Notes
- Francis Henry Egerton, Letter to the Parisians (1819), p. 22.
- Christine Richardson, ‘James Brindley (1716–1772) — His Simultaneous Commercial Development of Mills, Steam Power and Canals’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 76 (2006), 251–58.
- A plate inside the copy in Birmingham City Library states ‘Photostat Reproduction Made At the Birmingham Reference Library, 1939, From the Original Lent By H.W. Dickinson, esq’.
- Information from ICE Archives.
- A fifth notebook of Brindley’s has recently come to light, dating from 1760–62 and containing details of the building of the Barton Aqueduct. It is in private hands and was displayed in the exhibition at the Portico Library, Manchester, commemorating the Bridgewater Canal’s 250th anniversary. It has not been possible to arrange access to its content. See Bridgewater 250: the Archaeology of the World’s First Industrial Canal, ed. by Michael Nevell and Terry Wyke (Manchester: University of Salford, 2012) p. 13, n. 53.
- Rex Wailes, ‘Water-Driven Mills for Grinding Stone’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 39 (1966–67), 95–123 includes a brief account of the history of Hulton Abbey Mill by William Edwards on p. 118.
- Ibid., p. 95.
- Benson’s Patent, no. 437, 5 November 1726.
- Wailes, p. 95.
- Benson’s Patent, no. 536, 14 January 1732.
- The error has persisted. For example, the document designating the Moddershall Valley a Conservation Area under the terms of the 1971 Town and Country Planning Act states that in 1725 Brindley, together with Benson, John Gallemore and Joseph Bourne had ‘perfected and patented a process for ‘wet’ grinding flint’ (Staffordshire County Council Designation no 76, The Modder- shall Valley Conservation Area, p. 10). Benson’s patent actually dates from 1726 when Brindley was only ten years old.
- Simeon Shaw, A History of the Staffordshire Potteries (Hanley, 1829), p. 144.
- Some indication of the nature of Brindley’s ‘improvements’ emerges from Eliza Meteyard’s account: Brindley’s flint mill consisted of a large circular wooden vat […] the bottom paved with small stones, in which was fixed a central step or gudgeon for carrying the axis of a vertical shaft, the moving power being applied by a crown cog wheel placed at the top. At the lower part of this shaft, at right angles to it, were four large arms or beams to which the grinding stones were fixed; these also carrying round with them in the vat other loose blocks of granite. Into this receptacle the calcined and broken flints were introduced, and when completely covered with water, the axis was made to revolve with great velocity. The result was soon obtained. The ground flints and water were converted into a cream-like mixture, which was either used in a slop state or dried upon a kiln into a fine powder. Eliza Meteyard, The Life of Josiah Wedg- wood, i (London: 1865), 152.
- There are records for the burials of Mr Tibbetts (described as ‘Lord Gower’s Steward’ on 9 August 1758 and Mr Daniel Griffin of New Inn Mill on 1 September 1771. Trentham Parish Records, ii, 1744–1812 (Staffordshire Parish Record Society, nd), pp. 242, 252.
- James Brindley, Notebook, 1755–58.
- Samuel Smiles, James Brindley and the Early Engineers (London, 1864), p. 151.
- A. G. Banks and R. B. Schofield, Brindley at Wet Earth Colliery: An Engineering Study (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1968).
- Brindley’s ‘Sharit’ may have been William Sherratt (1715–95), millwright and engineer of Norton Green, whom Simeon Shaw identifies as ‘the father of the gentlemen who, in 1790, erected the extensive Iron Foundry in Salford’. Shaw, p. 144.
- The list specifies debts owing to the Coalbrookdale Company — £28 9s; to Mr Edensor of Congleton — £3; to the Cheadle Brass and Copper Company — £2 18s 9d; for stones from Congleton — £1 2s 6d; to a Mr Ginder for iron — £2 10s 10d and for carriage [presumably of castings] from Coalbrookdale — £3. Unspecified debts remain owing also to Messrs Smallwood and Kinnersley, to the tanner of Newcastle and the bricklayer.
- Kippis, Biographica Britannica (1778–93). The entry for Brindley appears in Vol. ii (1780), 591–603. In a marginal note, Kippis states: ‘The materials of this article have been obligingly obtained for us by Mr Henshall, Mr Brindley’s brother-in-law, by Messrs Wedgwood and Bentley. To Mr Bentley we are further indebted in several respects; and particularly for the short but masterly sketch of Mr Brindley’s character at the conclusion’.
- Quoted by Arthur Raistrick in Dynasty of Ironfounders (Ironbridge: Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, 1989), pp. 146–47.
- In the record of Clara Maria Broade’s death at Derby in 1799, she is described as ‘daughter of the present and sister of the late Thomas Broade, esq., of Fenton Vivian’ (The Monthly Magazine and British Register, 7 (1799), 167).
- James Brindley, Invention of a fire engine for drawing water out of mines or for draining of lands or for supplying of cityes, townes or gardens with water, Patent no. 730/1758.
- Brown had learned about the engine from a ‘Mr Spedding of Whitehaven’ (Raistrick, p. 147). The Spedding family were active in mine engineering around Whitehaven during the mid-eighteenth century. Carlisle Spedding (1695–1755) and his brother John (1685–1758) shared the post of agent to Sir James Lowther, coal and tobacco magnate. The brothers were responsible for sinking the shaft of Saltom Pit, one of the first undersea coalmines, and installing a Newcomen pumping engine at the site. Arthur Raistrick’s implicit suggestion that Brown’s information came from Carlisle Spedding in 1759 does not fit the dates, and Brown’s correspondent is more likely to have been James Spedding — John Spedding’s son — who became steward to the Lowther estate in 1758, on the death of his father.
- Richardson, ‘James Brindley’, pp. 251–58.
- William Brown to Mr Delaval, 9 September 1759, Northumberland Record Office, 2DE/6/3/2.
- According to the Victoria County History, ‘The Parrott (or Parratt) family were working mines in the [Bedworth] district from at least 1721 and from 1774 to 1794. Messrs. Parrott, Ferneyhough, and Whieldon described as ‘of the Hawkesbury Colliery, Bedworth’, had eight pits, and two others were being sunk. The firm was among the advocates of, and may have invested in, the Oxford and Coventry canals, which were cut through the mining area of Little Heath, Longford, and Hawkesbury between 1768 and 1777’ (W. B. Stephens, ed., Victoria County Histories — County of Warwick, 8 (1969), 57). See also ‘A Survey of lands and grounds belonging to Mr Richard Parrott in partnership with Mr J Bourne and Mr T Whieldon, taken in the year 17[59]’ by George Salmon (Warwickshire Records Office accession no. ZO287 (SM).
- James Brindley, Notebook, 1759–60.
- Biographica Britannica, ii (1780), 393.
- Raistrick, p. 146.
- Thomas Broade, A New Scheme for Making Inland Navigations (London, 1758), p. 15.
- John Smeaton reviewed Brindley’s work with every mark of approval. ‘The REPORT of John SMEATON, Engineer, concerning the practicability, &c. of a navigable canal from Wilden ferry, in the county of Derby, to King’s Bromley common, near Lichfield, and from thence in several branches, the first leading to Longbridge, near Burslem, the second to Newcastle under Line, the third to the city of Lichfield; and the fourth to the river Tame, at or near Fazeley bridge, near Tamworth, all in the county of Stafford, as projected by MR JAMES BRINDLEY, Engineer’, in Reports of the late John Smeaton, FRS, made on various occasions in the course of his employment as a civil engineer, 1 (London: Longman, 1812), 13–16. Digitized on Google Books.
- According to the epitaph for Brindley which appeared in the Chester Courant of 1 December 1772, he ‘knew water, its weight and strength’. The Eighth Earl of Bridgewater, incidentally, noted his ‘remarkable talent at guessing Nearly the Fall of a Brook or River by walking along its banks. Some persons,’ he added, ‘pretend to the same talent; But Mr Brindley, generally, was More Correct than Others’. Egerton, p. 22.
- James Brindley, Notebook 1759–60.
- Ibid.
- Samuel Hughes, ‘Memoir of James Brindley’, Weale’s Quarterly Papers on Engineering, 1 (1844), 14–49 (p. 47). Hughes claims to have heard the story from James Loch MP, agent to the Duke of Bridgewater’s heirs, the Dukes of Sutherland. £1 9s 5d admittedly seems rather a large sum to spend on cheese.
- Christine Richardson, James Brindley — Canal Pioneer (Burton-on-Trent: Waterways World Ltd, 2004), p. 45.
- ‘An Act to enable the Most Noble Francis, Duke of Bridgewater, to make a Navigable Cut or Canal from Longford Bridge in the township of Stretford in the County Palatine of Lancaster to the River Mersey, at a place called the Hempstones, in the Township of Halton, in the County of Chester’.
- For Brindley’s outing to the theatre, see Kippis Biographica Britannica, ii (1780), 591–603; John Phillips, A General History of Inland Navigation (London, 1803), p. 112; Smiles, p. 193; and in more recent times Richardson, James Brindley — Canal Pioneer, p. 46 and Nick Corble, James Brindley: The First Canal Builder (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), p. 80. Smiles appears to have been the earliest of Brindley’s biographers to suggest that the play was Shakespeare’s Richard III with David Garrick in the title role.
- Biographica Britannica, ii (1780), 591–603.
- Ibid.
- For a fuller account of Brindley’s work for the Don Navigation Company, see Richardson, James Brindley — Canal Pioneer, pp. 494–52.
- Smiles, pp. 215–16
- James Brindley, Notebook, 1761–62.
- Hempstones, Brindley’s initial choice of terminus for the canal, is just east of the Runcorn Gap.
- For a rather slanted and sceptical commentary on the Mersey aqueduct proposal, see Hugh Malet, Bridgewater — The Canal Duke 1736–1803, rev. edn (Nelson, Lancs: Hendon, 1977), pp. 112–13.
- Josiah Wedgwood also regarded Liverpool as a good place for sea bathing. Complaining in June 1773 that his small daughter Sukey ‘is […] full of pouks, & boils, & humours’, he announces to Thomas Bentley ‘I am going to Liverpool this week […] the salt water is absolutely necessary for her’. Correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood, ed. by Katherine Eufemia Farrer (Cambridge: University Press, 2011 — first publ 1903–06), vol. ii 1771–80, p. 147.
- John Phillips, The General History of Inland Navigation (London, 1803), pp. 110–11. Digitized by Google Books.
- James Brindley, Notebook, 1761–62.
- Information supplied by Anthony Annakin-Smith, author of ‘The Neston Collieries and Associated Industrial Workings, 1759 to 1855’ (unpublished dissertation for an MA at the University of Liverpool, August 2008).
- James Brindley, Notebook, 1761–62, 7 April et seq.
- Gordon Emery, ‘The Grand Plan’, in Gordon Emery, ed., The Old Chester Canal (Chester: Canal Heritage Trust, 2005), pp. 13–31.
- The countess’s father, the Earl of Warrington, had ensured that she was sufficiently well versed in land management to ‘deal personally with such complicated and protracted issues as the cutting of the Bridgewater Canal through the estate’. Dunham Massey (National Trust, 2000), p. 58.
- Jane Brown, The Omnipotent Magician — Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (London: Chatto & Windus, 2011), p. 119.
- Patent no. 730, 1758.
- Brown, p. 216.
- W. H. Chaloner, ‘Charles Roe of Maccles- field’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, lxii (1971), 145–56.
- Christopher Lewis, The Canal Pioneers — Brindley’s School of Engineers (Stroud: The History Press, 2011), p. 21.
- Richardson, James Brindley — Canal Pioneer, p. 53.
- William Farrer and J. Brownbill, eds, A History of the County of Lancaster, iv (Victoria County History, 1911), 335–38.
- Damming the brook was a necessary preliminary to taking it through the new siphon (Richardson, James Brindley — Canal Pioneer, p. 53).
- Was there, perhaps, a rock fall?
- Beswick at this time is presumably continuing work on the siphon.
- It sounds as though Mr Styth was a mason, but the Duke of Bridgewater’s Archive includes a ‘Copy of the state of Mr Stythe’s case in Mr Trafford’s lease and Mr Lloyd’s opinion’, which suggests he may have been a landowner (DBA/3/145 dated 6 October 1762). Brindley’s way of referring to him as ‘Mr’ suggests he belongs higher up the social order than the labourers Busick, Black David and Jackson.
- Foulkes’ map of 1799 shows the aqueduct and gives the span of the arch as 63·9 ft, and the depth from the bottom to the top of the arch as 14 ft 7 in. A reproduced section of the map appears on Salford City Archives website.
- Thomas Gilbert (1719–98) was John Gilbert’s older brother and land agent to the Duke of Bridgewater’s brother-in-law, Granville Leveson Gower, 2nd Earl Gower. Through the Earl’s influence, Thomas Gilbert would become MP for Newcastle under Lyme from 22 November 1763 to 1768 and for Lichfield from 1768 until December 1794. Caroline Spencer, Duchess of Marlborough, born Lady Caroline Russell, appears to have been a cousin of Earl Gower.
- At the time, Brindley was apparently lodging in ‘a cottage at the top of Pennington Lane’ (H. T. Crofton, History of the Ancient Chapel of Stretford (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1899), p. 28).
- Hugh Malet, The Canal Duke (Dawlish: David and Charles, 1961), p. 99 and Bridgewater: The Canal Duke 1736–1803 (Nelson, Lancs: Hendon, 1977), p. 97. The story of Gilbert’s stallion, or ‘rig’ and Brindley’s mare originated with the Eighth Earl of Bridgewater who gleefully insisted that ‘Mr Brindley Never would be Persuaded, That Mr John Gilbert did not contrive This, on purpose to prevent his (Mr Brindley’s) using his mare in going in pursuit of his business’. Egerton, p. 22.
- Arthur Young, describing a visit to the Bridgewater Canal in the 1760s, writes: Passing on, the canal runs chiefly along the sides of natural banks; which course was very judiciously chosen for the convenience of possessing not only one bank perfectly firm and secure, but plenty of earth ready for making the other. Just before we came to Throstle-nest Bridge, I observed a projecting piece of masonry in the canal, which, on enquiry, I found to be the case of a canal door, for I know not what other name to give it […] The stopping the loss of water is of great consequence, not only to lessen the mischief of the mere loss, in preventing the navigation going forward, but also in lessening greatly the damage the country would suffer from being overflowed; a point of much importance. Arthur Young, A Six Month Tour through the North of England (1770), p. 6. Digitized by Google Books.
- Nathan Bailey’s The Universal Etymological English Dictionary (London, 1737) defines ‘picking’ as ‘little stealing, petty larceny’ — which aptly describes Mr Lloyd’s action.