Coal and Iron

England was fortunate in that coal and iron ore, the staple materials for mechanisation, were plentifully available, as were other minerals – lead, copper and tin – that were used in industry. However, until the eighteenth century, there was a scarcity of usable iron . Iron is drawn out from ore as pure liquid metal by a process called smelting. For centuries, charcoal (from burnt timber) was used for the smelting process. This had several problems: charcoal was too fragile to transport across long distances; its impurities produced poor-quality iron; it was in short supply because Coalbrookdale: blast- furnaces (left and centre) and charcoal- ovens (right); painting by F.Vivares, . ACTIVITY Discuss the developments in Britain and in other parts of the world in the eighteenth century that encouraged British industrialisation. forests had been destroyed for timber; and it could not generate high temperatures. The solution to this problem had been sought for years before it was solved by a family of iron-masters, the Darbys of Shropshire. In the course of half a century, three generations of this family – grandfather, father and son, all called Abraham Darby – brought about a revolution in the metallurgical industry. It began with an invention in by the first Abraham Darby ( - ). This was a blast furnace that would use coke, which could generate high temperatures; coke was derived from coal by removing the sulphur and impurities. This invention meant that furnaces no longer had to depend on charcoal. The melted iron that emerged from these furnaces permitted finer and larger castings than before. The process was further refined by more inventions. The second Darby ( - ) developed wrought-iron (which was less brittle) from pig-iron. Henry Cort ( - ) designed the puddling furnace (in which molten iron could be rid of impurities) and the rolling mill, which used steam power to roll purified iron into bars. It now became possible to produce a broader range of iron products. The durability of iron made it a better material than wood for everyday items and for machinery. Unlike wood, which could burn or splinter, the physical and chemical properties of iron could be controlled. In the 1770s, John Wilkinson ( - ) made the first iron chairs, vats for breweries and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. In , the third Darby ( - ) built the first iron bridge in the world, in Coalbrookdale, spanning the river Severn*. Wilkinson used cast iron for the first time to make water pipes ( miles of it for the water supply of Paris). The iron industry then came to be concentrated in specific regions as integrated units of coal mining and iron smelting. Britain was lucky in possessing excellent coking coal and high-grade iron ore in the same basins or even the same seams. These basins were also close to ports; there were five coastal coalfields which could deliver their products almost straight into ships. Since the coalfields were near the coast, shipbuilding increased, as did the shipping trade. *This area later grew into the village called Ironbridge. The Cast Iron Bridge near Coalbrookdale , painting by William Williams, .