole thing often worked to his detriment.  There was increased risk involved because the intending purchaser might withdraw; his own time margins between outlay and profit were increased no matter how efficient his production systems; and cylinders and their related parts frequently lay about at his works awaiting the contract before transport to their destination could be arranged.  Sometimes the parts went missing.

It was as a consequence of these frustrations that Wilkinson obtained reluctant authority from Boulton & Watt to erect himself certain engines for his own use, which then led to his  involvement in the pirate engine scandals by short-circuiting the time-consuming Boulton & Watt process for his friends.  In spite of these serious differences of perspective and of practice the Boulton-Watt-Wilkinson Trinity continued to work together through the late 1770s and 1780s because they continued to make money and each realised that without the other this lucrative business would be threatened.  Then came the brothers’ dispute at Bersham.

In spite of John’s expressly declared wish to resolve their differences and retrieve the old mutually useful harmony Boulton and Watt were polite, concurred where they could but maintained a distance.  A number of issues were relevant.  First John Wilkinson, with his loss of Bersham and with the Willey lease ending, was clearly not the power in the land that he had been.  Second with William’s connivance there were skilled workmen available to Boulton & Watt with the running down of the Bersham works.  Third Watt’s Patent was due to expire in 1800 and with John Wilkinson involved in a host of pirate engines and with their sons’ increasing success in obtaining the back premiums for them through litigation there was money to be realised to replace any shortfall in profits from new engines.  That of course could only be to the detriment of a continuing business relationship with John.  A number of references illustrate this precarious balance between them in the period around the Arbitrators’ Award in the spring of 1796.

Towards the end of that year Boulton & Watt became heavily involved in London in the defence of their Patent against what they claimed had been a breach of it in a new steam engine then being advertised by Jabeth Hornblower.  The Hornblowers had previously canvassed support for their engine among the successful industrial magnates of the day one of whom was John Wilkinson.  Matthew Boulton knew this and following John Wilkinson’s overtures of continued friendship wrote to him.  He first extended an invitation to his home at Soho yet knowing that John Wilkinson had never been to Birmingham since the Birmingham Riots of 1791 destroyed the property and livelihood of his brother in law, Joseph Priestley.  Boulton then says:  “…I should also esteem it a mark of your friendship if you would send me the original letter which you recvd from Hornblower inviting you to join him and other such like friends in their opposition to our Patent…” [cclv]

Wilkinson’s reply is masterly.   He writes from Brymbo:  “Dear Sir,  The letter in question…being at Broseley with other papers in the B&W’s bundles and locked up, until I go there in the course of next month the injunction it is under will remain;   in the meantime I must consider the propriety of giving up a letter of that nature, more especially if the request I now make be not complied with, viz:  that B&W send me the originals of W.W.’s letters to their house or to any of the parties or agents concerned for them…” [cclvi]

No reply has survived but it seems likely such a letter met with a deafening silence from Boulton & Watt and the exchange did nothing to further their continued expressions of friendship.

James Watt senior had already drawn up a memorandum on their long term relations with John Wilkinson following the company’s listing, probably by the sons, “…of Engines made by John Wilkinson at Bersham for his own and other persons uses, with and without our consent.” [cclvii]  The list itself is informative.  It covers the period from the very first of Watt’s New Steam engines in 1776 to the summer of 1795 and is divided into two parts.

The first period, from 1776 to 1784, lists ten engines made by Wilkinson under agreed modifications to the normal Boulton & Watt contract and premiums.  For the first three engines erected by Wilkinson for his own use no premiums were charged.  This was of course in the halcyon days of 1776 and 1777 when there was excitement in the air and an urgency to have the first engines up and running.  Wilkinson’s part in this process, beyond that of supplying cylinders and cast iron parts, was as the practical experimental engineer who erected the engines according to instructions and reported back with suggestions for modifications.  It was a key role, and Boulton & Watt clearly recognised it by giving up the premiums on Wilkinson’s first engines.  The list refers to a letter of 17 July 1777 authorising this.

The next seven engines either had no written contractual agreement, or a modified one to Wilkinson’s advantage, and included five for his own works, two for Snedshill, two for Bradley and one for the lead mine at Maas y Fynnon Wen.  The remaining two were for France.  The Boulton & Watt comments included in the list indicate that Wilkinson was central in all the modified contractual arrangements for payment but having agreed the details then paid nothing.

The second list of engines built between 1787 and 1795 is headed “All the subsequent Engines have been erected without our knowledge or licence”.  There are thirty-five engines in this category with three others crossed out.  The Cark engine is not included.  Boulton & Watt’s notes indicate Wilkinson was involved in all the engines.   An astonishing fourteen over the years right up to1795 were for Bradley which confirms the size and dominance of this ironworks during the period.  The list also establishes that Wilkinson believed his role as experimental engineer, key supplier of parts and promoter and marketing agent entitled him, in the absence of a partnership in the company, to other financial benefits and concessions and he was determined to take them.   Unfortunately Boulton & Watt did not confront him about this until firm patterns had been established.  The reason why is in the elder James Watt’s memorandum.[cclviii] 

“…If it be asked why we did not sooner bring Mr. W’n to a settlement of accounts or take more decisive measures with him in respect to the Piracies he was always committing upon us, the answer is that we know him to be of a vindictive temper (although friendly to us where his own immediate interest was not concerned to the contrary & his friendship we have reason to think was sincere) & we knew he could do us much injury were he so disposed.  His friendship for us met with a reciprocation on our side, which we have shown by our attention to his interest always when in our power.  He in general executed our work well and there was no period, since the commencement of our connexion, in which a breach with him would not materially have deranged the order of our business, therefore we were not disposed to pursue any measures which might have interrupted the friendship which subsisted with him, hoping always that some period he might have been disposed to have made us some reasonable allowances for the use he made of our engines… Mr. W’s demand of fixt sum for all the Engines he might please to erect, shows the arbitrary & uncontracktable nature of a man who wished for perfect liberty to make as free with his neighbours property as suited him.  We cannot help however agreeing with him that these unsettled accounts were the seed of a plant of a very mischievous nature which has under his cultivation brought forth poisonous fruits insouciant at that shrine…”

There is some intemperate language in these notes, an indication of Watt’s mood of impatience and exasperation at the time, but a picture also emerges of Wilkinson as a lateral thinker playing with ideas.   Watt talks of the “…perpetual importunity of Mr Wilkinson…to erect such engines as he might want for his own use…”, and of Wilkinson “perpetually scheming new works…as if he had been doing us a favour…” when in fact it “..cost us much meditation and labour in the contrivance…” .   That is an important testimonial to Wilkinson coming from Watt and at this particular time.

In his notes Watt does point to other causes of the rift between them which provide important incidental information on their personal relations.   He mentions the sudden loss of much regular social contact following the Birmingham Riots of 1791 after which Wilkinson refused to visit their houses any more, which deprived them of  “…the opportunities of social fellowship… in which grievances on both sides were discussed & if (not) settled, at least were not placed to the account of want of cordiality…”.   There is also an interesting reference to Wilkinson’s closing of the Bersham works during the litigation and before the arbitrators judgement:  “…his unfortunate contest with his brother made him suspicious of us and in a fit of rashness, probably with an intention to be revenged on both parties, he stopt his works at Bersham, which whether intended or not was a cruel stroke at our business, for engines which we had contracted for could not be executed in due time for want of the castings & the Coalbrookdale Company to whose solicitations for part of our business we had always given a refusal on account of our connexion with him, have not shown much alacrity in executing our orders when necessity obliged us to apply to them…”

Watt’s notes look like an internal company memorandum to accompany the list of pirate engines compiled by his son.   As such whether or not Wilkinson actually saw them is not known but he will have picked up their tenor and intention from the talk of the time and clearly saw it as a declaration of war.   He was not slow to respond.  

He sent to Boulton and Watt a copy of the advertisement  “I purpose putting into the various Newspapers in different parts of the Kingdom:   STEAM & FIRE ENGINES   The public are hereby informed that Mr. Wilkinson proposes to erect Engines & supply the Materials for Engines upon a new and improved Construction – and the public are also informed that he will indemnify those persons who make use of these Engines from any obstructions that may be thrown in the way by Messrs Boulton & Watt.” [cclix]

The letter in which this intended advertisement was enclosed reflects a keen sense of betrayal and of injustices born by Wilkinson over the years with great patience and restraint.  He talks of Boulton & Watt’s recent conduct towards him effacing the memory of his services to them over the last 22 years  “…particularly to the former part of it – when…you must be well aware that the assistance I gave you…was the means of carrying you through many of the difficulties which presented themselves in the bringing your Engine Scheme to perfection…” [cclx]

In particular his suggestions for overcoming the practical difficulties involved in the Condensor in the production models improved the engine, but it then did not conform to Watt’s specification in his Patent.  He reminds Watt of the “tender ground” he has since stood on with regard to this matter and of the dangers of coming to Trial over it.  This is an implied threat given the then contest with the Hornblowers, and it is in this context that Wilkinson expresses himself bewildered by Boulton & Watt’s conduct towards him “during the late Contests” with his brother.  Before the compulsory settling of his account with the company after the sale of Bersham he says he had picked up rumours that they had intended to close his Works if he did not pay in full, yet:  “…it was my Intention when that settlement was made to open the Account again provided your conduct towards me afterwards did not (sic) tend to close those wounds in our Friendship which had been opened – This has been very far from the case…” [cclxi]

These exchanges signified the end of any further co-operation between John Wilkinson and Boulton & Watt, whose affairs came increasingly into the hands of their sons.   John Wilkinson at this point in his life had no surviving children and within his empire it fell to his nephews, Thomas Jones, William Johnston and Richard Watson, to provide the next generation of service and support.  He had clearly discussed this issue in his correspondence with Joseph Priestly in America.  Priestley had expressed particular confidence in Richard Watson whose parents and family the Priestleys knew well, and he assured John that his late sister Mary had always looked upon young Richard as a son.

Chapter 11 – QUEST FOR AN HEIR

After the death in childbirth in 1786 of his daughter Mary[cclxii], the child of his first wife Ann Mawdesly, and since his second wife Mary Lee, whom he married when she was forty, had been unable to provide him with children, John Wilkinson’s concerns about an heir to succeed him deepened.  All his contempories had sons, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, James Stockdale, Richard Reynolds, Joseph Priestley, and for them the new generation was in place to ensure the succession and the continuation of their affairs.

Not so with Wilkinson.  He had no sons.  He did have nephews who had become  significant figures in his business world and who clearly had expectations for the future.  How far such expectations were encouraged by Wilkinson, perhaps to secure at least some loyalty through his later years of quarrels and litigation, is not clear.  He certainly promoted his relations, Thomas Jones, William Johnston and Richard Watson, into positions of management responsibility in his business world whilst yet retaining to himself  the absolute control of important issues like policy, expansion and capital investment.  It was in the nature of the man to retain such control, simply because he believed that he was more skilled and experienced and efficient than they were.  It did not necessarily indicate a lack of trust in his nephews, though events ultimately made clear that it had rankled with them.

It was also in the nature of the man to try to solve for himself the problem of having no heir by a carefully constructed process of direct action to procure one, which itself must have contributed to the further insecurity of his nephews.   He wanted a son, from his own loins, and clearly felt that in the late 1790s, as he approached 70, he was still vigorous enough to produce one.  But he also needed a woman, who would willingly accept his attentions and the clear conditions he would impose without being difficult and demanding about the consequences.

Most commentators have condemned the process he eventually put in train, by which a mistress bore him three children in his old age, as a betrayal of any Christian morality he claimed for himself [cclxiii] and more particularly as a clear betrayal of his wife Mary Lee; but Wilkinson always equivocated in the matter of his Christian beliefs and religious dogma would not have been a serious consideration in his plans.  More important to him was his continuing relationship with Mary Lee and there is good evidence that this was not the betrayal it seemed.

That he cared deeply about her in the 1780s and 1790s, when she stayed behind at their northern sanctuary of Castle Head as he went south on business, is clear in many of his letters to James Stockdale who lived at Cark nearby [cclxiv].  He refers frequently to letters he has written to Mrs Wilkinson, telling her of his safe arrival at various destinations after days on the road, sometimes asking his friend to deliver an enclosure to her personally that she may have it the sooner or asking him to confirm that she has recovered from her latest indisposition and that she continues to take her medication.  That evidence extended over the years as they grew older together and is of a close and loving relationship.

Unfortunately only one of his letters to his wife appears to have survived but it is particularly illuminating.  He first asks her to pass his compliments to Mr Stockdale with some better news of affairs in Cornwall where their investments were not doing well.  Then he says:  “…A new mixture of fat and lean, sweet and sour or of good and evil seems to be preferable for us upon the whole, to that choice which if left entirely to ourselves we might make of having only the former without any seasonings of the latter.  That you may have and enjoy this in such proportion as to make you happy is the sincere wish of       Yours affectionately     John Wilkinson”  [cclxv]

The letter establishes that his wife is not only a confidant in his business affairs with whom, as with his friend James Stockdale, he can philosophise and discuss matters freely, but also from the tone it is evident that he cares deeply about her happiness.

That caring continued until she died, in 1806, still at Castle Head, by which time his mistress had produced the three children, who were all living with her by then at his Denbighshire estate at Brymbo.  There are no indications that the mistress and his wife ever met, but there is clear information as to how he felt about the loss of Mary Lee.  The memorial to her on the south transept wall of Lindale Church near to Castle Head, erected soon after she died, has a telling footnote – “She was humane, liberal and beloved”.  That is more than convention required.   If she had been simply a wife put aside the handsome memorial itself, without the footnote, would have been enough to satisfy appearances.  And there is more.

Mary Lee left a will, which of itself is significant since it is evidence that she assumed she had property to dispose of on her death, when under the then law any property a woman owned at the time of her marriage, and on her death, belonged to her husband.

Clearly between themselves John Wilkinson and Mary Lee did not accept this process since he had ratified her will in the presence of three witnesses on the day it was made, 16 October 1802.  Nonetheless the law put aside Mary Lee’s will on the grounds that she “…had no power to make a will as her estate was the absolute property of her husband John Wilkinson.” [cclxvi].  Far from accepting this decision Wilkinson went to law again in 1807, the year before his own death and the year after Mary died, and agreed to the lease and release of all her lands listed in the will to allow it to be executed, because of his “…regard and affection for his late wife and a desire to execute her wishes…”. [cclxvii].

In the context of this close and caring relationship the two may long have considered  and discussed together their lack of an heir, and it is probable that the plan to use another woman to procure one was arrived at jointly.  Plenty of wealthy men of the day kept a mistress and maintained them comfortably, sometimes with the knowledge of the wife who accepted the situation provided the mistress did not threaten her status or position.  In such cases the mistress was kept for reasons of sexual gratification because the wife could not, or for whatever reason would not, satisfy the husband’s physical needs.

It seems to have been different with the Wilkinsons.   This one mistress apart, there is no good evidence that Wilkinson was a philanderer who chased after other women, in spite of his physical vigour which endured into old age nor the second-hand stories about his lechery that have circulated both then and since. Conversely  it is clear that he was liked and respected, through his middle life and the years of his rise to power, by the wives of his friends and business associates, for his supportive attitude to women in a society where they had limited status.  It is probable then, that he used this one woman, with the agreement of his “liberal and beloved”  wife, simply to procure an heir.

The mistress was a maid at Brymbo called Ann Lewis.  As such she would see little or nothing of Mary Lee at Castle Head a hundred miles to the north, the more so since Mary rarely left her northern domain in these later years, which was probably a strategy of her choosing if she was party to this process.  It is likely that the maid was identified as a suitable woman for the purpose by a certain James Adam, also of Brymbo and a man increasingly to be trusted by John Wilkinson, who ultimately made him a trustee and executor of his estates under his will.  Events proved that to be an unwise decision and a major misjudgement of character; which immediately raises questions as to precisely what relationship existed between Ann Lewis and James Adam at the time and later, the more so since they both lived at Castle Head for most of the 20 years immediately following John Wilkinson’s death.

John Wilkinson bought the Brymbo Hall Estate with 500 acres of land in 1792 so it is likely that Ann Lewis became his mistress after that date.  In the following nine years to the birth of their first child in 1801 almost nothing is recorded about the relationship.  It is an indication of the discretion with which it was conducted, particularly since this was the period of litigation with his brother and his quarrel with Boulton & Watt, a time when he had detractors a-plenty who would not have hesitated to abuse his name had they found cause.

There is a dearth of primary information about his relationship with Ann Lewis during the early years she was with him.  There are passing references in the later letters of Gilbert Gilpin, whose judgement and commentary has to be suspect following his departure from the Bersham works in 1795 and his disparaging remarks about his former employer elsewhere.  One letter in particular, referring to an incident in 1804, is invariably quoted in secondary sources and provides a glimpse of Ann Lewis and of Wilkinson’s responses to her:  “…He has lately been over at B Rowleys for a few days together with his girl. She (poor creature) while there, had nearly died of indigestion from having gorged herself with eating salmons.  Old Shylock and her withdrew from the table; and having laid on the bed together for a few hours she returned perfectly recovered.  Mr and Mrs Blakeway were there at the same time…” [cclxviii]. 

The fact that Mr and Mrs Blakeway were present on this occasion is significant.  Edward Blakeway had married the sister of Mary Lee, Wilkinson’s wife, and they and the Wilkinsons had been very close for many years.  She was dead by this time and Blakeway had married a much younger woman[cclxix], but they were clearly still all friends, and the Blakeways were in a position to monitor what was happening between Wilkinson and Ann Lewis and to report back to Mary Lee at Castle Head as appropriate.   The fact that Wilkinson appears to be comfortable, even uninhibited, by the attendance of close family is also relevant.  However, there is no mention of Ann Lewis in the other important sources of the period, either in the letters of Joseph Priestley, who as a Divine might not have been sympathetic and therefore might not have been told, nor in the Stockdale Family papers.  

There is, however, one piece of evidence which suggests that Ann Lewis might not have been the only young woman to have bestowed sexual favours on John Wilkinson in his late years.  It is found in John Randall’s The Wilkinsons in a long verbatim quote from a gossipy letter written by Gilbert Gilpin to William Wilkinson.  Randall typically does not give the date of the letter but he clearly had it in front of him at the time of writing.  The present whereabouts of the original are not known and it does not appear in the collection of Gilpin letters held at Shropshire Archives, but in it in his inimical gossipy style and following on from a string of disparaging remarks about his former employer Gilpin describes how security was breached at a house where John Wilkinson kept a group of three girls: [cclxx]   “…Will Rylands and Morris got into his seraglio in the night sometime ago, and the girls (3 in no.) not having full confidence in each other so far as related to keeping the secret, disclosed it, and one of them wrote J.W. respecting it, in consequence of which he wrote Mr. Giles one of his clerks (a seafaring man) to sleep in the house every night, since which Mrs Giles has become jealous of her husband and the ladies of the harem.  It is not known how Rylands and Morris will get off when J.W. arrives…”

Gilpin does not say if Ann Lewis was one of the three girls in question and gives no further details, but unless he was making up this salacious story as a gratification to William Wilkinson, whose enmity towards John was by this time well established, it is possible that in his search for a suitable person to bear his heir John Wilkinson might have had experimental relations with other women before he settled on Ann Lewis.

If his relationship with her began soon after his purchase of Brymbo in 1792 there is also the possibility that his getting Ann Lewis with child did not come easily.  It may be of course that the relationship did not begin until later, but their first-born, a daughter, was not born until 27 July 1802 when Wilkinson was 74 years old.  He called her Mary Ann, the names of her mother and his beloved Mary Lee.  It may be significant that he put his wife’s name first.  The second child was also a girl, born three years later on 6^th August 1805.  How he must have longed for a boy to have called her Johnina.   And then at last the following year, when he must have begun to despair, on 8 October 1806 when he was 78 years old, a boy, and of course he called him John.  It is not known whether Mary Lee, by then an old lady in her eighties, who died just two months later and who