I am sure a lot of you will have admired the graceful curve of the many black and white cast Bridges strewn around the canal system as you have cruised, sporting the name of Horseley Iron Works. As some of you may also know, as a young lad, I did not like school and this resulted in me spending a good proportion of my time messing about on the cut, to the point that when I came to leaving school I had already lined myself up a job working for local canal haulier Mr Alan ‘Caggy’ Stevens, but this was not to be, for my father stepped in and said “you will go and get yourself an apprenticeship and gain a proper trade, then you can bugger about on the canals” And so it was that I was indentured as an engineering apprentice at the large Tipton firm of Horseley Bridge & Thomas Piggott. At the time I did not realise the significance of this Company, and it’s historical connections to the cut.
BRIEF COMPANY HISTORY
1712 The earliest serious coal mining in the Tipton area took place near the Dudley border where Thomas Newcomen built his first successful atmospheric steam pumping engine at Coneygree. As a result of this development and the construction of other similar engines it became possible to mine at greater depths and over wider areas. Mining slowly increased and moved nearer to the centre of Tipton. A group of local industrialists Edward Dixon, a banker of Dudley, Joseph Amphlett, another local banker but also involved with mining and William Bedford a solicitor of Birmingham formed a partnership to exploit this situation. There existed an ancient agricultural area in Tipton known as the Horseley Estate and this comprised 309 acres into which a short section of canal had been cut from the main line near Great Bridge with the intention this would be extended. Another short cut of canal had been made from the Dudley canal. This activity signified that industry was about to extend to this land and there are many who consider this Estate to be at the very heart of the Black Country.
1792 Horseley Bridge originated as the mining company of Dixon, Amphlett and Bedford. The Horseley Estate was purchased for £10,000 and mines were sunk in their new land and in cutting a canal with locks to extend the short length near Great Bridge, and in due course create what was known as the Toll End Branch of the canal. Various short sections were cut from this new line to access the Horseley mines and additional pumping engines were built, rapidly changing the ancient rural scene. At the centre of the estate was an ancient blade mill formerly a corn mill sitting at the edge of a large mill pool which was fed from a stream originating in the high Dudley ground. It is considered that this mill was at the site of the Tipton mill recorded in the Domesday records. The first Horseley mines were sunk near this mill site and plans show these details. As time and mining progressed the coal extraction was to cause land sinkage and damage to the locks and canal arms, all of which had to be repeatedly made good.
Throughout the Midland area there was increasing industrial development and they decided to build iron furnaces. These furnaces were located near the Mill Pool and were blown by a Boulton and Watt beam engine of 43 inch diameter cylinder 8 feet in length and this was set to work on 24 October 1809. From this time Horseley had the facilities to melt and cast iron.
The next development was the building of an engineering works alongside the canal and near to these furnaces. The machinery was usually driven by a waterwheel from the flow of water from the old mill pool but they installed a small steam engine to turn the machinery when the pool water was insufficient. Thus they became capable of undertaking the construction of all types of iron components and structures.
1808 Iron furnaces were built in 1808 and 1809.
1813 Mr. Aaron Manby joined the firm and developed the engineering side and the company
1818 The casting of bridges commenced and a swing bridge was built for the East India docks, London
1820 A bridge was built for over the canal at Brentford.
A general form of construction was developed for bridges spanning canals. This comprised of four main side castings, two each side joined at the centre span by a form of locking plate and then bolted together. Cast iron plates were then fitted to these main castings by bolts and formed an arch at the level of the bottom profile of the side castings and creating a smooth appearance. The upper surface of these plates was built up as necessary to form the deck of the bridge. Such bridges were cast for the Oxford and Coventry canals and many for the Birmingham Canal Navigation.
Two of Horseley’s bridges at Dudley Port Junction
1821 Built the first iron steamship, 'Aaron Manby', Prefabricated by Aaron Manby of the Horseley Iron Company Staffordshire; the vessel was first constructed in the Engineering Works yard at Tipton and then dismantled and sent in sections by canal to Rotherhithe Dock, London. Finally fully re-assembled, she sailed from there across the Channel to Rouen. Later she was on the River Loire and was only broken up in 1855. There is clear evidence that a significant reduction in draught, from about 30 to 18 inches, was a prime object of iron construction for this river vessel.
1822 Thomas Piggott and Company was founded, and built iron canal boats.
1824-5 The Horseley Iron Co. built a boat for the Shannon, the Marquis Wellesley, constructed as a twin boat, with a central paddle wheel.
1829 Constructed the Galton Canal Bridge at Smethwick for Thomas Telford in 1829. One of the largest bridges built with a 150 foot span over the new Telford line of the canal at Smethwick. Although it is now restricted to foot traffic it was in full road use until about 1970.
I remember looking at original drawings of both this and the Stewart Aqueduct when I spent time in the drawing office on my ‘cooks tour’ as an apprentice.
The Engine branch aqueduct over the B’ham new main line.
During the nineteenth century the Horseley Iron Company diversified into steel building of various types. Later with the coming of the railways the company built many bridges for this new means of travel, typically a six girder bridge at Nash Mills on the London and Birmingham Railway.
1832 Horseley then, like a number of other companies, turned to the new expansion in railways and in locomotive building. Their first venture was an order in 1832 for three locomotive engines for the St. Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway.
An engine was built to be tried and offered to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This was called 'Star' and was performing well on initial tests but sadly someone had left some timber on the line and the engine left the rails and was damaged. Following the necessary repairs she was set to work on a trial basis on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway but in March 1835 she was involved in a serious accident on the line.
1846 The final Horseley work on locomotive engines involved repairs to two of Robert Stephenson's engines which had been supplied to the Leicester and Swannington Railway. It appears that their boilers had suffered from too little attention to the effects of water and scale during their service. Although work continued on many projects the general fluctuations in trade affected many aspects of trade and the Horseley Iron Works got into financial difficulty about 1846 and fell into the hands of the Stratford Bank. They were rescued by three local Ironmasters JJ. Bramah, Deeley and Cochrane who then attempted to sell 'those celebrated works known as the Horseley Ironworks, Tipton'.
1865 a decision was made to build a new works on another site nearby. The building of this new works and its operation until 1992, saw 200 years from the date of the initial purchase of the Horseley Estate
1933 Horseley Bridge and Engineering Company, amalgamated with Thomas Piggott and Company Limited of Birmingham, in 1933.
this was followed by the transference of the Piggott works to Tipton.
And so to where I fit in. When I started at ‘Ossley Bridge’ in the late 1960’s they were still making bridges, but fabricated not cast as the foundry had long gone. Other items that were manufactured were gasometers, boilers, pressure vessels, storage tanks, pipe work in fact anything very large, heavy and fabricated. There was still a blacksmiths shop, the work of which fascinated me. One element that still existed from it’s canal bridge building days was ‘The Regent Palace’ in Railway Street next to the ‘Regent’ pub. The ‘Palace’ was an ex cinema that was owned by the Company and was used as a storage/warehouse. As apprentices we would love to be given a job down the Palace for although all fixtures and fittings had been removed it was still intact as a picture house and a great place to ‘explore’. In the summer of 1969, myself and a couple of other apprentices were taken down to the Palace by our Foreman, Rex Glover, and told to fetch all the wooden patterns out and burn them on a bonfire that we kept going for about four weeks in the back yard of the Palace. When I think of it now it was an absolute crime, but at the time, the street was being cleared and all building were being demolished for modernisation, and we were just doing what we had been instructed to do. Amongst the varied array of patterns were huge railway wheels of all sizes and descriptions, and sectionalised patterns of the side members of the typical ‘BCN’ cast bridges with the lead letters affixed to their sides of ‘Horseley Iron Works, Toll End’ Most of the patterns had lead letters and numbers fitted to them, these were all removed, and put into a big tin bath at the side of the bonfire and melted down for their scrap metal value. After four weeks of burning the site was cleared and that was the last time anyone went to the Palace as it was soon demolished, along with the pub where lots of the welders, riveters and boilermakers went of a dinner time for a couple of pints to replace the fluids lost through their mornings toil! If my memory serves me right, workers who were undertaking particularly heavy or hot work, were given a ‘beer note’ by the foreman to be exchanged at the Regent for pints of beer.
My apprenticeship at ‘Ossleys’ was a great time and during my Cooks tour I worked with some very skilled, old fashioned craftsmen, some of which would not even let you look at the drawings and would cover them up, but sketch what you had to make on the back of a fag packet. Even if you asked what it was for they would simply say “you dow need to know, just mek it” My apprenticeship was filled with old ‘Black Country characters’ and funny events, but that would be another blog perhaps. So for now,
Don’t bang ‘em about
Blossom
Many thanks to the Black Country Society’s writings from where most of the History was gleaned.
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