Introduction

When the writer Samuel Smiles stated that: "Our engineers may be regarded in some measure as the makers of modern civilization" the remark could never have been perceived as an overstatement, for what transpired in England between the early 1600's and 1830 had consequences for much of the world.

Sir Basil Brooke of Madeley Court developed new methods for making steel in 1615. He built a cementation furnace, forges and watercourses on his Madeley estate and by 1622 had a thriving iron and steel enterprise.

In 1620, Dud Dudley, son of the Earl of Dudley, smelted iron using coke to fuel the furnace. These two innovative men can truly be regarded as the founding fathers of the Industrial Revolution.

It was within the parish of Madeley that the first Abraham Darby cast iron using a moulding box and fine sand, a process developed by John Thomas of Montgomeryshire, and where Abraham Darby 111 constructed the world's first iron bridge. Twenty miles of the world's first iron rails were laid there and Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive. It was also home to a pottery industry of world renown.

England's economy was later transformed by the adoption of machines and factory methods that brought about changes that had not happened elsewhere, and it was the Frenchman, Monsieur Blanqui, who referred to the events unfolding across the Channel as the industrial revolution.

The names of Brooke, Darby, Reynolds, Wilkinson, Trevithick, Telford, Jessop, Fletcher, Wesley and many others are now consigned to history, but their legacy lives on in what had been one the most important parishes in Britain.