Ironbridge – Raistrick’s contribution

In 1945, at the end of World War II, Arthur Raistrick was invited to take up a fellowship at the Quaker College of Woodbridge; Selly Oak, and met there -members of the Darby and Cadbury families: This led to studies of other Quaker industrialists published in 1950 as Quakers in Science and industry and in 1953 to the Dynasty of Iron Founders – The Darbys and Coalbrookdale, using material from the archives of Allied Ironfounders Ltd, held in Coalbrookdale, In 1709 Abraham Darby took over an old charcoal-fired iron furnace from 1638, and rebuilt it to produce cast iron, using coke in place of charcoal. It was again rebuilt in 1777 by Abraham Darby III to cast the various parts of the famous Iron Bridge in 1779. This “Old Furnace” was blown out early in the 19^th century, and a new moulding shop and stores were built around, and over it, so preserving it in the state it was from the 1777 rebuilding, with only the upper few feet being lost.

In 1950, the Coalbrookdale Company, now part of Allied Ironfounders began to clear the site of the Upper Works, under the supervision of Dr GF Williams, a managing director within the company. Several thousand tons of rubbish, and old war buildings, were removed to uncover the ‘Old Furnace’, and it was the pioneering work of Williams and Raistrick who recognized the importance of the excavations and saved the furnace from destruction. Financial help from the company led to the creation of the original Coalbrookedale Museum and Furnace in 1959, so celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the company. The full story of the excavation was presented in Ironbridge by Dr Raistrick in 1979, as the Rolf Memorial lecture – ‘The Old Furnace at Coalbrookedale’. The general design of the Museum and its construction was done jointly by Raistrick and Williams, with the help of the staff and work people of Allied Ironfounders.

The small company museum became part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum in 1968, now being known as the Museum of Iron, based in the Great Warehouse built in 1838. The museum and Furnace continued to be run by the Coalbrookedale Company and cared for by retired employees, until 1970, when it was transferred to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, of which Arthur Raistrick was Vice-President. In 1972 Raistrick was appointed as ‘Curator of Technology’ with the responsibility of restoring and building the ’Ironbridge Gorge Museum’, Plate 32 in Raistrick’s Dynasty of Iron Founders is a photograph showing Raistrick himself, together with GF Williams, at the 1984 opening of the Ironbridge Institute, sited in the Long Warehouse. This building also houses the Museum Library and Archives, and it is there that Raistrick’s research papers relating to the Darby family, and industry in Shropshire and Yorkshire can be found.

By the early 1950’s Arthur Raistrick was spending most of the week at King’s College, Newcastle where he was Reader in Geology, and living at weekends and vacation time in the barn in Linton, which he had converted to a home. It was during the same period that, in 1949, he became a founder member of the Upper Wharfedale Field Society, and its President from 1952 to 1967. Much of his work at Ironbridge was carried out in parallel with his Grassington activities.

It is also worth taking time to explore pathways of Lincoln Hill, the site of limestone quarries in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

The Hill is crossed by the remains of “plateways” and an inclined plane, all built to carry limestone, ironstone, coal or charcoal to the Coalbrookdale industrial works. In the late 18^th century, the Quaker ironmaster Richard Reynolds laid out the footpaths as “Sabbath walks” or “Workmens walks”, in the hope that workers and their families would enjoy the outdoors on Sundays, and so keep out of the public houses. He planned special viewpoints on the walks, with a climb up 150 steep steps to the site of the former Rotunda; where a rotating seat once gave a panoramic view of Coalbrookdale, the Gorge and River Severn, and even to the Welsh hills. Now the Iron Bridge itself can be seen through the trees, but the full panorama has unfortunately been lost.
Significantly it was Dr Arthur Raistrick (later a YDS Founder Member), who had the vision and initiative to realise the immense significance of this early icon of the industrial age.