TRANSACTIONS OF LOCAL STUDIES FORUM 2013

Proceedings of the Ken Jones Local History Day held at on 20 April 2013

Wrekin Local Studies Forum TRANSACTIONS OF THE WREKIN LOCAL STUDIES FORUM 2013

Contents

Editorial … … … … … … 2

Ken Jones, his life and work ~ John Powell … … 3

Holywell Lane revisited ~ Barrie Trinder … … 8

Methodism in , with particular reference to Ken Jones ~ John Lenton … … 12

Coal to the Power Station: the role of the railway ~ Neil Clarke ... … 24

Copyright – WLSF and contributors Ken at the Friends of the Gorge Museum 40th anniversary celebrations at Blists Hill in 2009

 EDITORIAL

The Forum

The Wrekin Local Studies Forum exists to bring together organisations and individuals interested in local studies in and around Telford & Wrekin. It is a fully constituted group that meets quarterly to share and receive information, expertise and resources and to plan joint ventures. There is currently a mailing list of over 30 contacts representing local history, family history and reminiscence groups, civic societies, museums, archives, libraries, colleges and the local authority, and of these 18 are active members.

The Forum aims to promote and encourage local studies in the area by organising exhibitions, day events and conferences, working with other organisation to widen access to resources and publishing bi-annual leaflets to advertise the interests and meetings of member societies.

The Transactions

To further the aims of the Forum, the Transactions presents selected local studies papers resulting from talks given at member-societies’ meetings and day conferences and from research undertaken by individual members.

This issue of the Transaction is devoted entirely to the proceedings of the Ken Jones Local History Day. This day conference was held at Coalbrookdale on Saturday, 20th April 2013 to celebrate the life, interests and achievements of Kenneth Bevis Jones, MBE, local historian, railway enthusiast and long-time supporter of the Museum Trust, who died at the age of 90 in February 2012. The event was organised by the Friends of Archives, hosted by the Friends of Ironbridge Gorge Museum and supported by WLSF – Ken was a member of all three. Our thanks go to the speakers who have kindly provided papers for publication.

Items for inclusion in the next issue of the Transactions are welcome and should be sent to the Editor, Cranleigh, , TF6 5BH.

Neil Clarke

 Ken Jones, his life and work John Powell

Kenneth Bevis Jones (always known as “Ken”) was born on 25th October, 1921 at 4, The Stocking, Lightmoor, in the Parish of Little , Shropshire. He was an only child. Ken’s great- grandfather, Thomas Davies (1837-1933) had worked as a railway navvy building the line from Lightmoor down to Coalbrookdale in 1863-4. Ken’s father Cecil Thomas Jones also worked on the railway: he is described on his marriage certificate as a signal porter. Ken’s mother Dora (nee Hillidge) is described in the same document as a “motor driver”, but since the wedding took place in 1918, it is possible that this was some form of war work. It is believed that she had spent some time in domestic service.

Ken attended Pool Hill School in Dawley when his father was working at & Dawley Station, but when he was transferred to Ketley, Ken moved to Ketley Bank School. His childhood was happy and relatively uneventful.

From an early age, Ken harboured the ambition – like many young boys of his generation – of becoming an engine driver. Surprisingly, despite the fact that he worked on the railway himself, Ken’s father was not keen on the idea, and tried to dissuade him, or at least to steer him towards an office job rather than one on the footplate. When he left school at the age of 14, Ken was too young to work on the railway, so he found a position as a clerk in the office at the Wrekin Foundry of James Clay (Wellington) Ltd. He described the work as decidedly uninspiring, though he enjoyed watching the trains passing on the Ketley Junction to Coalbrookdale branch, and he soon discovered that if he volunteered to run errands at the right time of day, he could also watch expresses passing on the to Wolverhampton main line as well!

Ken’s determination to join the railway was undiminished, and eventually he succeeded in persuading his father to put his name down at Wellington loco shed to be taken on as a cleaner when he reached the age of 16. After a wait of three months, Ken was finally requested to attend for a written and eyesight test on 5th February, 1938. A few weeks later, on 3rd March 1938, he had to attend a medical examination at Park House, Swindon; having passed this, he was measured for his overalls, which he took home with him in a brown paper parcel under his arm. He started as a very proud employee of the Great Western Railway on 6th April, 1938, on which date he was instructed to report to the shed foreman at Oxley Shed, Wolverhampton.

Oxley was primarily a shed for freight train locomotives, but after a couple of years Ken progressed as senior cleaner to Stafford Road Shed, which provided most of the passenger locomotives for trains to Chester and Birkenhead, Bristol and the West Country, and for expresses from Wolverhampton to Paddington via Snow Hill. Ken began to undertake firing turns on yard shunters. By this time the war had started, and working on the railways suddenly became a dangerous occupation. In later life, Ken recalled being held for hours at a time in freight loops and sidings as trains brought exhausted troops back from Dunkirk. The sight of the wounded and bedraggled soldiers, he said, led him to believe that Britain would almost certainly lose the war.

In July, 1940 Ken was promoted to fireman and posted to Banbury Shed, in Oxfordshire. Again, his duties involved mainly freight trains and shunting, including the Hump Yard north of the station, which he found to be particularly boring. He stayed at Banbury for 14 months before being moved back to Wolverhampton. During this second spell there, he had his first taste of firing on an express train, when he and driver Albert Williams were unexpectedly instructed to

 A young Ken Jones with his mother Dora and his great-grandfather Thomas Davies, who had worked as a navvy building the Lightmoor-Coalbrookdale railway line in the 1860s.

A rare picture of fireman Ken Jones (right) on the footplate. The locomotive is Hall class no. 5920 “Wycliffe Hall”. The location, and the identity of the driver, are unknown.

Ken and Dorinda’s wedding at New Hadley on 21 February 1953. Ken’s mother and father are on the left, and Dorinda’s parents and sister on the right.

 bring a 12-coach express from Chester back to Wolverhampton hauled by “Hall” class locomotive, no. 6908 “Downham Hall”.

Ken’s final railway move occurred in June, 1942, when he was transferred to Wellington Shed. From then onwards many of his trips, and certainly the turns he found most enjoyable, were over the line through Coalbrookdale and on to and . The contrast with the large sheds at Wolverhampton could not have been greater. With a smaller workforce, there was a strong sense of camaraderie between the footplate men, and also with the signalmen, station staff, shunters and gangers – crews even developed friendships with individual passengers who lived along the line. This was Ken’s happiest time on the railways. Although the Great Western disappeared when the railways were nationalised in 1948, and control passed to the Western Region of British Railways, there were few noticeable changes to this idyllic country line, though the withdrawal of passenger services between Wenlock and Craven Arms in 1951 was in retrospect an ominous sign of things to come.

Outside work, Ken’s social life revolved around the local Methodist chapels. He helped organise football teams, though he is not known to have been an active participant in sport, and he also went away on youth club outings and holidays. It was through these activities that he met Dorinda Perkins from Hadley. They fell in love, and were married at New Hadley Methodist Church on 21st February, 1953. Dorinda was particularly interested in amateur dramatics; she directed plays, and Ken appeared in a number of them, receiving favourable reviews in the local press for his convincing performances. Unfortunately, the unsocial hours of a life on the footplate, and more importantly the likelihood of being transferred away from the area where they had just set up home, persuaded Ken that he should leave the railway, and he duly finished on 3rd December, 1954. He said in later life that he never regretted the decision, and would never have changed it: nevertheless, he retained a deep interest in railways for the rest of his life, keeping in touch with many of his former workmates, and avidly reading the staff magazines passed on to him by his father, who finally retired in 1962 having clocked up 47 years service. He was dismayed by the wielding of the Beeching Axe, and took the opportunity to ride on the Wenlock – Wellington line on the last day of operation. On the last day on the Wellington – Crewe line, a former colleague invited him onto the footplate and gave him a turn on the shovel. He rode on, and filmed, some of the last steam-hauled runs of the Cambrian Coast Express.

Ken’s new career was in local government, initially at Stafford, with him travelling to and fro daily by train from Hadley, and then at a later date he transferred to . He attended evening classes to improve his prospects, and completed a course on book-keeping at Shrewsbury Technical College in 1968. His final position was in the Electoral Registration Office at District Council, from where he retired in 1981 at the age of 60.

Local history had always been an interest of Ken’s, as evidenced by scrapbooks he kept of press cuttings from local newspapers. From the mid-1960s onwards, he became more actively involved, attending courses at Attingham Park led by such people as Michael Rix, and by signing up to evening classes in the Telford area organised by Barrie Trinder. Like many others, he was inspired by the ambitious plans of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, established in 1967. In due course both he and Dorinda joined the Friends of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. Ken said in later life that he was sorry to have missed the Friends’ first AGM, but attended every one after that until shortly before his death. Ken and Dorinda became steadfast members of the Friends, attending most fundraising and social functions over the next 35 years. Ken was the mainstay of the Social History Group, which met weekly in the Museum Library, and he also served on the Friends’ Committee as both Secretary and Chairman. He established a reputation as one of

 Stalwart of the Friends of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. Ken (right) leads the procession across to commemorate the bi-centenary of its opening on 1 January 1981, accompanied by Blists Hill Site Warden John Whetton.

Oral history in the making. Ken records former Maw & Co. worker Bill Harper at Jackfield Tile Museum in 1992.

 the Friends’ most accomplished and sought-after guides. In due course, Ken was invited onto the Board of Trustees of the Museum, and he also served for many years on their Academic & Curatorial Committee.

In the mid-1970s, when China Works was under restoration, Ken had a chance meeting on site with Bill Bagley, who described how he had fired the kilns there prior to the closure of the works in 1926. Ken realised that much valuable information of this type was in danger of being lost. He decided to do something about it by recording the memories of working people, initially on cassette tape, and subsequently on more sophisticated reel-to-reel equipment which he paid for from his own pocket. Over the next three decades Ken interviewed and recorded in excess of 100 local people, building up a unique archive of material which has assumed national importance. He became an expert on the techniques of oral history recording, and was in demand as a speaker and broadcaster on the subject. The recordings were transcribed and typed up by members of the Friends’ Social History Group.

When well into his seventies, Ken decided to take up authorship and, after several years of meticulous research, he produced an outstanding history of the railway line which had meant so much to him. The Wenlock Branch. Wellington to Craven Arms was published by Oakwood Press in 1998, and received favourable reviews from railway enthusiasts and social historians alike. It is no exaggeration to say that it will never be bettered. Eleven years later, Ken’s longstanding interest in the Poor Law resulted in a second book, Pitmen, Poachers and Preachers: Life and the Poor Law in the Madeley Union of Parishes 1700-1930, published by The Dog Rose Press in 2009. The chapter “Days They Recall” contains extracts from Ken’s oral history recordings, and the inspired inclusion of an accompanying CD allows readers to hear the voices of the interviewees themselves.

Ken and Dorinda enjoyed socialising, particularly in Little Wenlock where they had lived since the 1970s, and where they became involved with the church and village life. They invited their many friends to parties to celebrate their ruby wedding in 1993, their joint 80th birthdays in 2001, and their golden wedding in 2003. Ken also enjoyed the companionship of Ironbridge Rotary, of which he was invited to become a member. Sadly, after several years of ill health, Dorinda died in November 2009.

Towards the end of his own life, two things particularly cheered Ken. Firstly, thanks to an initiative led by the Friends’ Committee, and supported by the Trustees of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Ken’s entire archive of oral history recordings was digitised, thereby ensuring that they will always be available for future generations to make use of. Secondly, to his great surprise and delight, Ken was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2010. It was for his services to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and the Friends of the Museum over the previous 40 years. As his guests of honour at Buckingham Palace Ken took with him Hayley Stephens, who had helped him look after Dorinda in her final years, and her daughter Ayisha. Ken said that receiving the medal from HM The Queen was the proudest day of his life.

Ken himself became ill in the spring of 2011. He rallied for a while, and was able to enjoy a surprise party in Little Wenlock Village Hall for his 90th birthday on 25th October, but then suffered a relapse and spent Christmas in hospital. He died peacefully in the Severn Hospice in Shrewsbury on 2nd February, 2012. Ken came from humble beginnings, and went on to a life of considerable achievement. His easygoing manner, his friendliness and his warm sense of humour resulted in him being held in great affection by everyone he came into contact with. Like his beloved Great Western Railway, Ken too is “Gone With Regret”.

 Holywell Lane Holywell

 Holywell Lane re-visited. Barrie Trinder

The event on 20 April 2013 had two purposes: to commend and celebrate Ken Jones’s achievements as a historian of Shropshire, and to add to the public record of his life story. My primary concern is with the former, but I can contribute a little to the biographical material assembled by John Powell and John Lenton.

For about 14 months in 1940-41 Ken and I lived in the same street, although I then was no more than a toddler. After he qualified as a firemen on the Great Western Railway Ken was transferred in July 1940 from Oxley depot at Wolverhampton to Banbury. The shed foreman found him lodgings with Arthur Walton, a driver who lived with his wife in a recently constructed semi- detached house called ‘Penryn’ in East Street in Banbury’s eastern suburb of Grimsbury.[1] My parents lived in an older terraced house at the opposite end of the street. For four years in my teens I delivered Arthur Walton’s Daily Herald. It was always a pleasure to discuss with Ken the locomotive duties that he undertook at Banbury, the North End and Hump Yard shunters, and the trials of firing an ill-maintained ROD class 2-8-0 on a freight train to Didcot.

By the late 1960s I was working for the adult education service of Salop (from 1980 Shropshire) County Council. One of my duties was to foster interest in the history of the industrial area recently designated as Dawley (later Telford) New Town. For two years I ran a research group on the history of religion in the area that was hosted by Christopher Nankivell, then vicar of Malins Lee, and became aware that someone called Ken Jones had published a history of the Methodist chapel at New Hadley. Later, in 1969-72, I was responsible for training and deploying guides at seven open days organised by the fledgling Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. A fleet of eight or ten Elcock’s coaches took visitors round the historic monuments in the Gorge, including the embryo open air museum at Blists Hill. There were guides on each coach, one of whom was David Jones, headmaster of the new primary school at Woodside, where I had given lectures on industrial history which attracted large audiences, and where training sessions for guides were held. David had recently moved to a new house at Clee View, Little Wenlock, and told me shortly before the first open day that his neighbour, Ken Jones, would also like to take part. At short notice we deployed Ken at the Coalport China Works. This was the beginning of an association with the Museum that continued for more than 40 years, during which, amongst many other activities, Ken guided through the Gorge innumerable parties of visitors from all parts of the world.

In September 1972 I began to teach a research class on the social history of the Telford (as it was by then) area, which met first at the new library in Madeley, and from 1973 at what was then the Walker Technical College in Wellington, where it continued to meet for a decade. Ken was a member throughout that time. In those enlightened times the then County Archivist was happy to allow me, as a fellow County Council employee, to take out documents overnight, so that members of research classes could work on them, while archivists at Hereford and Lichfield allowed large numbers of wills and probate inventories to be photocopied for class use. One of the achievements of the Telford class was the transcription, analysis and publication of the seventeenth and eighteenth century probate inventories for almost the whole of the Coalbrookdale Coalfield. [2] Ken was not directly involved with this project, although in class discussions his knowledge of local topography and dialect proved valuable in gaining an understanding of inventories, and the fund that he established with Dorinda made a substantial contribution to the publication costs of Miners and Mariners. Ken spent most of his time in the class on two

 projects, investigating the background of the Wenlock branch railway, the results of which were published in his first book,[3] and on the 30 or so dwellings in the township of Little Dawley that comprised the community of Holywell Lane which lay close to his birthplace at The Stocking.

The astonishing higglety-pigglety range of brick cottages in Holywell Lane contrasted sharply with the straight rows of company-built housing at Horsehay, Sandy Bank Row and Dark Lane. Ken studied Holywell Lane by examining evidence from five large-scale maps of the area made between 1772 and 1882 and by analysing manorial records and census returns. The class undertook a field trip to the area in the winter of 1973-74, during which empty houses were explored and some ventured up the ladders and through the trapdoors which in some houses provided the only access to the first floor rooms. The cottages in Holywell Lane were demolished in 1976. Ken was beginning at this time to record old people’s memories, some of which, particularly those of Sam Thomas who then lived in Little Wenlock, related directly to Holywell Lane. By the late 1970s a comprehensive picture of an open industrial community was emerging, in many ways sharply different from settlements in which housing was owned by large companies.

It proved possible to add to Ken’s work the results of wholly different research. Maurice Jones worked with the Museum as part of his studies at the Department of Architecture at Liverpool Polytechnic, and wrote a study of squatter settlements including a detailed plan of Holywell Lane which formed part of his finals submission to the Royal Institute of British Architects. John Malam worked under my supervision at the Ironbridge Institute (then the Institute of Industrial Archaeology) as supervisor of an archaeological project funded by the Manpower Services Commission. In the summer of 1981 he directed a small-scale excavation on the site of one of the cottages that had long been demolished. [4] These sources were brought together with Ken’s work in an article published in a national journal in 1982. [5]

The article is not difficult to locate and its contents can only be summarised here. There were four or five houses in Holywell Lane in 1772, but 26 in 1825, after which two more were built and one was demolished before 1882. The court rolls for Little Dawley showed that 17 were built between 1771 and 1796, and that from 1795 occupiers paid rent rather than fines for encroachment. Most of the tenants purchased their cottages in the 1920s and 30s and the last was sold in 1935. The majority of the cottages were basically of one room with a bedroom above extending upwards into the roof space. The work of the social history class revealed the probate inventory of Edward Darrall (or Dorrell) of Holywell, Dawley, who died in 1726. Ken was able to identify his cottage and to detail the history of the Dorrell family who were still living there 150 years afterwards. Edward Dorrell is recorded in the account book of the Coalbrookdale Company as charking coals (i.e. making charcoal) and digging a ditch for Abraham Darby I in 1709.

Ken was able to show that boys as young as eight living in the row were working underground in 1841, that three men from the Lane lost their lives in pit accidents in the 1820s, and that in later decades men walked considerable distances to work at pit. Some women worked picking iron ore from clay on pit banks, the occupation described by Annie Payne, born in 1887, one of the last pit girls, whose recollections are one of Ken’s most memorable recordings. Some families remained in the Lane generation after generation, changing their occupations with the changing local economy. Ken recorded meticulously the by-employments of disabled and very old people who lived in the Lane, making toys for children, fetching beer for neighbours or delivering coal. He showed that cottagers continued to keep pigs and even cows well into the twentieth century.

10 The article on Holywell Lane also threw light on squatter settlements elsewhere - on the slopes of the Ironbridge Gorge and at Ketley Bank and Wrockwardine Wood in the Coalbrookdale coalfield; in other parts of Shropshire on the Clee Hills, Myddle Wood and Hookagate; in the Black Country, notably in the conservation area at Mushroom Green; in the Potteries; and in the slate-working area of Gwynedd. Colin Ward, surveying the national picture in 2002, acknowledged the importance of the Holywell Lane research. [6]

Ken’s work on the Poor Law showed that he had become a capable documentary historian, [7] but his talents as an oral historian were exceptional. His gentle manner encouraged his interviewees to relax and delve into the deepest but also the most historically relevant recesses of their memories. His most lasting memorial will be the digital files of his recordings that remain in the library at Ironbridge. Ken left school at 14 and acquired his skills through reading and through attendance at adult educations classes from the early 1950s. The opportunities presented by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, the prospect of interpreting the history of the landscape to visitors, the availability of the library for the deposit of recordings and transcriptions, and the sociable company of other people interested in local history, enabled his abilities to flourish. An article that I published in 1976 attracted criticism because I commended the educational opportunities for voluntary work presented by the first generation of industrial museums, quoting R H Tawney who wrote:

The purpose of an adult education worthy of the name is not merely to impart reliable information ... it is still more to foster the intellectual vitality to master and use it, so that knowledge becomes, not a burden to be born, or a possession to be prized, but a stimulus to constructive thought and an inspiration to action. [8]

Ken’s life and publications attest to Tawney’s vision. He responded positively to the ‘stimulus to constructive thought and an inspiration to action’ that the Museum provided, and in so doing made a valued contribution not only to local history in Dawley and Madeley, but, through his research into Holywell Lane, to our understanding of the process of industrialisation nationally and internationally.

References.

1.K Jones, The Wenlock Branch: Wellington to Craven Arms (Usk: Oakwood, 1998), pp 308-09. 2. B Trinder & J Cox, eds, Yeomen and Collieries in Telford: the probate inventories of Dawley, Lilleshall, Wellington and Wrockwardine (Chichester: Phillimore, 1980); B Trinder & N Cox, eds, Miners and Mariners of the Severn Gorge: the probate inventories of Benthall, , Little Wenlock and Madeley (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000). 3. K Jones, The Wenlock Branch: Wellington to Craven Arms (Usk: Oakwood, 1998), 4. J Malam, ‘Excavations on the site of an eighteenth century squatter cottage at Little Dawley, Telford’, M O H Carver, ed, Archaeology (1981). 5. Ken Jones, Maurice Hunt, John Malam and Barrie Trinder, ‘Holywell Lane: A Squatter Community in the Shropshire Coalfield’, Industrial Archaeology Review, vol 6 (1982), pp.163-85. 6. Colin Ward, Cotters and Squatters: Housing’s Hidden History (2002), pp 105-14. 7. K Jones, Pitmen, Poachers and Preachers: Life and the Poor Law in the Madeley Union of Parishes 1700- 1930 (: Dog Rose, 2009). 8. Bob West, ‘The making of the English working past: a critical view of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum’, R Lumley, ed, The Museum Time Machine: putting cultures on display (London: Routledge, 1988), pp 36-62; B Trinder, ‘Industrial Conservation and Industrial History: reflections on the Ironbridge Gorge Museum’, History Workshop Journal, vol 2 (1976), pp 171-76; R H Tawney, The Radical Tradition (Pelican edn, 1966), p 88

11 Methodism in the Telford Area, with particular reference to Ken Jones John Lenton

Introduction I am indebted to many different individuals, particularly for their writings but also their oral memories about Ken Jones and his family. Ken’s words are used wherever possible, since he wrote about Methodism and its local history. Ken was born near Lightmoor, his father a local preacher in the area. The Lightmoor United Methodist chapel featured in his childhood. He married the organist at New Hadley ex-United Methodist chapel. Ken’s knowledge of Methodism enhanced his work on the area’s history. He emphasised the small groups and chapels, the Sunday schools with their anniversaries, treats and processions with banners, the preachers and what they said and people thought. I begin with the Fletchers, deal with growth and divisions, with the organisation of the Circuits, and some of local Methodism’s strengths and weaknesses. This a general account with the history of the four chapels to which Ken and his family were linked, chapels which in general have been omitted from most of the published work on Methodism in the area, and a little about the Coalbrookdale chapel, and will emphasise the role of the much loved local preachers such as his father.

My area is that of modern Telford increased by the Severn Gorge that Ken knew so well, with the closer parts of the old Madeley Poor Law Union, so including Little Wenlock, Huntington, Jackfield, and Broseley.

Fletcher and the Rise of Methodism Methodism did not flourish here until the coming of Fletcher. John William Fletcher or Jean Guillaume de la Flechere, a Swiss born nobleman’s son from Nyon on Lake Geneva, came to in 1750 and became tutor to the sons of a leading family, the Hills of Tern Hall (today Attingham Park). He met a Methodist in 1753, became one in the winter of 1753/4 and in 1757 was ordained, acting as a curate for a short time at Madeley and preaching for the Methodists in London. In 1760 he was made Vicar of Madeley by his patron, though Wesley did not visit him here till 1764. He visited his flock in their homes and the new places of work, the mines and the blast furnaces. He founded Methodist societies inside and outside the parish, at first in people’s homes. So in Madeley parish there were societies in Coalbrookdale and Madeley Wood, outside it societies in Coalpit (later Ketley) Bank, the Trench, Dawley and in Wellington. Ketley Bank and the Trench were on the edge of parishes, as was Coalbrookdale in Madeley itself. The Madeley Wood meeting was at Mary Matthews’ tall cottage which became called the Rock Chapel. In 1777 Fletcher built a meeting house there. He also went to speak to societies in

 Barrie Trinder in Shropshire (Chichester: Phillimore, 2000) (3rd ed) and MNC in East Shropshire, Clive Field ed Church and Chapel 1851 (Keele: Shropshire Record Series 8 2004) and “Methodism in Shropshire in 1851” in TSAS Vol LXXX (2005) 176-189, VCH Vol XI ed G C Baugh (1985) Telford, Patrick Streiff Reluctant Saint (Peterborough: Epworth, 2001) and Hammond and Forsaith eds Religion Gender and Industry ( Eugene OR: Pickwick, 2009). More information can be found on thefletcherpage.org/ Oral memories have been supplied by many, especially Ken’s fellow workers John Powell and Jim Cooper. Others are referenced in the relevant sections.  Cf Ken Jones Pitmen Poachers and Preachers p6 (Ludlow: Dog Rose Press, 2009) (in future “PPP”) where Ken began his account of Methodism in the area with Fletcher.  Phillips Early Methodists in Shropshire 57-61, R F Skinner Nonconformity in Shropshire 1662-1816 (Shrewsbury: Wildings, 1964).57-67.

12 Broseley and Little Wenlock and he preached in the open air, for example at Horsehay Works. At Coalbrookdale the society met at the house of Michael Parker and later Walter Onions. A chapel was built by Fletcher there in 1784/5. These societies in Shropshire all seem to have been small in number at this period and not large enough to form their own Circuit. As a result they were linked either with the Circuit to the east or the Cheshire Circuit to the north. Between 1748 and 1762 they were part of the Staffordshire Circuit. From 1763, however, to 1787 a new Chester Circuit was established with the Shropshire societies included. In 1787 Wolverhampton, a new Circuit, was created from Staffordshire and this absorbed the Shropshire societies from Cheshire. The first Circuit which only contained Shropshire societies came after 1791.

Methodists continued to work closely with Anglicans right across the Telford area well into the 19th century. Mary Fletcher, as Fletcher’s widow, was allowed to live on in the Old Vicarage until her death in 1815, thirty years after Fletcher’s death, and during that period she continued to run the parish as her husband had asked her. She and her adopted daughters or companions, Sally Lawrence and Mary Tooth, preached, led classes and founded societies and chapels (Mary Fletcher built a chapel at Coalport in memory of Sally who had regularly led the society there). They worked with the curates whom Mary Fletcher had recommended for appointment and with other clergy of the area, like John Eyton of Wellington, who often came to Madeley, and, like Fletcher himself, preached at Methodist classes and chapels and also with the Wesleyan preachers. In 1792 Shrewsbury became a separate Circuit, one which included the whole of the Telford area. That Circuit had a large revival, especially in the coalfield area, led by the itinerant preacher Samuel Taylor in 1798 and 1799. Many societies dated from that point.

Wesleyan Methodism 1800 to 1932 Little evidence survives for when the individual early Methodist societies started. It is only by 1813 and the first Shrewsbury Circuit plan that we can definitely see all the preaching places which then existed (plate 1). Only from slightly after 1813 do records of that Circuit survive. The pattern was similar. First a society would meet in someone’s house. Then that house would be licensed. Then it might be taken over as only for meetings, what Wesley called a meeting or preaching house. Later the local society would try to build a purpose built chapel. At Coalpit Bank (later called Ketley Bank) where Fletcher had founded the society, the first chapel was built in 1795. By 1799 the Vicar of at the Visitation said it attracted many from Shifnal. Chapel records hardly ever survive from that early period. In 1802 a society was founded at Red Lake. In the same year a chapel was built at the Nabb which shows there must have been a society there for some time. In 1809 the Shrewsbury Local Preacher Thomas Brocas preached at Coalpit Bank and Lawley Bank and by 1810 there were 1400 members in the Circuit. Most who worshipped at services, however, would not be members.

At Little Dawley the pattern was similar. People walked to Fletcher’s meetings in Coalbrookdale or Madeley. Six who had been converted by him then founded a society in Little Dawley on Sunday evenings. By 1799 the itinerant preachers were preaching at a society there and in 1805 a chapel, in Ken’s words, at “Upper Yards on what is today Springwell Mount” was registered. Of the six original trustees, three, Robert Bailey, Thomas Barker and Robert Morgan, came from Holywell Lane. In 1851 they reported average attendances of a 215 strong Sunday School in the

 Life of Richard Williams of Horshay near Madeley (London John Mason nd).  Trinder Industrial Revolution 178-9.  Ken Jones Methodism in Little Dawley (1987)

13 morning, 150 adults plus a Sunday School of 190 in the afternoon, and 130 in the evening.

On the first printed Shrewsbury Circuit plan of Sunday preaching appointments of 1813, chapels and then societies are arranged alphabetically (apart from recent additions towards the bottom). Most were in East Shropshire. Sometimes later chapels could be distinguished from society meetings in houses by the fact they come first and have their names in larger capitals. The list of chapels included Broseley, Coalbrookdale, Coalford and Coalpit Bank. Coalpit Bank and the Nabb each had two services on Sunday (11 & 6pm at Coalpit Bank and 2 & 6pm at the Nabb). This enabled a preacher to come out from Shrewsbury on Sunday and preach at each. Both were close to the main road which was still the only reasonable form of communication in the area. There were also weeknight services and the weekly class meeting.

In north-east Telford Methodist Society meetings included two noted already, one founded by Fletcher at Trench, and one at Red Lake. But others, which may go back to the Fletcher period, may date from nearly 50 years before: Ketley, New Hadley, Priorslee, linked to Shifnal, the Rock, Waxhill Barracks and Newdale indicate the importance of the main road. Only Waxhill Barracks and the Trench were well away from this, so a total of ten societies across that area in 1813. Each had at least one class leader, many had a Local Preacher, some (certainly the chapels) had Sunday schools linked to them with voluntary Sunday School teachers. By 1818 there were schools at Coalpit Bank and the Nabb on the plan; the preacher spent his afternoon at the school so his influence would be felt there. Each year more class meetings were likely to develop. In 1816 a cottage meeting started at Hadley. In 1818 there was one at Horton. By 1823 there was one on Mannerley Lane, one at Ragfield, another two called the Rookery and Red Hill, another at Donnington, ie a total of 17 just in north-east Telford. In 1832 a chapel was built at Ketley.

The Wellington Circuit was separated off from Shrewsbury in 1817 with 350 members. Its biggest society was Wellington, where they built a new chapel and manse in 1836. The Broseley Circuit, later called Madeley, was detached from Shrewsbury in 1815 with 685 members. This Circuit was so important that for two years the Shrewsbury District was not based on the smaller Shrewsbury Circuit but in Madeley - a “Madeley” Methodist District. Wellington Circuit gained some societies around Newport from the Stafford Circuit around 1819. Four of these, Shifnal, Lilleshall, Sambrook and Newport, had appeared on the Stafford plan by 1816.

In Coalbrookdale the earlier chapel was replaced in 1828. This is not the one standing today, which was opened in 1885, the centenary year of Fletcher’s death and thus called Fletcher Memorial. It did not make any return in the 1851 census, though there is a return for the Wharfage, Ironbridge, made by the Coalbrookdale steward.10 A leading member at Coalbrookdale was Benjamin Bangham who died in 1842,11 and his descendants remained the dominant family judging from the list of donations to the 20th Century Fund. They then lived at Hawkshead House and Primrose Cottage, and were related to the Roberts family of Model House, remembered on one of the stones as Sunday School Superintendent. Others included the Fowlers of the Ferns

 Clive Field ed Church and Chapel in Early Victorian Shropshire Returns from the 1851 Census for Religious Worship (Keele Shropshire Record Series No 8 2004) 45.  At Shropshire Records and Research 2045 Box 12 printed J.H.Lenton Methodism in Wellington 1765- 1982 (Wellington; Wellington Methodist Church 1982) 4.  Minutes 1821-2, partly because Jonathan Crowther was Madeley Superintendent those years. 10 Field Church and Chapel p48. 11 Ob WMM 1842 932.

14 and Hills, Harleys, Briscoes, Dunbars, Fletchers, Beebees and Williams.12

Until 1849 the growth of Wesleyan Methodism, despite secessions detailed below, was nationally double the rate of growth of the population.13 However, in Shropshire Wesleyanism was comparatively weak as Clive Field has shown.14

Somewhere around 1873 the Wesleyan Methodist Atlas was published, showing how the Wesleyan system looked on the ground at this point, fairly close to its maximum coverage. In the north west was the Wellington Circuit with several rural societies such as , Rodington and Moreton Mill, but most close by: Hadley, Ketley, Newdale, etc. In what is today south Telford were Circuits in Dawley and Madeley, with outlying societies in Kenley and Huntington for Dawley and Much Wenlock, Shirlett, Broseley and Bridgnorth for Madeley. In the north east of Telford there was the Ketley Bank and Shifnal Circuit, including Trench and Newport.15 The main change to the Wesleyans in the area came in 1908 when, under the prompting of the Wesleyan Home Mission department, the four Circuits were united as the Wellington Circuit, stretching from Moreton Mill to Bridgnorth. They worked in sections, but it did mean there was better leadership and weaker societies received more help.

Breakaway Methodist Churches 1. The Methodist New Connexion The pattern of organisation set by Wesleyan Methodism was reproduced on a smaller scale by each later Methodist breakaway church. Each started as a meeting in someone’s house, and progressed by hiring rooms, building chapels and then pulling them down and building larger. Each group of chapels was in a Circuit, which formed a District. Because they had fewer members, so there were fewer churches and fewer Circuits which stretched over wider areas and were more likely to have gaps between; but the principles remained the same. As with the Wesleyans, few early records have survived.

The MNC broke away from the Wesleyans in 1797/8. Their strength was in the big northern towns, though they did come into East Shropshire later, thanks to a breakaway group called the Winfieldites in the southern coalfield led by Robert Winfield in 1821. He was a former Primitive Methodist (PM) preacher who attracted the Wesleyan class leader Benjamin Tranter. In 1829 the Revivalists joined the MNC, who sent as their first minister the prominent theologian William Cooke.

By 1839 they had a Circuit of 13 societies, stronger in the south than the north. Eight of these built chapels: Oakengates, Hollinswood, Lawley Bank, Brandlee (perhaps their strongest, in Dawley) Lightmoor (see later), Madeley, and Madeley Wood.

They had another 23 societies at different times across the region, notably in agricultural villages south of the Wrekin such as Huntington, and Longwood, often those neglected by

12 (R Ratcliffe transcribed) The 20th Century Fund donation lists Madeley Circuit. 13 Robson Dark Satanic Mills 54-5 14 TSAS 90 2005 176-89. 15 Ed Edwin H.Tindall The Wesleyan Methodist Atlas (London Wesleyan Methodist Bookroom nd.(c 1873))

15 the Wesleyans but with a smaller population base, so ones which did not last when agriculture declined after 1870. The 1886 preaching plan shows they had open air camp meetings like the Primitive Methodists.16

2. The Primitive Methodists More important both nationally and locally were the Primitive Methodists. Indeed they were so good at filling in the gaps left by the Wesleyans that in most of rural Shropshire, and also in Oakengates and Wrockwardine Wood, they became the leading religious community, while elsewhere they became almost as important as the Wesleyans. They began in the Potteries, separating over the question of open air meetings or, as they called it, camp meetings. These were their raison d’etre, held frequently in the summer on public open space like the Wrekin or the Cinderhill at Wrockwardine Wood, or at Ketley Bank on the Camp Meeting Hill17. They attracted non chapel goers and the wayward young who could then be drawn into cottage meetings or love feasts and converted. Camp Meetings continued well into the inter-war period in the 20th century, and are still being held in South and West Shropshire.18

The first PM missionaries, James Bonsor and others, came to Oakengates to the Bull-ring in 1821, forming a society there, but unable to find a site to build. The closest was at Wrockwardine Wood where they built their first chapel in 1823. The story is then very like the Wesleyans. A separate Circuit was set up, other societies founded, which tried to build chapels for themselves and soon started regular Sunday schools over the whole area. By 1861 there were chapels at Wrockwardine Wood, Oakengates, Hadley, Coalpit Bank and St George’s and Society meetings at Dark Lane, Old Park, Park Forge Row, Ketley, Trench, Waxhill Barracks, Slate Row, Donnington Wood, Donnington, New Hadley, Bunters Row, the Rookery and Donnington Barracks, and no less than 48 Local Preachers living in the area. Membership was 860 in the Circuit that year. And that was only the north. In the south there were the Dawley and the Madeley Circuits, including chapels at Dawley Bank Road, Madeley High St, Horsehay, Ironbridge, the Rock, Finger Road, , Much Wenlock and Stretton Westwood, Broseley, together with many other society meetings, eg at Aqueduct, Coalmoor and Little Wenlock,

The PMs were much more successful than the MNC. They appealed to agricultural labourers and were strong in the villages of Staffordshire and Shropshire. Many of these labourers then moved for work to the West Midlands, where the PMs were strong among miners, quarrymen and workers in the metal industries. They became by 1851 second nationally only to the Wesleyans in numerical strength and numbers of chapels and societies. In Shropshire they were more important than the Wesleyans, dominating the countryside especially in the north, with total attendances of 14,791 compared to the Wesleyan 12,053. These numbers do not include missing returns, where the Prims suffered more than the Wesleyans.19

By the end of the nineteenth century there were four PM Circuits in the Telford area, Oakengates which included Wellington, Wrockwardine Wood, Dawley and Madeley. Jealousy between Wellington and Oakengates led to the former setting up as an independent Circuit from Oakengates in 1919. Most of these were single minister stations.

16 SRR 1886 MNC preaching plan 1886. 17 Jones PPP 287 oral memories of Bill Sheldon of the Rock. 18 Esther Lenton in PWHS 52 (1999) 1-14. 19 Field Church and Chapel.

16 METHODISM IN THE TELFORD AREA

Plate 1. Shrewsbury Circuit Plan 1813 (Shropshire Archives)

Plate 2. Ketley Bank Hill Top

17 Plate 3 Ketley Bank Youth Group at Ludlow Castle, 17 August 1950: Ken, third from left, back row; Dorinda, third from right, front row (Photo: Ken Dawes)

Plate 4. Lightmoor Salem Chapel (“Fat Bacon”)

Plate 5. New Hadley

18 3. Other Methodists In this area the main other group was the Wesleyan Reformers, involved in the Snedshill affair of 1850/1, who broke away from the Wellington Wesleyans to set up their own Circuit. They took with them a large number of local preachers, several chapels (eg Snedshill20) and many societies. In 1857 they became the United Methodist Free Churches and in 1907 united with the MNC Circuit to become the United Methodists. The Ketley chapel was one of the first they built. They were strongest across the north of the coalfield, especially round St Georges where their minister lived.

Local Preachers Ken’s father, Cecil or C.T. Jones, was born at Horsehay, the son of a metal worker at the Coalbrookdale works, and Cecil had two older brothers, Clifford and Percy. These two brothers both married sisters of the name of Davies at Brandlee United Methodist church in March 1912 and April 1913. Cecil Jones was a signalman living at 4 The Stocking, near Lightmoor, when Ken was born. He came on plan in 1917 as “C.T.Jones”. By 1932 he appears as of Clares Lane, Old Park, working at the Ketley Halt and signals and he lived there until he moved in retirement and under health pressures in the mid 1960s to Admaston.21

He became junior Society Steward at a Wesleyan church close by, Ketley Bank Hill Top (plate 2), in 1932, the year of Methodist Union. Had the family moved earlier and it was only at this point that his membership was transferred? As a Local Preacher in 1934 he was not on the WM plan at all, so presumably on the UM plan, but copies of this have not survived. In 1936 he was an auxiliary preacher, not an accredited preacher on the Wellington ex-WM plan. In 1943, for example, he took a double appointment at Lawley Bank in October and six other appointments in the Ketley Bank section. In March 1952 he was a “helper” in the Oakengates Circuit. But by September that year the Local Preachers meeting had accepted his credentials and he was a fully accredited preacher - date of acceptance 1917! By 1964 he was preaching in the Oakengates and Shifnal Circuit, so in the October to December quarter he preached five times on their plan, and he was senior Steward at Ketley Bank then also.22

A much earlier Local Preacher was Richard Williams of Horsehay and the Lloyds, 1755-1830. He worked for 25 years as a furnaceman for the Dale Company at the Horsehay works. A convert of Fletcher in the early 1770s, his descriptions of persecution of Methodism in that periods are interesting: “In the village of Little Wenlock...I saw one of the servants of the Lord pelted with addled eggs and clods, and otherwise ill used...We were sure to get well pelted by the Horshay people, when we went to hear Mr Fletcher preach at Dawley Green; though when he came to Horshay and took his stand in Mr Reynolds’ timber-yard, none durst lift a hand or move a tongue against him or us, it being well known that he (Reynolds) had a great respect for Mr Fletcher.” Williams opposed Sunday working at the works but as a furnaceman was forced to work. However, around 1805 the company made him manager of the Lloyds furnace. Soon the arrival of William Anstice among the owners enabled him to alter working at the furnace to none on Sundays and thus began a move which spread to other blast furnaces. He also became class leader and Local Preacher.23

20 J H Lenton The Snedshill Affair in the Bulletin of the Shropshire branch of the Wesley Historical Society vol1 no 10 (Nov 1977) 2-4. 21 I am grateful to John and Rosemarie Addison for their memories of him in Admaston. 22 Information from circuit plans in the author’s possession, also from Jim Cooper and John Addison. 23 Richard Williams of Horshay.

19 Ken Jones’ Churches 1. Ketley Bank Hill Top Ken was brought up here where his father was Steward, though in his youth he often went for weekends to his grandparents in Lightmoor and went to church there instead. However, during the war a Youth Group was founded at Ketley Bank from young people of the three chapels, the ex-Wesleyan Hill Top, the ex-Prim St Pauls and the ex-United Methodist Mossey Green. It met at each of the three in turn and was led at first by George Carter, son of John Carter the Hill Top senior Steward to 1943. Ken was George’s friend and was encouraged to help him, and eventually George Carter married and bowed out, leaving it to Ken and others. There were a few from New Hadley there, including the Perkins girls Dorinda and Betty, and it was here that Ken met his future wife. Dorinda was interested in theatre and she began to put on plays with the group and run rehearsals. Ken was good at planning walks and on one occasion the youth group walked through his original stamping area of Holywell Lane and Lightmoor and down to the Severn. Plate 3 is of a visit by the group to Ludlow castle.24 In 1953 Ken married Dorinda. His best man was George Carter, my chief informant on local Methodism when I first came to this area.25 This Youth Group was one of a number formed in the area and beyond in Methodist Churches towards the end of the Second World War, the strongest being one at Wellington led by Arthur Jones, founded in 1943.26

2. Methodism in Lightmoor Lightmoor was a collection of isolated cottages, south of Horsehay and west of Little Dawley. Both Prims and MNC had cottage meetings there. The PMs seem to have started first in 1847, being mentioned in the Wrockwardine Wood Circuit records. Opened up by the railways, by Ken’s time, it was an industrial landscape with factories, brick works and overgrown spoil heaps with a few houses dotted around.

Ken said “a typical example (of a cottage meeting) was that of William Hayley of Burroughs Bank, Lightmoor, a miner at the nearby Ash Tree clay pit. In 1859 he was holding a PM society meeting in his cottage. On 2nd July William Franks, also a miner, was holding meetings in his cottage at no.7 Holywell Lane...these meetings were to form the nucleus of the many chapels... to be found throughout the...coalfield.” The Dawley and Madeley Primitive Methodist Circuit Minutes of 31st Sept 1860 record “the Burroughs Bank society have liberty to purchase land to build a chapel.” This land was eventually purchased at the Gravel Leasowes from the Earl of Craven” in 1861. The two “cottage meetings joined together and became known as the Lightmoor PM chapel”.27 The chapel was officially known as Jubilee since it was opened in the PMs’ Jubilee year, 50 years from their foundation, but was popularly known as “Pop Bottle”. The story is that a blind man was taken round and declared “It’s no bigger than a Pop Bottle.” They had 30 members in the Madeley PM Circuit in 1876, though only 12 by 1888. Ken said it shut by 1901, being turned into cottages, one of which was occupied by his paternal grandparents. Ken’s chief enjoyment when young and visiting his grandparents was observing the engines on the nearby railway. The cottages were still standing in 1977.

24 I’m grateful to Gordon Shepherd for the identification. 25 Information from Gordon Shepherd, a member of the Youth Club. 26 Allan Frost Wellington Methodist Youth (Priorslee All Paperback Originals 2006). 27 Jones PPP 7.

20 The other society at Lightmoor was that of the MNC (later UM) which had been at the Genies since 1849. In April 1865 they opened their chapel called Salem (plate 4). However, like “Jubilee/ Pop Bottle” the less religious name stuck. They were called “Fat Bacon” since the members raised chapel money by keeping pigs. More is known about this chapel and “Fat Bacon” lasted longer than “Pop Bottle”. In 1900 it only had nine members but the evening congregation was 30 and there were 40 in the Sunday school. Leading families there included the Wards of the Genies, especially Thomas Ward, and the Higginsons, such as Matthew Higginson who was Sunday School Superintendent 1900-18 and was a Local Preacher. The baptismal register survives showing that laymen like Higginson carried out many of the baptisms. It also gives Ken’s baptism (born 25th October, baptised by Harry Hinchcliffe, the Circuit minister, on 24th November 1921).28 The Sunday School Anniversary was usually on the 3rd Sunday in June and for 40 years was conducted by W.E.Boot from Cannock. However, in 1936 a handbill shows it was on the 4th Sunday with the Revd Thomas Marlow the preacher at 10-30 in the morning and at 2-30 in the afternoon, and with Mr R.N.Moore of Madeley, known as “Uncle Bob”, a local baker, an ex-Wesleyan who founded Madeley Rest Room, in the evening at 6. The afternoon had a special musical service, with soloist Gordon Sumnall, a Midland Red bus conductor. Conductor of the service was Mr Charlie Thomas and the organist George Davies.29 They must have acquired an organ by 1936 though, as Ken said, “As late as the late 1920s Thomas Ward on his violin and a cellist were still accompanying the hymn singing at the little Salem United Methodist chapel at Lightmoor”.30 The chapel shut in 1938 after Methodist union31, though it appeared in the Circuit schedule book with accounts up to 1939 inclusive. Next year, 1940, it was listed, but no accounts and no treasurer were given, so it had probably shut.32 It was pulled down c. 1972.

3. New Hadley Methodism Ragfield was a society on the 1813 Shrewsbury plan with a service at 6pm. It broke away from Wesleyanism in 1851 along with the Reformers based at Snedshill. So, in Ken’s words, ‘A United Methodist Free Churches meeting existed at New Hadley in 1859, meeting at 2-30 on Sundays and Zion (Chapel) was built for it in 1868 north of Hadley Lane, later Hadley Road. It used to be on the banks of the Brickle Hole in the Ragfield area which formed part of the East Shropshire coalfield, not on the main road as it is now’. This chapel had its first recorded baptisms in 1874.33 There are membership lists from 1900 to 191734.These show a membership then of between 15 and 21, ten women and 11 men at the highest point. Two thirds lived in New Hadley and a third elsewhere, mostly Hadley but also Trench, Wombridge and even Haybridge. The main surnames

28 Lightmoor Baptismal Register in SRR NM . Harry Hinchcliffe entered the Free Methodist ministry in 1902, serving St George’s and Dawley from 1918 to 22. He died in 1951 ( ob Mins 1951 p134, OA Beckerlegge UM Ministers p 111). 29 NM 4627/7/8 formerly owned by George Whitehead No 7? Doseley Crossing Lightmoor. Information from Revd Maurice and Mrs Janet Wright. 30 Jones PPP 246, presumably his own memories. 31 In 1930 the trust paid £12 to the circuit, on income of £16 guineas. NM 3038/3/7 St George’s and Dawley section in Oakengates Methodist Circuit Schedule of Methodist Trust Property 1939-50 shows Lightmoor up to March 1941. However, no accounts or treasurer are shown after March 39. That year the treasurer was T Wood. 32 See note 7 above. In 1940 it was still insured for £150 for loss against fire (see Circuit Schedule Book already cited ). 33 New Hadley Baptismal Register 1874- NM 5817/10 the first baptism being Florence daughter of Thomas and Ann Harper 25th May. 34 NM 3767/XXIV/J. Other membership recorded figures are 1900, 15, 1906, 20, 1908, 22, 1912, 24, 1917, 21, 1944, 28,1958, 39, 1976, 43.

21 were Beddows, Bailey, Price, Harris, Holland (Dorinda’s mother’s maiden name) and Dean. Class leaders lived outside New Hadley. They were Oliver Dainty of Waterloo Bridge, Ketley, to 1905, then Sampson of Wombridge.

The chapel, which was leasehold, was demolished in the 1920s to enable Blockleys to extract clay from underneath, and they worshipped on a hut on the new site while the new chapel was built. It was replaced by another chapel in 1932.35 They themselves built this one (plate 5) on land Blockleys donated, the foundation stone being laid on 16th April by Alderman C.S.Patchett of the rival prosperous Wesleyan chapel in Hadley. Membership then grew from 21 in 1917 to 28 in 1944 and 43 in 1976, partly because of a strong musical tradition of which Dorinda and her mother were part, Dorinda being one of the organists from the early 1930s to when the Joneses moved to Little Wenlock, almost 40 years. New Hadley Methodists used a wooden hut as Sunday school, but replaced that with a school hall in 1954, partly thanks to a donation from their fellow ex-UM chapel Horton. Ken worshipped here regularly after his marriage in 1953 when he and Dorinda lived at Gladstone Street, Hadley, the house which had been presented to the happy couple by his father-in-law David Perkins, a steel manufacturing inspector. This period was one of prosperity for the church. However, after the Joneses left for Little Wenlock, numbers declined and the New Hadley chapel shut in 2002.36 The original chapel at SJ 682116 had been east of the Granville Arms, about 200 yards from the road and west of Ragfield Row about 300 yards away.

Conclusion: Methodism in the area Methodism succeeded in East Shropshire for many reasons. The Fletchers and their influence, both social and spiritual, were a major factor in the early years. The Methodist organisation, the “great machine” as 19th century Wesleyans termed it, gave a place to everyone and provided innumerable meetings of different kinds which provided benefits for the poor, friends for the friendless, marriage opportunities for those looking for a wife or husband, occupation and education for the young and those bent on self- improvement, as well as spiritual nourishment. Religious festivals like Sunday School Anniversaries and outings enabled those who otherwise would never have a holiday to celebrate and enjoy themselves. As Ken said, and the story of Richard Williams illustrates the point, it “gave a new self-respect to many, making them hardworking thrifty and sober”.37 Methodism was closely linked with the metalworking and mining industries and, as mines and ironworks spread across Telford and got larger and deeper, so miners and metalworkers who were often Methodists founded their societies and built chapels. It is no accident that the historian of the mines of Shropshire is Ivor Brown, himself a Methodist from Madeley, keenly interested in the Fletchers. Ken’s example of the importance of miners to Methodism was “the trust deed of 1837 relating to the Little Dawley Wesleyan chapel, in which 13 of the 18 trustees were miners, each of them signing the document with their cross”.38 Little Dawley WM chapel built up a large library, many of the volumes purchased in the 1830s and 40s, so those miners’ children (and their parents whom they might often teach) when they learned to read had something to practice on. This included deep theology and stories

35 The architect was S Davies of Stourbridge. 36 June Toze Nonconformist Chapels in NETelford (NE Telford Studies group 2007) pp52-3 has pictures of both chapels. Other information from Maureen Beard, John and Rosemarie Addison and Terry Gilder. 37 Jones PPP 8. 38 Jones PPP 7.

22 of missionaries like John Hunt, a craftsman from a West Midlands village.39 Methodist hymns provided the background for their greatest experiences. So, for the waggoner William Boycott of the Dilley Hole near Lightmoor, it was important that at the New Year the local lads should sing the Charles Wesley hymn for him: “Come let us anew our journey pursue, roll round with the year, and never stand still till the Master appear.” The tune was a characteristic Methodist tune which first appears in Wesley’s Sacred Harmony of 1780.40

To sum up, Ken Jones was steeped in local Methodism..41 A railwayman born and bred, Ken’s Methodism was part of his love of the history of the area and his book was fittingly entitled Pitmen, Poachers and Preachers, as each were typical and could be one and the same person, though perhaps at different times. He had tales to tell of all three. When Barrie Trinder and others brought about the renaissance of local industrial history in the 1960s, it was to the Ken Joneses that they turned for detailed knowledge of religion, industry and social life, built up over a lifetime. It was only the Joneses later move to the relative luxury of Little Wenlock, once he worked for Bridgnorth District Council and could move away from living beside the railway, that led him to worship in the only church in that village, the parish church, where he became a respected sidesman, while Dorinda again played the organ.

The eventual decline of Methodism in the area was partly the result of economic decline after the great age of the industrial revolution. Where local industries remained strong, Hadley, Horsehay, Madeley or round the Lilleshall works in the north-east, chapels retained their strength long into the 20th century. However, in the second part of the 20th century many chapels shut. Coalbrookdale chapel shut in 1969.

39 List of library books rescued from Little Dawley chapel by the author. 40 Jones PPP 299 oral memory of Bert Franks b 1910. The hymn was printed first in 1749 in Hymns for New Year’s Day and appearing in most Methodist hymnbooks since. The third line of words is repeated in each verse. 41 Born close to two small Methodist chapels (admittedly one had already shut and the other soon would), he was the son of a well-loved Local Preacher and signalman Cecil Jones, known as “Cec”. Cecil later became an insurance representative for Commercial Union and served as Steward at the Ketley Bank Hill Top chapel. Ken, after he married, settled in Hadley in another small chapel where his wife played the organ. Her parents David and his wife Elsie, were pillars of the chapel. Elsie taught in the Sunday School and sang in the choir. Reminiscences of Mrs Maureen Beard and others.

23

(http://www.broseley.org.uk/pope/Power%20station%20L7.jpg) Fig.1. Ironbridge (A) Power Station in the 1950s, showing layout Station in the 1950s, the rail (A) Power Ironbridge Fig.1.

24 Coal to the Power Station: the role of the railway Neil Clarke

During his railway career from 1938 to 1954, Ken would have been very familiar with the railway lines that served Ironbridge (or, as his generation knew it, ) Power Station. The role played by these lines is the subject of this paper.

Introduction Coal-fired power stations generating electricity have existed in Britain since the late 19th century. The earliest, a small private unit, opened in Holborn, London in 1882, generating electricity for neighbouring premises. But it was not until the application of the steam turbine to electricity generation in 1906 that larger, more efficient, centrally-based, public power stations were developed. In these, until recent decades, the fuel used to heat water to produce steam which drives turbines that turns electrical generators, has been coal. One of the dozen or so remaining coal-driven power stations in this country is at Ironbridge, which recently also began to use wood pellets as fuel.

The standard work on the history of Ironbridge Power Station is that by Michael Stratton.1 This was written 20 years ago and took the story up to the privatisation of the plant. I want to focus on the supply of coal and other fuel to the power station from its opening to the present day. In my researches, I’ve found the memories of mining historian Ivor Brown, railwayman Geoff Brown, and of course of Ken himself, of particular value; I’ve also used information I gleaned when I was a guide at the power station from the late 1990s to 2005; and the observations of John Powell, from his vantage point in the Museum Library overlooking the viaduct, and of Dave Morgan, at Chunes Crossing, have provided some detail on recent rail movements.

Location The first power station here was built by the West Midlands Joint Electricity Authority and opened in 1932. There were a number of reasons for choosing this site on the eastern edge of Buildwas parish at the entrance to the Ironbridge Gorge: firstly, a reliable supply of water was needed for conversion into steam to drive the turbines and also for cooling purposes, and this was readily available from the at all times of the year; secondly, the coal needed to fuel the boilers could be supplied by local East Shropshire pits, particularly relatively low-grade coal and slack from Kemberton, Granville and Highley collieries; thirdly, the network of railway lines that passed through the adjacent Buildwas Junction would enable construction materials to be delivered and provide transport for fuel requirements; fourthly, there was more than a sufficient pool of local manual labour for construction work during the Depression which had begun in the late 1920s, and there was also engineering expertise in the area.

Two Power Stations After some 3½ years of construction, the first part of the new power station opened in October 1932 - a 50 MW unit with three chimneys.2 This was supplemented by another 50 MW set in 1936 and by two further 50 MW sets with three more chimneys in 1938. And so, by the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the power station was a 200 MW generating unit with six chimneys. This station operated at full capacity during the war and was camouflaged to escape the attention of German bombers. It came under state control in 1948 and thereafter fed into the National Grid (figure 1).

25 By the 1960s, and because of greater demand, the Central Electricity Generating Board were looking to increase their generating capacity nationally and, for some of the reasons given earlier and because there was room for expansion, they chose to build a new larger power station on the Buildwas site, the first part of which was commissioned in 1969. The older station, now termed Ironbridge A, continued to generate while the new Ironbridge B station overcame its initial teething problems, and the run down of the older station wasn’t finally completed until 1978. Therafter the new station, made up of two 500 MW units, began to generate at its full capacity of 1000 MW.

Coal supplies and deliveries - Ironbridge A When the first power station was opened in 1932, much of the coal it required would have come from local pits belonging to the Highley Mining Company in the Wyre Forest Coalfield and the Madeley Wood and Lilleshall Companies in the Coalbrookdale Coalfield.3

The original Highley mine was on the right (ie. the west) bank of the River Severn; but its main production shaft from the late 1930s was on the left (ie. the east) bank of the river at Alveley. Coal was transported across a specially constructed bridge to a coal preparation plant alongside the , and after 1960 an aerial ropeway carrying coal in buckets was constructed. Screened coal destined for the power station was then carried by rail via Bridgnorth to the sidings at Buildwas Junction. Most services were withdrawn from the Severn Valley Railway in September 1963, but coal trains from Alveley continued to supply the power station at Buildwas until December 1963, after which the track north of Bridgnorth was removed. Coal from Alveley southwards to the power station at Stourport only ended when the mine closed at the end of 1968.

The Madeley Wood Company’s Kemberton pit also supplied coal to the first power station. A tramway linked the pit to sidings off a spur of the Great Western Railway’s Madeley Branch (figure 2). Rail wagons were pushed onto the spur from the main branch line by locomotives which themselves never entered the spur; and then horses, rope-haulage and gravity took over to move the wagons to a screen, which was supplied by the tramway with coal from the pit. Loaded wagons were returned by the same means to four sidings, where they were marshalled into trains, and hauled by a locomotive to Madeley Junction. After the loco ran round, the coal train was then conveyed to the power station, via Madeley Court (figure3 ). Empty wagons from the power station were first returned to Hollinswood Sidings, then worked to Madeley Junction and finally propelled to Kemberton Sidings. According to Ivor Brown, who began his mining career at Kemberton in 1952, the sidings employed six shunters, two platelayers and three horses to assist in the movement of wagons. Ivor also says that by 1960 about 70% of Kemberton’s output of small coal went to power stations, and that Ironbridge A was prepared to accept dirtier slack, with a 7% ash content. Coal from Kemberton to the power station ended when the pit closed in 1967.4

All three remaining pits operated by the Lilleshall Company in the 1930s appear to have supplied the first power station with coal. The Woodhouse, Granville and Grange mines were connected by the Company’s own standard gauge railway system to the London Midland & Scottish Railway’s Wellington–Stafford line at Donnington and Coalport Branch at Priorslee and to the GWR main line at Hollinswood.5 Between 1932 and the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1948, coal traffic from the pits was forwarded directly via the exchange sidings at Hollinswood and reached the power station via Madeley Junction. Coal production ceased at Woodhouse in 1940 and Grange in 1952; and after Nationalisation, the output from Granville, was always routed to the

26 Fig.2

27 exchange sidings at Donnington. The National Coal Board’s own fleet of Hunslet saddle tank locomotives, and later diesel locos, handled the wagons down the gradient to Donnington where they were and marshalled for collection in lengthy trains by British Railways locos. Coal destined for the two power stations at Ironbridge travelled via Wellington and Madeley Junction, with reversals at both (figure 4). Granville mine closed in May 1979 and the final train, conveying coal that had been stockpiled at the pit, ran on 2 October of that year.

In addition to supplies from local pits, opencast workings in the area during and after the Second World War also provided coal to the first power station, and most of this was delivered by road. Much of this travelled via Jiggers Bank and Coalbrookdale. I well remember as a student at Coalbrookdale High School in the 1950s a rather puerile joke doing the rounds relating to this coal traffic. When the fire siren located on Dale End House went off, and before the fire engine housed next to Trinity Hall could be manned and get out on the road, it was mockingly suggested that the coal carried by the passing lorries intended for the power station might be diverted to keep the suspected house-fire going until the fire engine got there!

But some of the local opencast coal was delivered to the power station by rail. In the section on freight train operation in his book on the Wenlock Branch, Ken records that “the opening of the open cast mining site on Horsehay Common in 1942 brought about increased activity in the goods yard at Horsehay, with a slack train leaving there daily for Buildwas”.6

Although local supplies of coal were seen as a crucial factor in the siting of the first power station at Buildwas, the West Midland Joint Electricity Authority had also taken into account that the Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton main line and its branch from Madeley Junction to Buildwas Junction provided a crucial link to the Staffordshire coalfields. And increasingly during the 1960s, and particularly after the closure of Kemberton and Alveley, mines from outside the area supplied the power station with coal by rail. Some of the longer distance workings were marshalled at Oxley Sidings on the edge of Wolverhampton, and hauled by locomotives from Oxley motive power depot.7 A graphic account of one of the workings from Oxley Sidings to Buildwas in the early 1950s, which did not go exactly to plan, is given by Geoff Brown, a Wolverhampton-based footplateman.8 After stopping at Lightmoor to allow the guard to pin down the brakes on some of the wagons (figure5 ), as the train began to descend the 1 in 50 bank the driver realised not enough brakes had been applied and he could not control the train. With his speed increasing, he threw a message to the signalman at Coalbrookdale and, on approaching Buildwas Junction, both footplatemen were relieved to see the home signal off. But they could not stop the train until they had reached !9 That was certainly a close shave, but Ken said it was not the only runaway train on this section of line.

And finally, in considering rail-borne supplies of low-grade coal, in addition to Midlands slack the first power station was designed to burn South Wales “duff”, and this reached the power station via Shrewsbury and the Severn Valley line.

Coal supplies and deliveries - Ironbridge B By the time the first part of the new power station began to operate in 1969, the only local mine left open, as we have seen, was Granville; and so increasingly coal supplies by rail came from pits such as Norton and Silverdale in North Staffordshire, Littleton and Hem Heath on Cannock Chase, and Daw Mill in Warwickshire. Some of these trains were marshalled at Bescot Yard

28 Fig.3. Coal train from Kemberton Colliery, hauled by an ex-GWR pannier tank locomotive, pauses at the former Madeley Court station in 1956 – one of the runs undertaken by Ken before he left railway service two years earlier.

Fig.4. Coal train from Granville Colliery, hauled by a class 47 diesel locomotive, reversing at Madeley Junction in 1967.

29 near Walsall. It was reckoned that something like 50,000 tons of coal per week would be needed to fuel the two boilers of Ironbridge B station, in addition to the more modest requirements of the A station, and so a more efficient means of bringing in and handling the coal had to be introduced. This was the so-called merry-go-round train comprising wagons of 32-ton capacity which could discharge their load while travelling very slowly over hoppers at the power station. In addition, the layout at Madeley Junction was altered to include a ¼ mile loop so that trains loaded with coal for the power station could wait while empties came up and joined the main line, such workings being facilitated by a new 40-lever signal box. It was envisaged that one coal train a day would be running from Granville and ten from outside the area, with around 60% of the power station’s requirements coming from North Staffordshire. Each train carried up to 1000 tons of coal in 30 or so wagons. Oil, which was used when the power station’s boilers needed restarting, came in by rail from the Stanlow Refinery at Ellesmere Port.

Locally, in addition to coal from Granville, open-cast sites were still being worked; indeed new sites between Ketley and Horsehay were being opened up ahead of road building and other projects promoted by the New Town developers. And Ivor Brown, in his capacity as Land Reclamation Engineer for Telford Development Corporation during the 1970s, says that most of the coal produced by the National Coal Board and private contractors, after blending, went to power stations, including Ironbridge.10

How important opencast coal was to the power station at this time was to be demonstrated during the Miners’ Strike of 1984. When the strike began, the picketing of power stations did not at first over concern the Central Electricity Generating Board – as this local newspaper report indicates:

Flying pickets came to Shropshire today with South Wales miners descending on Ironbridge Power Station. A group of seven from the Taff Merthyr pit were at the entrance in a bid to stop coal getting in. The Central Electricity Generating Board said that the Station was working normally and that only a minor part of the coal came in by road – most came by rail.11

But the situation changed when the rail unions gave their support to the miners. And during the complete cessation of rail deliveries caused by the strike, a stream of lorries rumbled down Jiggers Bank and Coalbrookdale and past the picket lines. The repair work needed on the bank in subsequent years is perhaps testament to the wear and tear of that particular time. But apart from this local coal, with the closure of Granville and the running down of the Staffordshire pits, supplies of coal in the 1970s and 80s began coming by rail from even further afield, including the East Midlands and Yorkshire, and in particular from the new Selby Coalfield terminal at Gascoigne Wood. However, the coal industry in this country continued to contract and, with the privatisation of the power industry in the early 1990s, imported coal began to be supplied to Ironbridge Power Station. Another new development in the delivery of coal by rail was the introduction (c. 2001) of new, larger wagons. These were capable of holding 75 tons, but were rarely full, and trains of up to 19 wagons were now the norm (plate 9). By 2005 fuel supplies arriving at the power station were as follows: • 95% of the coal used at the power station came by rail, comprising coal from Scottish open- cast sites at New Cumnock in Ayrshire and Ravenstruther in Lanarkshire, and imported coal from Russia, Columbia and South Africa coming through the ports of Avonmouth, Liverpool and Tyne Dock;

30 Fig.5. Coal train from Silverdale Colliery, N. Staffs., hauled by an ex-LMS class 8 2-8-0 locomotive, pauses at Lightmoor Junction in 1964.

Fig.6. A Peckett saddle-tank locomotive shunting wagons on the concrete viaduct at Ironbridge A station.

31 • the remaining 5% of the coal used at the power station and deliveries of biomass (a fuel made from dried vegetable matter) came by road - this coal, termed by the staff as ‘Corley Coal’, presumably came from open-cast sites outside Shropshire; • oil supplies came by rail from Cardiff, on average one train of up to ten 100-ton tankers per week; • recycled catering oil was occasionally delivered by road tanker. The last eight years have seen an erratic pattern of coal deliveries by rail, with long periods of cessation leading to speculation of imminent closure, whereas in fact the power station has taken the opportunity to eat into its massive stockpile of coal. The contract for coal deliveries has been held by three freight companies – English, Welsh & Scottish (now the German-owned DB Schenker), Jarvis (Fastline) and Freightliner. The few oil trains that have been noted have come from Immingham, and the last recorded coal trains ran from Liverpool Bulk Terminal. The recently opened controversial opencast site at Huntington Lane on the edge of Little Wenlock parish does not supply coal to the power station. In 2012 a large new covered building was constructed at Ironbridge to store biomass (wood pellets), which is to be delivered by rail from the Liverpool Bulk Terminal.13 This is to be mixed with coal from the stock pile and fed into the boilers. The remaining allocation of electricity generation at Ironbridge is expected to be completed by 2015.

Coal handling facilities – Ironbridge A Having examined where the coal supplies came from and how they were delivered, a final look to see how they were handled and used at the power station. At Ironbridge A station the rail links and coal-stocking area were designed to handle, initially in 1932, 500-600 tons of coal a day and, with expansion by 1938, up to 2,000 tons a day. The GWR laid out marshalling yards capable of holding 250 wagons and arrival and departure loops on embankments were also provided. Shunting was undertaken by the power station’s own Peckett saddle tank locomotives, and wagons were hauled over the concrete viaduct to the tippler and off the far western end, on a run-through system (figure6 ). It took no more than an hour to tip a trainload of trucks. Most of this coal was stored in the open area between the concrete viaduct and the Severn Valley Railway and was picked up by an overhead transporter. This was a steel gantry, spanning the 230 feet across the coal store, which incorporated a hopper drop and two bucket chains capable of shovelling up coal at a rate of 160 tons per hour. This method of handling the coal at Ironbridge A changed when new arrangements were put in place for the new Ironbridge B station.

Coal-handling facilities - Ironbridge B The recommendation in the Beeching Report of 1963 concerning the future movement of freight had a direct bearing on the delivery of coal by rail to the new power station at Ironbridge. Beeching had argued against the existing system of pick-up freights and marshalling yards and in favour of block trains. The idea of delivering coal to power stations by so-called merry-go- round trains, which involved keeping trains permanently coupled and running them in a loop on their way over unloading hoppers at the power station, was explored by the Central Electricity Generating Board, British Railways and the National Coal Board. It required introducing a new 32-ton load wagon with automatic bottom discharge triggered by lineside equipment and a specially modified slow-moving locomotive. The system was first successfully used at West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire in 1965 and was in place for the opening of Ironbridge B station in 1969.

32 COAL TO THE POWER STATION

Plate 6. The Power Station today, showing the railway crossing the Albert Edward bridge (bottom right) and extending to the unloading plant (top edge right), beyond which (out of view) is the head shunt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ironbridge_Power_Station_-_geograph.org.uk_-_524409.jpg Attribution:John Chorley)

Plate 7. A class 66 diesel locomotive on the head shunt and about to run round its train of imported coal.

33 Plate 8. Coal train being hauled through the unloading plant by a class 60 diesel locomotive.

Plate 9. A train of 75 ton capacity empty wagons leaving the Power Station, with the oil unloading siding on the left.

34 However, at Ironbridge, the long narrow nature of the site in the river valley ruled out an oval rail loop; and when the old track layout at Buildwas Junction was erased, a new layout of two receiving roads and a central locomotive run-round track was established (plate 6). Arriving coal trains would run through as far as the head shunt and the locomotive would uncouple (plate 7). It would then run round the wagons, couple up to the other end and very slowly (ie. ½ mile per hour) haul the train through the unloading plant (plate 8). There, lineside gear released safety catches on the bottom-discharge gates of the wagons, allowing a complete train of 36 wagons to unload into ground hoppers without stopping and starting. Conveyor belts would then transfer the coal to the crushing and screening tower, from where it would be conveyed either to the mills in the boiler house, when the station was generating, or to the stock pile when not required. Coal needed from the stock pile would be fed into the main reclaim hopper.

Today For the past twelve months coal when needed for generating has been reclaimed from the stock pile; and now, at least for one of the units, this is being mixed with wood pellets to fuel the boilers. These wood pellets, sourced in North America, are delivered by rail to the power station from Liverpool Bulk Terminal, and stored in a very large shed. Ken would perhaps have been dismayed at the demise of coal supplies but would surely have been happy that part of his beloved Wenlock Branch is still in use!

Notes and references 1. Stratton, M., Ironbridge and the Electric Revolution, John Murray (1994). I have relied on this work for much of the information on the history of Ironbridge Power Station up to privatisation in 1991. Since privatisation, successive owners have been National Power, Powergen, Eastern Generation, Texas Utilities, Powergen/ E.ON. 2. A megawatt (MW) is a million watts. 3. For the history of these mines, see I. J. Brown, The East Shropshire Coalfields, Tempus (1999). 4. Correspondence, Ivor Brown. 5. Yate, B., The Railways and Locomotives of the Lilleshall Company, Irwell Press (2008). 6. Jones, K., The Wenlock Branch, Oakwood Press (19980, p.157. 7. Oxley was Ken’s first railway posting in 1938. 8. On this occasion, the train of 36 wagons carrying 360 tons of slack was hauled by an ex-GWR 5100 class 2-6-2 tank locomotive. 9. Brown, G., The Living Footplate, privately published (n.d.), pp.15-17. 10. Correspondence, Ivor Brown. 11. Shropshire Star, 29 March 1984. 12. Information from Coal Handling Plant, Ironbridge Power Station. 13. The contract for delivery is currently held by the GBRf freight operating company.

(Plates 7-9 and figures 3-6, photographs by the author) ------

35 Ken, with his guest of honour Hayley Stephens, proudly displays his MBE outside Buckingham Palace on 7 December 2010.

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