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Articles

The ingenious Mr Padmore: eighteenth-century polymath

Pages 176-189 | Published online: 21 Jun 2018
 

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.

Notes

1. D. Defoe, A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain (1742).

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

3. J. Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (1900).

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

5. M. Watts, John Padmore’s Cranes at Bath and Bristol. BIAS Journal, 8(1976).

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

7. A. Rudder, A New History of Gloucestershire (St. Georges, 1779).

8. J. Shebbeare, A new analysis of the Bristol Waters (1740).

9. J. Evans, A Chronological Outline of the History of Bristol and the Stranger’s Guide to its Streets and Neighbourhoods, (1824).

10. G. A Cooke, Topography of Great Britain or A British Traveller’s Pocket Directory (1820).

11. S. Rudder, A New History of Gloucestershire (1779).

12. Copy of part of Strachey’s Map of Somerset showing Bristol, Bath and Wells. [DD/SH C/1165]. 1736. Somerset Heritage Centre, Reference T\PH\sro/14.

13. Shebbeare J. op cit.

14. Latimer, J. op cit.

15. T. Savery, The Miners Friend or An Engine to Raise Water by Fire (1702).

16. E. Somerset, Second Marquis of Worcester, Century of the Names and Scantlings of Inventions by me already practised (1663).

17. R. H. Thurston, The Growth of the Steam Engine (Stevens Institute of Technology, 1878).

18. Hutchinson & Lord Grandison Patent. Reverberatory Furnace. October 1678.

19. J. A. Buckley, The Cornish Mining Industry, a brief history (1992), p. 13.

20. Day and T. Coverdale, The Avon Valley Copper and Brass Industry. BIAS Journal 46 (2013).

21. S. Hughes, Copperoppolis, the landscape of the early industrial period of Swansea. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monument of Wales (2000), p. 20.

22. J. Brooke, and H. Kalmeter, The Kalmeter JournalThe Journal of a Visit to Cornwall, Devon and Somerset in 172425. Translated by Brooke (Twelveheads Press, 2001), p. 12.

23. National Library of Wales. Penrice & Margam estate records. 164, counterpart at 3156.

24. E. M. Bridge and P. R. Reynolds, Coal Mining in the Gower Peninsula, J. Gower Society, 52 (2001), p. 27.

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