Famously depicted by Philip James de Loutherberg (1740–1812) in his painting ‘Coalbrookdale at Night’ (1801), the area now known as Ironbridge Gorge, on the banks of the River Severn in Shropshire, is widely considered one of the cradles of the ‘Industrial Revolution’. It was here that the Bristol born Quaker Abraham Darby (1678–1717) developed the first commercially successful coke (instead of charcoal) fuelled furnace that transformed iron production in Great Britain and with it the industrial trajectory of the nation. As nonconformist Protestants, Darby and his descendants at Ironbridge have been used to support a national historical narrative that saw Protestant individualism as an attribute of economic success. According to this narrative, the ‘Industrial Revolution’ was largely led by Protestants and heralded the rise of the ‘modern world’ by marking a major discontinuity with the less technically innovative medieval and early modern past. By examining the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century industrial activities of the Catholic Brooke family, who owned the Manor of Madeley (which encompassed what is now Ironbridge Gorge), this book convincingly challenges this ‘well-rehearsed origin myth’ (p. 1).
As the author, Paul Belford, confidently states from the outset ‘This book overturns some traditional narratives about the process of industrialisation in England’ (p. 1), both in terms of the chronology of industrialisation and the religious makeup of those involved. By exploring the industrial activities of this Catholic gentry family, Belford has contributed an important study to a growing body of work that has recognised the contribution English Catholics made to industrial innovation and enterprise in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As Belford makes clear, ‘Darby did not acquire a terra nullis in backward rural Shropshire’ (p. 1) and the area around the Manor of Madeley had been a centre of innovation and experimentation in ferrous metallurgy since at least 1536.
Throughout, the book focuses principally on the careers and industrial activities of three successive heads of the Brooke family: Sir Robert Brooke (c. 1515–58), John Brooke (c. 1538–98), and Sir Basil Brooke (1576–1646). Their extensive industrial interests are the focus of the final three chapters, which are the most informative and compelling part of the book. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 (‘Industry and Conformity’; ‘Innovation and Resistance’; and ‘Industrialisation and Identity’) describe in detail the industrial activities of this pioneering family and provide clear and detailed ‘textbook’ descriptions of metal working processes that will be of use to students of the history of technology generally.
The Brookes acquired the Manor of Madeley in 1544 and in the following century transformed the industrial profile of the area. At its peak in the seventeenth century the Brooke’s industrial portfolio comprised coal mines as well as ‘the largest Catholic-owned ironworking businesses in the country, and one of the most important regardless of religious affiliation’ (p. 189). Under Sir Basil, the family can be credited with pioneering the cementation process in steel manufacture, which transformed wrought iron into steel, and for which he was granted a patent in 1615. The cementation process marked a major contribution to metallurgical science and remained in use in parts of the United Kingdom until 1951. The family were clearly shrewd in their investments and manoeuvred themselves to take advantage of opportunities as they saw them. Beyond Madeley, they had interests in soap manufacture, as well as silver- and lead-mining in Ireland, wireworks at Tintern on the River Wye, and owned ironworks in the Forest of Dean from which they obtained the iron for their Coalbrookdale steelworks.
Belford was director of the archaeological unit at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust between 2000–10 and the study is consciously presented as ‘historical archaeology’. It combines documentary and archaeological evidence to tease out new insights about the area and the people involved. Given the paucity of documentary sources and the fragmented nature of the archaeological record this interdisciplinary approach is very successful. Throughout, close archaeological analysis is made of a range of features (both industrial and domestic) across the region which Belford contextualises in relation to the wider historiography and activities of the Brooke family. Like an archaeological report, the close descriptions are accompanied by maps, plans, and photographs. There are fifty-four figures in total, though this does not include a pedigree, which would have been useful. Sadly, the book also lacks an index, which hampers quick navigation of the text.
The archaeology confirms that the Brookes were engaged with the early cementation process in steel production; it demonstrates that the sophisticated watercourses used by the Darbys at Coalbrookdale were developed by the Brookes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and confirms that the industrial complex the Brookes engineered significantly influenced how the area developed in the subsequent centuries. Fundamentally, the archaeology uncovered by Belford clearly shows that the Catholic Brookes created ‘the industrial landscape that was later used by the Quaker Darby family’ (p. 190) so successfully.
Although their industrial activities underpin the central argument of this study, Belford has been careful to place the men and the estate in their social, cultural, and geographic contexts. Chapter 1, ‘Lines of Enquiry’, places the study within the wider historiography and introduces the reader to Belford’s methodology of ‘historical archaeology’. Chapter 2, ‘Before the Revolution’ demarcates the area under study and outlines what industry was performed at the Manor of Madeley before the Dissolution. Chapter 3, ‘Society and Religion’, offers an overview of the family’s Catholicism whilst chapters 4 and 5 (‘Visions in the Landscapes’ and ‘Expressions in Architecture’) examine the architectural remains and features in the landscape to understand how the Brooke family displayed their Catholicism. The chapters draw particularly on the work of Alexandra Walsham on sacred topography, but are sadly rather inconclusive. Very little survives intact from the period forcing Belford to focus on the parkland and gardens at Madeley Court (especially the sundial, gatehouse, and lodge). Though the findings are necessarily tentative there is little that convincingly suggests these features purposefully displayed ‘any specifically Catholic identity’ (p. 128).
Through these early chapters, the family appears as one loyal to their Catholic heritage, with deeply-held notions of faith, yet careful to accommodate that Catholicism to the demands of the Protestant ascendancy. Their Catholicism was ‘visible but not radical’ (p. 70) and in times of fluctuating toleration this pragmatic equivocation enabled them to advance socially, economically, and politically. It was only in the tumult caused by the English Civil Wars that the family’s fortunes turned: Basil Brooke died a papist delinquent in the Tower of London in 1646.
Given the importance of the history of Ironbridge Gorge to the industrial history of Great Britain, this book presents an important study that goes a long way to challenge the traditional narrative of English industrialisation. It highlights the role English Catholics played in early industrialisation and challenges not only the dating of the ‘Industrial Revolution’ but contributes to the debate concerning whether the term ‘revolution’ is appropriate at all. Whatever the future outcome of these debates it is clear: ‘Without the Brooke dynasty, the Darby “dynasty of ironfounders” could not have succeeded’ (p. 190).
