James Brindley’s Steam Engines, 1756–59

Abstract

Although James Brindley’s chief claim to fame is his canal work, his notebooks indicate that between 1756 and 1759 steam power occupied much of his thinking. None of the engines that he built is known to survive and the detail that Brindley provides about their construction and efficiency is skeletal; nevertheless, his accounts indicate that he built up the nucleus of an impressive steam-engine client-base, which included the coal-owning Broade family of Fenton Vivian; Phineas Hussey, who owned a colliery in Little Wyrley; iron-founder Abraham Darby II of Coalbrookdale and Thomas Whieldon, master potter of Fenton, who owned coal measures near Bedworth. Confident of commercial success, in 1758 he took out a patent (no. 730) for the ‘Invention of A Fire Engine, for Drawing Water out of Mines…’ Soon afterwards, his work caught the attention of William Brown of Throckley who inspected the Fenton Vivian engine in 1759. From his observations, Brown disputed Brindley’s claim that it was an ‘invention,’ but nonetheless regarded his innovations as an ‘improvement.’ His sketch of Brindley’s boiler fleshes out the description that appears in the patent specification. Brindley’s engagement with steam power was energetic but short-lived. After his death, his friends claimed that he would have perfected steam engine design, had not the activities of unnamed jealous rivals thwarted his endeavours. Evidence suggests that actually an approach from the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater in the summer of 1759 turned his attention to canal building. Although he may not have fully realised his steam engineering ambitions, his headlong records make a valuable contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century engine wrights’ working practices.

Keywords:

• Brindley
• engine
• steam
• cylinder
• boiler
• patent

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Steve Grudgings and Richard Lamb for their comments on Brindley’s records and calculations relating to Miss Broade’s engine. I also thank Carol Morgan and the Institution of Civil Engineers, and David Hallen and the Trustees of the Brindley Mill and James Brindley Museum at Leek for allowing me to reproduce pages from James Brindley’s Notebook of 1755–58, and Anna Rhodes of Buxton Museum and Art Gallery for giving me permission to reproduce Francis Parsons’ sketch of James Brindley. I am grateful also to Northumberland Archives and the Tate Gallery for permission to include material from their collections.

Notes

1. L. T. C. Rolt and J. S. Allen, The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen (Hartington: Moorland Publishing Co., 1977), p. 110.

2. S. Smiles, James Brindley and the Early Engineers (London: John Murray, 1864), pp. 144–5.

3. A. Kippis, ed., Biographia Britannia, (1778–93). Entry for ‘Brindley.’ Vol. II, pp. 591–604.

4. James Brindley, Ms notebook 1755–58, nd, but probably May 1756, Brindley Mill Museum, Leek; JBN, p. 4.

5. He records £28 9s owing to the Coalbrookdale Company; £2 18 9d to ‘Ch[e]adle for Brass’ – probably the Cheadle Brass and Copper Company for brass fitments – possibly a brass cylinder; £1 2s 6d for ‘stones from Congleton’; £2 3s 10d to an ironmaster named Ginder and £3 for carriage of some unspecified casting from Coalbrookdale. There is also £3 owing to a Mr Edensor of Congleton – possibly Richard, father of Michael Edensor associated with Wet Earth Pit – and unspecified sums to Mr Smallwood and Mr Kinnersley; also to a tanner of Newcastle, who would have supplied leather for valve openings and an unnamed bricklayer. (James Brindley, Ms notebook 1755–58, nd, but probably Autumn 1756; JBN, p. 10.

6. Derby Mercury, 31 January 1799.

7. Brindley Ms notebook 1755–58, nd, but c.12 May 1757; JBN p. 2.

8. Coalbrookdale Company records suggest that they cast an iron cylinder for ‘Mr Broade of Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent’ in 1756. A. Raistrick, Dynasty of Iron Founders – The Darbys and Coalbrookdale, (Ironbridge: Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, 1989), p. 147. Raistrick disputes Davies’ suggestion that it was 60 inch in diameter. S. A. Davies, ‘The Coalbrookdale Company and the Newcomen Engine,’ Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 20 (1939), 47.

9. Patent No. 730, 26 December 1758. Roll C73/8/1, National Archives, Kew, op cit.

10. Kippis, Biographia Britannia, (1778–93), p. 593.

11. My thanks to David Hardwick for proposing the idea about lagging. For what it is worth, Newcomen Society member Mr F. O. Beckett made the same suggestion in discussion of Arthur Titley’s, ‘Note upon part of a diary by James Brindley,’ Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 20 (1940) 74.

12. Richard Lamb, letter to author, 4 October 2013. See also S. Grudgings, ‘From Calley to Curr: The Development of the Newcomen Engine in the Eighteenth Century,’ in Mining Technology: Technical Innovation in the Extractive Industries – Proceedings of the NAHMO Conference 2014, ed. by D. J. Linton, pp. 35–50.

13. Brindley, Ms Notebook 1755–58, entries for John and Ralph Baddeley’s Flint Mill, 15 March–31 August 1757, and Ms Notebook 31 October–27 November 1763 passim; JBN, pp. 20 and 99–129.

14. Richard Lamb, letter to author, 4 October 2013.

15. S. Grudgings, analysis of the available records suggests that ‘six months was a typical minimum timescale. ‘From Calley to Curr,’ p. 39.

16. Brindley, Ms Notebook, 1755–58; an entry dated 31 March 1756 reads ‘Going to Beakwill a boute the Boiller pleats to be mead’ [sic]. JBN, p. 3.

17. When Brindley lists his engine’s potential uses, they include not only the obvious ‘drawing water out of mines’ but also the more adventurous work of ‘draining of lands’ and ‘supplying cities, towns or gardens with water.’ James Brindley, Patent for a steam engine, Patent No. 730, 26 December 1758. Roll C73/8/1, National Archives, Kew.

18. Patent No. 730, 1758.

19. Patent No 730, 1758.

20. Brindley Ms notebook 1755–58, entries for 6 and 13 November 1757; JBN, p. 19.

21. Compare James Watt’s experience in Cornwall with the engineman Thomas Dudley. ‘I had told them that they had not cold water for above 7 or 8 strokes pr minute’ Watt wrote. ‘However, as there was a great number of spectators, Dudley thought he would show them somewhat and accordingly sett off at the rate of 24 strokes pr minute, he soon got all his water boiling hot and then they seemed to be at a loss why the Engine would not go …’ Quoted by L. T. C Rolt, James Watt (London: Batsford, 1962), p. 75.

22. Brindley, MS notebook for 1759–60; JBN p. 57.

23. Quoted by Raistrick, Dynasty of Iron Founders – The Darbys and Coalbrookdale, (Ironbridge: Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, 1989), p. 147. Raistrick gives no date for Spedding’s letter but it probably dates from mid-1759.

24. C. Richardson, ‘James Brindley (1716–72) – His Simultaneous Commercial Development of Mills, Steam Power and Canals,’ Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 76 (2006), 251–58, at p. 253.

25. William Brown to John Hussey Delaval, 9 September 1759, Northumberland Record Office, 2DE/6/3/2.

26. J. Brindley, Ms Notebook 1759–60; JBN, p. 51.

27. William Brown to John Hussey Delaval, 9 September 1759, Northumberland Archives, ref 2DE.6/3/2.

28. William Brown to John Hussey Delaval, 9 September 1759, Northumberland Archives, ref 2DE.6/3/2.

29. For a transcription and discussion of Brindley’s letter to Brown, see C. Richardson, op cit. pp. 251–58, esp.pp. 255–56.

30. L. Turnbull, The World of William Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne: North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, (2016), pp. 89–90.

31. Quoted by Raistrick, op cit, p. 146.

32. For Whieldon and Bourne’s property in Bedworth, see R. Jenkins, Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times, (Manchester: Ayer Publishing, 1936), p. 81; Victoria County Histories – County of Warwick, Vol. VIII, pp. 104–14.

33. A. Kippis, Biographia Britannica (1780), entry for Brindley. Hugh Henshall – Brindley’s devoted colleague and brother-in-law – supplied the background information about his life to Thomas Bentley and Josiah Wedgwood who collaborated in drafting the article.

34. ‘Many gentlemen of this neighbourhood are reaping the benefit of Mr Brindley’s inventions: He having taught them a method of draining coal pits by a fire engine, constructed at the expense of £150, which no-one before knew how to make at less than £500. In these he uses wooden chains which are preferable to iron ones, and cylinders made of deal, which supply the place of those which were usually made of cast iron’. Anon., The History of Inland Navigations, Particularly Those of the Duke of Bridgwater, in Lancashire and Cheshire (1769) p. 38. In a letter to the Leeds Intelligencer of 6 October 1767 John Sparrow, clerk to the Company of Proprietors of the Trent & Mersey Canal, described planned works on the tunnel at Harecastle Hill, promising that ‘A fire-engine will be erected in the middle of the hill, and shafts sunk [...] for drawing up the earth to the surface.’