Forging A New Age of Iron

Butterley Iron Works, Derbyshire. 

My latest feature in my Industrial Revolution series for Jane Austen's Regency World (July/August issue) is on the advances made in cast-iron manufacture. In 1775, the year that Jane Austen was born, James Watt’s designs for improved steam-engines first became commercially available.  

Boulton and Watt’s Soho Foundry's steam-engines engines supplied the ‘blast’ for furnaces (instead of bellows); powered forge hammers; and later, powered rolling- and slitting-mills. 

This beach house at Sidmouth (image right) has a cast-iron balcony or 'balconette). 

The genry loved the utility and simplicity of iron. Mr Rushworth’s house in Mansfield Park has a ‘long terrace walk, backed by iron palisades…beyond the bowling-green’.  And a locked iron gate gives Henry Crawford the key to gaining Maria Bertram’s heart. 

Images: 

The Casting-house at Butterley Iron Works, Ripley, Derbyshire. The Pentrich rebels attacked the works in 1817, but were thwarted by its manager. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. 1, London, (c. 1860). Author’s collection. 

Sidmouth photo © Sue Wilkes.