The iron works and coal mines at Horseley in Tipton, Staffordshire, were founded by Edward Dixon and Joseph Amphlett, both of Dudley, and a Birmingham solicitor, William Bedford. In 1792, they paid £10,000 for land at the Horseley Estate with the intention of sinking coal mines. Newcomen atmospheric steam engines were installed to rid the mines of flood water and in 1809 a blast furnace was commissioned, blown by a Boulton and Watt steam engine. By 1813 the works had expanded. It was at this time that Aaron Manby joined the Horseley Company and with Joseph Smith an engineering works was built adjacent to the iron works.
Manby was a man of considerable talent. He was born at Shifnal in Shropshire and immediately after joining the Tipton works set about expanding the engineering side of the business. He lobbied the President of the Board of Trade for ordnance orders and took out a patent for making bricks with furnace slag. But his real claim to fame came about after his patent for the construction of an oscillating marine steam engine. The first vessel so powered was the Prince Coberg. Its potential was quickly seen by Sir (later Admiral) Charles Napier who, recognising that Manby ‘had more talent than money’, sponsored his work and with him formed a French company with the intention of running a steam packet service on the Seine. Marine steam engines were provided for the three timber ships plying their trade on the Seine – the Ville de Rouen, the Duc de Bordeaux and the Génie du Commerce. But Manby had ambitions to build a ship of iron and in 1821 he set about the task at Horseley. The ship Manby built was appropriately named the Aaron Manby. It was 106 feet in length and 17 feet wide, powered by a 32-horsepower steam engine and equipped with revolving paddles. The vessel was then despatched in parts by canal to London and re-assembled – possibly on the Grand Surrey Canal in Rotherhithe – under the supervision of Aaron’s son, Charles Manby.
Trials were held on May 9th 1822 between Blackfriars and Battersea Bridges. The Morning Chronicle reported on 14 May that ‘a large party of distinguished naval officers, engineers and savants embarked at Parliament Stairs’ and concluded that ‘she is the most complete piece of workmanship in the iron way that has ever been witnessed.’ The Aaron Manby then set off for France to work on the Seine, so becoming the first iron hulled steam ship to go to sea. A second ship was built for Napier and Manby at Horseley, the Commerce de Paris, and re-assembled as before in London, most probably at Rotherhithe.
But Manby’s time at Tipton was coming to an end. He became a partner at a foundry in Paris, La Fonderie de Charenton, and much to the displeasure of the Horseley works took many Tipton iron workers with him. And it seems that the Black Country men enjoyed the sophistication of French life, the Quarterly Review reporting that:
‘The Englishmen abroad, though able workmen, are in general, persons of extremely bad character, continually drunk.... they drink nothing but the most expensive wines...and never leave the cabarets till the whole of their wages are exhausted.’
The Aaron Manby ended her days working on the Loire and was finally broken up in 1855. Manby himself died in 1850 on the Isle of Wight.
The company also built bridges, including one for the East India Dock in 1816, the Grand Union Canal at Brentford in 1824 and Richmond Railway Bridge in 1908. The company thrived throughout the 20th century building bridges, the Dome of Discovery for the 1951 Festival of Britain and plant for the gas industry, including the Gas Light and Coke Company, in Westminster, and Beckton Gas Works.
And there is more. After a visit to the London Museum Docklands, enjoy a meal in one of the restaurants within George Gwilt’s warehouses. Those to the east, in Warehouse No. 2, are supported by cruciform cast-iron pillars, of 1814, proudly inscribed ‘Horseley Iron Works.’ These columns were installed in all of the six tall warehouses, between 1813 and 1818, to replace the original timber ones that had been badly compressed due to the overloading of sugar casks.
A question: the Aaron Manby was said to have been re-assembled in Rotherhithe. Does anyone know where? Did Charles Manby have a yard? I have been unable to find out.
Article taken from the recently published The Making of the Black Country, A Unique Industrial Landscape (Troubador, 2024). Available from Waterstones and Amazon or at the special price of £15, postage included. Details from: g.marshall41@btinternet.com
Images:
Richmond Railway bridge plaque Patche99z, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia commons
Richmond Railway Bridge By Patche99z - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3582516
Aaron Manby ship - Public Domain