The ingenious Mr Padmore: eighteenth-century polymath

Abstract

John Padmore was an eighteenth-century millwright and shareholder in the Bristol Brass Company. Very few have heard of Padmore but deeper research indicates that he was active in the early 1700s in the application of a range of technologies. He was engaged in the building of: copper smelting mills; battery mills for the manufacture of copper hollow-ware; rolling mills for the production of sheet metal; a floating harbour on the River Avon north-west of Bristol; the Avon Navigation; a tram-way for transporting stone from the mines near Bath to the River Avon; and cranes for loading stone into barges in Bath and cranes for handling the cargoes of sea going ships in Bristol. He also designed and built water engines for raising water and early atmospheric engines for similar purposes. Daniel Defoe described him as ‘the ingenious Mr Padmore’, today we would describe him as John Padmore – Engineer. John Padmore should therefore be hailed as a great engineer in the age of enlightenment.

Keywords:

• Bristol
• Atmospheric engine
• water supply
• docks
• Llangyfelach Copper Works

Notes

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2. Will of John Padmore, Millwright of Barton Regis. PROB 11/672/116. The National Archives.

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4. Auction catalogue of the contents of Ralph Allen’s Prior Park in 1769, a ‘portrait of Mr Padmore, in a painted frame’.

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6. J. Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (1887).

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