Proto industrialization in the UK-Older than you think

A reply I gave on Quara about proto industrialization. I discuss the origins of wool, cotton, copper, iron, steam power and some ways in which they are linked.

If industrialisation means the organisation of the factory system and the automation of work there is one answer. If industrialisation means new (or at least abundant) materials and forms of energy, there is another. I am more qualified to discuss the second but I will start with the first anyway. Both required peace and improved agriculture to gain momentum. There is also the question of what is proto-industrialisation, which I shall treat as trade and technology that creates large new markets, especially for exports.

The Saxons had exported woollen cloaks to the continent. In 1066, William the Conqueror of Normandy, became the ruler of England. Importantly for this story, his wife was Matilda of Flanders and he had major Flemish allies such as Eustace of Boulogne,, then Flemish. Flanders was a major cloth weaving centre. For centuries to follow, English and Welsh prosperity depended on the export of raw wool to Flanders particularly in the early stages from Savigniac and Cistercian monastries founded during the 1130s onwards. The monks were international in focus and exported production as far as Italy. There was also private enterprise.

Despite huge earnings from raw wool, Henry VII wanted to add value by expanding the export of wool cloth. He reduced the export of wool and made a deal with Burgundy to sell cloth there instead. The weaving industry grew. Fashion changed. Lighter cloth was demanded. Flemish weavers were imported in numbers to set up weaving of lighter wool cloth, silk and linen. Growth continued. Elizabeth 1st expelled the (Flemish) Hanseatic League traders in 1597 to reduce the competition for raw wool. Elizabeth also awarded a charter to the East India Company traditionally on 31 December 1600. The EIC started importing cotton clothes, calico and muslin, from India around 1690. These were hugely popular across Europe. In 1741, a spinning mill was opened in Birmingham to produce cotton yarn in the UK. Manchester captured the trade due to a damper climate and port facilities at nearby Liverpool. Also, the hilly countryside provided water power to drive the textile mills both cotton and wool. Hand woven Indian cottons were always more delicate and fetched higher prices. The EIC did not cut off the hands of Indian weavers. The EIC sold the product.

Now we turn to new materials and energy. There are several threads in this. Copper, iron and steam all need to be accounted for.

Cortez overthrew the Aztec Empire of Mexico by 1521. Looted gold and later, following Pizzaro’s conquest of the Incas in 1533 even more gold and also silver flooded into Europe. This disrupted the traditional relationship between gold, silver and copper causing the relative value of copper to rise and thus a shortage of copper coin. Elizabeth 1st dealt with this problem in 1568 by setting up The Mines Royal using German engineers to mine and smelt coppper. The mine was in Cumbria. However, the smelter was in Neath in South Wales. The Welsh Method of refining copper ore had been discovered (anonymously). This required treating the ore in alternative blast and reverbaratory furnaces as many as 30 times with purity increasing each time. This required 9 tonnes of coal per tonne of copper ore. Cheaper to move the copper ore to the coal. So copper from Cumbria, Angelsey in North Wales and Cornwall found its way to Neath and Swansea with abundant coal and port access. The former Cistercian Abbey at Neath became, briefly, the world’s biggest copper smelter. Eventually similar processes were used to refine tin, lead, silver, zinc, nickel (Old Nick’s metal, a deadly contaminant in copper). Bristol used local coal to extract lead from ores in the Mendips. Mining for lead (usually mixed with silver, zinc, sometimes copper) spread across the UK.

The copper was used for coinage, as discussed. It was also used to cover ships hulls under water (copper bottomed) to reduce fouling by weeds, making British ships faster and more manouverable than their rivals and able to spend more time at sea. Pots and pans were made of copper, later tinplate. There were two big colonial markets. In India, copper was used to trade for calico, cotton cloth and later tea and numerous other cargos including opium for laudunum. In West Africa, copper was used to trade for slaves. Industrial uses also multiplied. Birmingham became a leader making devices from brass (copper+zinc). Yorkshire too.

The Cornish copper mines were deep. They needed constant pumping. To flourish, they needed new technology to pump out the water. That new technology needed cheap, strong iron and precision engineering before it could emerge.

The Cistercians smelted bloomery iron (basic cast iron) in exportable quantities especially in South Wales and Yorkshire. In Yorkshire they may even have developed or adopted from China, an early blast furnace. However, Henry VIII dissolved the monastries to seize their wealth. The industrial revolution was put on hold for 200 years although bloomery production perhaps continued at Margam Abbey (Port Talbot) in South Wales and Rivelaux in Yorkshire. Iron making shifted to The Weald in Sussex near to the London market. Early blast furnaces producing finery iron were developed in Belgium and adopted on the Weald from 1590 onwards but charcoal and iron supplies dwindled by 1700 or so. The industry spread out to distant locations often near Cistercian sites where charcoal, iron ore and limestone could be found.

The last week of steel making at Port Talbot
1130 AD-2024 AD

Traditional iron making used charcoal made from wood as the reducing agent in the iron making process. The district around a large blast furnace will soon be stripped of suitable timber and transport costs will rise higher and higher. So there is an incentive to replace charcoal. This was not however the immediate cause of the transition to coke. The inventor of industrial iron making was trying to make cooking pots. Abram Darby was a brass smith in Bristol having preiously worked in Birmingham on malt mills, an odd choice for a Quaker. He seemed to have used coke (coal processed in the way wood is processed into charcoal) in experiments in Bristol to make “grey” iron for cooking pots, perhaps because of availability in the middle of a city. He discovered that grey iron could be moulded in greeensand with a simpler process than the usual “white” iron. Not only that, the pots were thinner, so lighter and had a much higher melting point. The use of coke allowed higher smelting termperatures and purer iron. He obtained patents in 1707 and in 1709, moved to Coalbrokedale in Shropshire where he bought an existing charcoal blast furnace. He seems to have improved the process to get the right balance of coke, limestone and iron ore and began to make cooking pots in large quantities. Other cast iron products followed. The modern brand of cooking range, Rayburn, is a direct descendant of Darby’s products, now owned by AGA. After his patent expired iron making spread over the coal districts of the UK including in 1765, Merthyr Tydfil.

Before steam engines could be developed, precisely machined cylinders were required. These were evolved from cannon. The first cannon were made in China of wrought iron staves bound together. They were known in Europe by 1328. Standardized cannon shot sizes required cannon of a standard size for good logistics. It was found that cannon that were bored from a solid piece were less liable to explode than cannon made by casting. In 1713, Joham Manitz, a Swiss inventor working in France, improved boring methods enough to set up a production line in Lewes in Sussex.

Meanwhile, in Cornwall, mines were getting deep and expensive to pump. Some mineowners approached a local ironmonger, Thomas Newcomen, to think about pumping mechanisms. Newcomen knew about Savery’s work in France which used the vacuum created by cooling steam to lift water directly but not far. In cooperation with Savery, who held the patent, Newcomen developed a vaccum engine that pulled a beam that operated a pump handle rather than lifting water directly. This allowed pumping at far greated depths. Newcomen’s vacuum required a piston and a close, predictable fit between the piston and cylinder. The first machine went into operation in 1712 at a colliery in Staffordshire near a coal supply. James Watt made many improvement to the Newcomen Engine doubling efficiency and set up Boulton and Watt in Birmingham in 1775 to make stationary steam engines. They needed very precise cylinders. The cannon manufacturer James Wilkinson at Bersham in North Wales, a friend of Boultons, had developed suibable precise methods. He started making steam cylinders for B&W and transferred the cannon production to Merthyr Tydfil iron masters. Boulton and Watt’s engine could produce rotary motion and became a reliable source of power to drive the machines for the textile mills of the factories of the North of England.

Watt’s patents expired in 1800. In 1804, Richard Trevethick, a Cornish engineer, related to Swansea copper smelters, working at a major iron works in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales designed a high pressure steam locomotive. This locomotive pulled a train of 70 passengers and 10 tons of iron about 10 miles. Trevethick’s engine was light and fuel efficient. He mounted it on road transport and a barge. In 1805 he built and demonstrated another locomotive in the North East of England where, in 1825 George Stephenson built the world’s first passenger railway. Descriptions of Trevethick’s personality suggest he may have had some form of autism including dyslexia. He died penniless and is buried in an unmarked grave.

At this point, in terms of primary invention, the first industrial revolution has perhaps ended.

The cranes for unloading iron ore, coal and limestone at Port Talbot where iron making recently ended after 884 years.