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Draft:Brecon Ironworks

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Brecon Ironworks, now demolished[1], was situated one mile north of Brecon, in a ravine on the east bank of the River Honddu.

The ironworks, which comprised a charcoal-fired furnace and forge, were erected in 1720[2] by Benjamin Tanner, a local ironmonger, and Richard Wellington, who owned Hay Castle[3]. In 1753 the ironworks were sold to John Maybery[4], an ironmaster from Pipton, Brecknockshire, where his family owned an iron forge[5].

The supplies for the Ironworks

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The ironworks were built on the site of a fulling or tucking mill[6] which used water-powered fulling hammers to process woven cloth which was produced by local farmers. The water for the mill was obtained from the river, three fields away, via a leat to fill a pond at the bottom. Periodic openings of a sluice gate at the lower end of the pond powered a water wheel, which in turn powered the mill.

Weaving and knitting industries flourished during the first half of the eighteen century. Consequently Brecon prospered to the extent that it was described as 'the richest town in Wales'[7]. However, by the mid-eighteenth century the prosperity of the town ended because of the emergence of rival industries in Gloucester and Wiltshire.[8]

After the conversion of the site into an ironworks, ironstone was obtained from the top of the Sirhowy Valley[9], and iron ore and limestone were obtained from Hirwaun[10]. The ironstone from the Sirhowy Valley was loaded onto mule teams.[11] From there, the obvious route to Brecon was eastwards, down into the Usk Valley and, following the river, northwards into the town. From Hirwaun, the iron ore was transported on the backs of horses and mules[12], over the mountain track of the Bannau Brycheiniog and down into the town.

The Brecon Ironworks were charcoal-fired. Initially the charcoal was produced from the woodlands which grew on both banks of the river. However, insatiable supplies of charcoal were needed.[13] Consequently, charcoal was later produced from wood which was obtained from a wide range of the surrounding area[14], including Llangammarch and Llanwrtyd.[15]

In addition to enjoying the previous benefits, the ironworks enjoyed the benefit of their proximity to English markets[16], which would have been reached from the nearby road to Hay-on-Wye, which is adjacent to Herefordshire.[17]

The leases for the Ironworks

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In 1723, Tanner and Wellington took out a lease for the land from Edward Jeffreys, a barrister of the Inner Temple, who owned the land and who lived in the Priory, Brecon[18], in the grounds of what became Brecon Cathedral. Two new leases were later granted. In 1750, William Tanner, the son of Benjamin Tanner, with the consent of both his father and Wellington, assigned their interests in the works to Thomas Daniel and Richard Reynolds, two iron merchants and dealers from Bristol. Then, in 1753, a lease for the land was granted to Thomas Maybery, the son of Thomas Maybery, who owned Powicks (present-day [[[Powick]]) Forge, on the River Teme in Worcestershire.[19] Maybery did not take out the lease for himself but for his son, John, from Aberlonvey, present-day Three Cocks or Aberllynfi, who owned a forge there.

The demise of the Ironworks

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The ironworks does not seem to have existed after 1780. [20] Competition occurred from the multiple furnaces which sprang up in the South Wales Valleys, which were located close to copious supplies of coal, from which they produced coke as a fuel[21], and which became 'the foremost producers of iron in the world'[22].

The Maybury family

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John Maybery married Anne, the eldest daughter of John Wilkins, the-then Deputy Prothonotary of The Crown for the Brecknock Circuit, and Sibyl, his wife, with whom he lived in the Tower of the Priory, Brecon. In 1757, he took out a lease from Lord Windsor to build an ironworks at Hirwaun.[23] In 1760, upon the death of Lord Windsor, he took out, with John Wilkins, his brother-in-law, and Mary Maybery, his mother, a lease from Lady Windsor for the same land.

In the next two decades, John Maybery took out leases for two other pieces of land in South Wales. In 1764 he took out a lease for the Tredegar forge and furnaces.[24] And in 1777, he and his father-in-law took out a lease for an ironworks at Machen.[25]

John Maybery died in 1784. He left two sons, Thomas and Arthur Henry Augustus[26], both of whom followed their uncle in entering the legal profession. Thomas, his eldest son, succeeded William Wilkins, as Prothonotary for the Brecknock Circuit and Arthur Henry Augustus, his second son, became the head of Maybery, Williams, and Cobb, the Brecon firm of solicitors[27].

The Maybery Papers

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The 'Maybery Papers' originated in Brecon and are now held in the National Library of Wales. They came to the attention of John Edward Lloyd, the eminent historian of Wales, around the end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth century.[28] He recounted that he had come into the possession of a collection of ‘tens of thousands’ of documents about the South Wales iron works that he described as having been undisturbed for forty years. Lloyd identified the donor of the collection as 'Mr A. Maybery of Brecon'.

Lloyd attributed the origin of the collection of papers to the Brecon firm of solicitors of Walter and John Powell. He explained that the firm:

‘had the privilege of being largely employed and trusted by the chief Ironmasters, with the result that in the course of years a mass of documents relating to the South Wales Iron Works accumulated in their offices, and passed on to successive members of the firm … Eventually in 1860, every member of the firm having retired or died, the contents of the office became the property of Mr A. Maybery by descent …’. (1904, p. iii)

Lloyd reported that the condition of the papers ‘was such as to make it a risk to health to make among them even a search of a few hours’ duration.’ [29] Nevertheless he examined and reduced them ‘to some kind of order’.[30] Eventually he reproduced what he considered were the most important papers in his 1906 book ‘The early history of the old South Wales iron works (1760-1840)’.

Lloyd's book documents the histories of multiple industrial locations in South Wales. It comprises thirty-one chapters, which are divided into two divisions, a Western division and an Eastern division.

The industrial locations in the Western division comprise Brecon Furnace and Forge and Aberlonvey Forge; Hirwain Iron Works; Dowlais Iron Works; Cyfarthfa Iron Works; Plymouth Iron Works; Pendyarran Iron Works; Neath Abbey Works; Afon, Ynis y Penalwch, Ynis y Gerwn and Dylais Forges; Ynis y Cedwyn Furnace; Melin Griffith Iron Works; Treforest Works; Aberaman Iron Works; Aberdare Iron Works; Abernant Iron Works and Gadlys Iron Works.[31]

The industrial locations in the Eastern division comprise Bute Iron Works; Union Iron Works; Tredegar Iron Works; Sirhowy Ironworks; Ebbw Vale Iron Works; Abercarne Iron Works; Blaen Afon Iron Works; Nant y Glo Iron Works; Beaufort Iron Works; Clydach Iron Works; Llanelly (or Clydach) Forge; Llangrwyney Forge; The Forge or Trostre Forge; Abbey Tintern Iron Works; Monmouth Forge and New Wear Forge[32].[33]

Originally coal was used to enable iron production. Then, with the discovery of the huge size of the South Wales Coalfield, iron production was superseded by coal mining.[34]

Notes

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  1. ^ Van Laun 1976, p. 9.
  2. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 1.
  3. ^ Owen 1911, p. 286.
  4. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 2.
  5. ^ Jones 1898, p. 405.
  6. ^ Jepson 1997.
  7. ^ Jenkins 1970.
  8. ^ Jenkins 1970.
  9. ^ Jones, 1969 pp. 27-28.
  10. ^ Coincidentally David Watkin Jones (1874: 204), who wrote under the bardic name Dafydd Morganwg, documented: 'in 1666 one ‘Mayber' built a small charcoal-fired furnace in a remote place near Llygad Cynon [the source of the River Cynon], in the parish of Penderyn.'
  11. ^ Jones, 1969 pp. 28.
  12. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 2.
  13. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 2.
  14. ^ Minchinton 1961.
  15. ^ Lundström 1969 (originally 1791), p. 10 observed 'the longest distance over which wood was transported to the Brecon furnace was ten miles, the average about five, while the range was two and one-half to ten.'
  16. ^ Davies 1933, p. 136.
  17. ^ Davies 1965, pp. 2-3 observed that, prior to 1750, 'access by road to the new industrial areas of [north-east Glamorgan and north Monmouthshire] was not possible until the construction of the Abergavenny-Merthyr road in 1812; indeed, it was easier to reach these communities by road from the north than from the south until well into the second half of the nineteenth century.’
  18. ^ Jepson 1997.
  19. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 2.
  20. ^ Jepson 1997.
  21. ^ Rehder 1987.
  22. ^ Shore, Leslie M. (2017). The Tredegar Company. Lydney, Gloucestershire: Lightmoor Press. p. 9. ISBN 9781911038 20 7.
  23. ^ Minchinton 1961.
  24. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 14.
  25. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 3.
  26. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 3.
  27. ^ The firm of Maybery, Williams, and Cobb succeeded that of Powell, Jones, and Powell, which in turn had succeeded that of Walter and John Powell.
  28. ^ Lloyd 1904, p. iii.
  29. ^ Ibid.
  30. ^ Ibid.
  31. ^ Lloyd 1906, p. 1-128.
  32. ^ The New Wear Forge was located on the Monmouthshire bank of the River Wye, at the boundary across the river between Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, below Symonds Yat and opposite, on the other bank, The Doward. The only map in which New Wear appears is in Black and Black (1856: 384).
  33. ^ Lloyd 1906, pp. 129-208.
  34. ^ Atkinson and Baber 1987.

Sources

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