Back to the Mainly The Georgians calendar
In 1779 the very first bridge built of iron was finished in England. It was made to cross the River Severn and was so important that in 1986 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In 1709 in the village of Coalbrookdale a man called Abraham Darby pioneered a unique method of smelting iron. You can read about smelting iron from our timeline in the Iron Age which is here. Darby used coke, which is made from coal, rather than charcoal which had been used in the past. This was far cheaper and so it became cheaper to produce iron.
The industry that grew up around there needed to transport their goods across the river. In 1773, an architect called Thomas Pritchard proposed an iron bridge be built. Parliament approved and in 1777 construction began and, after the death of Pritchard, it was overseen by Abraham Darby's grandson, called.......Abraham.
As I said the bridge was finished in 1779 and opened to traffic on New Year's Day 1781. It was 30 metres long and used 378 tons of iron. The bridge was used for over 150 years but was closed in 1934.
It is now a monument to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Just like the Agricultural Revolution that we talked about earlier, this didn't have a particular start date. It was more something that happened over a period of time, although it was quite a short period of time before it came to affect the lives of many people in England.
We said that as a result of changes on farms, fewer people were needed to work on the land and these people tended to go off and look for work in the bigger cities. Luckily, as they did, the cities began to grow with the beginnings of what we now call factories.
The weaving of cotton cloth had become a major industry by the 1760's, with most of the labour being done by people in their homes. In 1771, a man called Richard Arkwright opened the first cotton mill at Cromford, Derbyshire and the yarn was spun by his invention known as the water frame.
Arkwright was originally a barber and wig maker but he teamed up with a clockmaker called John Kay to make his machine. It could spin four strands of cotton at the same time. The picture on the right is the only complete example of a water frame in the world. Arkwright built many of these machines and employed unskilled workers, often women, to work on them.
One of the main reasons for the Industrial Revolution was that making strong machines out of iron was so much cheaper and inventors kept coming up with improvements. More people living in cities meant more workers were available. Machines could run all day and all night and so production of goods was greater.
As well as the cotton industry that was based in the north west of England, other industries began to grow. With all these factories requiring some form of heating or power, coal mining grew.
James Watt, a Scotsman, made a massive contribution by improving the steam engine which had been invented by Thomas Newcomen and Thomas Savery. Their engine had been used to pump water out of the coal mines but it was slow and prone to breaking down. Watt improved things so that by 1783 Richard Arkwright had built a steam powered cotton mill.
There were far too many inventions to name them all here but, in the next century, we will see the most radical changes to life that the Industrial Revolution brought about for the people of England. Change was always happening from the time of those hunter gatherers until now, 1780. But from this point the changes came so much quicker.
Forward to 1783AD
