28 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

Iron and coal

Iron wrought-iron, was the result. There is documentary evidence for the existence of an iron In the Middle Ages the iron industry, in common with industry in West Yorkshire by the twelfth century, although other craft industries, was not particularly capital intensive, it is certain that ironstone was being extracted and smelted most extracting and smelting operations being carried out long before then. 1 In the Middle Ages the ore, which occurs on a limited scale. This situation was encouraged by the fact in quantity in the shales of both the Millstone Grit and the that most licences for mining and smelting were, because of Coal Measures, was mined where it outcropped. The usual the destructive effects of the industry on both the land method of extraction was the digging of bell pits. Essentially surface and woods, of a short duration. small scale workings, each bell pit employed only a handful As a result of the nature of the industry in this period it of men, the ironstone being obtained by the miners first was possible for individuals to take out the necessary licence sinking a shaft to the ore-bearing level, and then working and work on their own account. There are also, however, a outwards from the base of the shaft in every direction until number of examples of entrepreneurs who employed the roof of the workings was judged to be no longer safe. miners, charcoal burners, and smiths to work on their When that point was reached the pit would be abandoned behalf. The best documented case of entrepreneurial and back-filled, the latter frequently being one of the involvement in the medieval iron industry of West conditions upon which the mining lease was granted. Fields Yorkshire is that of John Culpon of Sowerby. In the early of these ironstone bell pits can still be seen in a number of fourteenth century Culpon engaged smiths to work iron at a places in West Yorkshire, the best examples being those at number of sites scattered over central and western areas of Bentley Grange and Emley Woodhouse (both in Emley) the manor ofWakefield. 2 (see Pls 13, 14). This method of mining was still being practised in the late sixteenth century, the period from Probably the most important single group to have been which the Emley Woodhouse workings date, and probably involved in the iron industry of the county during the later. Middle Ages were the monks of the Cistercian order. In the twelfth century a number of Cistercian monastic houses Ore was also extracted from the ground by means of adit were founded in the north of England; four of these, Byland and gallery mines. In the former type of mine a tunnel was Abbey, Fountains Abbey, Kirkstall Abbey and Rievaulx driven into the side of a hill at the point at which the ore Abbey, were, before the end of the century, directly outcropped, whilst in the latter a shaft was sunk and tunnels involved in the iron industry of West Yorkshire. then excavated outwards from its base. In the fourteenth century the monks of these abbeys Ironstone was mined wherever it occurred irrespective of ceased to work the iron on their granges and, instead, began existing land use, whether in woodland, common, or open to grant leases for mining and smelting to private field. Once the ore had been brought to the surface it was individuals. Among those who took advantage of the transported to the site of the smelting furnaces, these being available leases was Matthew Wentworth of Bretton Hall. usually located as near to the mine workings as possible. In 1503 Monk Bretton Priory granted him a lease to mine The fuel for the reduction process was charcoal, the wood ironstone for his smithies (furnaces) at West Bretton. from which it was made being cut and burnt by gangs of charcoal burners or 'colliers'. With the dissolution of the larger religious houses in 1539 The simple furnaces, or 'bloomeries', in which the ore monastic interests in the iron industry of West Yorkshire was reduced were constructed of fire-resistant clay, or came to an end. The sale of the lands previously held by the stones bonded with clay. These were charged with charcoal Cistercian abbeys resulted in the valuable mineral rights and iron ore, fired, and the temperature within raised to the passing completely into private hands, often those of the required level by use of hand- or foot-operated bellows. local gentry. These men, in their turn, often seem to have After a number of hours, when the ore was judged to be been content to lease sites rather than work them reduced, the furnace was broken open and a piece of iron themselves. removed. This was then reheated and beaten with hammers The Middle Ages witnessed the introduction of to remove slag and consolidate the metal. The finished technological innovations which not only were to increase product, kn::>wn as a 'bloom', was wrought-iron. the efficiency and the capacity of the industry, but also to Occasionally, if the furnace became too hot, the iron took change completely its character. One of the first of these too much carbon from the charcoal; cast-iron, a product for was the application of mechancial power to the working of which the medieval iron industry had little use, rather than forge hammers and furnace bellows, the source of power, as Iron and coal 29

Plate 13. Bell pits, Bentley Grange, Emley

in the case of the textile industry of the period, being The blast furnace was a larger and more permanent provided by water. The first known reference to a structure than the bloomery, and, unlike the bloomery mechanically operated forge hammer in England is to one which was broken open after each firing, the smelting located in Warley township in West Yorkshire. This process was a continuous one, charcoal, ironstone and hammer, or 'oliver' as it was referred to, was already in use limestone being fed in at the top, and molten slag and iron by 1349/50. 3 tapped out at the bottom. The volume of air required to provide an effective blast for furnaces of this size could only The next and most important single development in the be provided by a mechanical power source, which until the history of the iron industry was the invention of the blast eighteenth century meant water. This reliance upon water furnace. The blast furnace, first used in Flanders in the late power restricted the location of furnaces, as it did woollen fourteenth century, seems to have been introduced into the mills, to those sites where an adequate supply of water was south of England in the fifteenth century. available.

Plate 14. Bell pit, Bentley Grange, Emley 30 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

The introduction of the blast furnace made possible a Yorkshire) in 1650. Through marriage and settlements John considerable increase in the industry's output of iron. Even became part owner of the furnace; subsequently his son and the earliest of these furnaces were capable of producing a grandson, through both marriage and business ton of iron every twenty-four hours of the period of time partnerships, acquired interests in a number of furnaces and they remained in blast. The traditional bloomeries, on the forges in both West and South Yorkshire. other hand, usually produced 'blooms' weighing no more In 1696 John Spencer and. his partner Thomas Dicken than a few pounds, and also had the added disadvantage of entered into an agreement with a group of iron masters from having to be rebuilt after each firing. Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire 'for the better and more profitable working and managing the· several furnaces and smithyes in their or any of their []Possession] ... ' these to be' ... held used wrought and enjoyed in partnership amongst the said parties'. 5 Between them the members of the partnership owned or had interests in: the several ffurnaces and smithyes with the Dam Goites sluices and appurties thereunto belonging called Chappell ffurnace Rockley ffurnace Barnby ffurnace Upper bank ffurnace Nether bank ffurnace and Stainbrough smithyes all in the said County of York.6 Of the furnaces mentioned in the agreement only two were in West Yorkshire, those at Nether and Upper Bank (Midgley in Shitlington), both of which were owned by Spencer and Dicken. The furnaces, located close to the site of Byland Abbey's monastic ironworking grange at Bentley, are now only commemorated by the name Furnace Hill. Plate 15. Bretton furnace watercourse Other ironworking sites were later brought into partnership, these including forges at Colnebridge and Another important difference between the bloomery and Kirks tall (both monastic foundations) and a blast furnace at the blast furnace was that whereas the former produced West Bretton. The watercourse and spoil heaps of Bretton directly-reduced wrought iron, the latter could only furnace are still visible, these constituting the only surviving produce cast iron. Because there were still few uses to which remains of a charcoal blast furnace in West Yorkshire (see cast-iron could be put, a secondary process was necessary to Pl. 15). convert it into wrought-iron. In order to do this the cast-iron By bringing together both furnaces and forges in a single was reheated in a finery until molten and stirred with a bar working partnership a degree of vertical integration was whilst a blast of air was played over its surface; the oxygen in achieved which, theoretically at least, benefitted all the the blast combined with carbon in the iron and gradually parties concerned. The furnaces now -had a guaranteed transformed it into wrought-iron. market for the iron they produced, whilst the forges, in The coming of the blast furnace made possible not only a turn, had a guaranteed source of iron. Under an agreement massive increase in iron production but also resulted in the dated 1728 the partnership's furnaces at Bank, Barnby, industry becoming increasingly capital intensive. Firstly, Bretton and Chappell undertook to supply Colnebridge, the fixed capital represented by the furnaces and their Kirkstall, and Wortley forges with five-twelfths of their pig associated watercourses, blowing apparatus, and fineries iron requirements. Most of the ore smelted in the furnaces was considerably greater than that of the smaller was of local origin, all of them being sited on or near bloomeries. Secondly, the running costs of the blast outcrops of Tankersley Ironstone. During the middle of the furnaces were far higher, requiring as they did a continuous eighteenth century, however, ore is known to have been supply of ore and charcoal during the period, often months, imported from the Furness district of Lancashire for use at that they were in blast. 4 Bank Furnace. Similarly, the forges bought iron from The increasing cost of involvement in the iron industry outside sources, including consignments of scrap iron had the effect of encouraging the formation of business imported from Holland. partnerships, and by the early eighteenth century the It has been argued that the monopolistic position which majority of the ironworks of the north of England and the the Spencer agreement enjoyed in the iron industry of West Midlands were worked on behalf of such partnerships. In Yorkshire for half a century had the effect of making it this period the iron industry of West Yorkshire came to be increasingly technologically backward and unable to dominated by a partnership variously referred to as the compete. The early eighteenth century saw an important Spencer syndicate or Spencer agreement. The Spencer breakthrough in the field of iron smelting technology, this family's involvement in the industry in West Yorkshire being Abraham Darby's successful substitution of coke for began with Ralph Spencer of Criggon, Montgomeryshire charcoal as a fuel in blast furnaces. If, by the middle of the sending his son, John to be clerk to his relative, Major eighteenth century, coke fired blast furnaces were becoming Walter Spencer at Barnby furnace (near Cawthorne, South increasingly common in the Midlands, they were still Iron and coal 31 unknown in West Yorkshire. The Spencer agreement, despite the increasing cost of charcoal, continued to rely solely on charcoal-fired furnaces until the partnership was dissolved in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. With the coming of the coke-fired blast furnace to West Yorkshire the industry became increasingly concentrated in those locations where both ironstone and coal suitable for coking was available in sufficient quantity to make extraction economically viable. These conditions were met in the Bradford district, where a combination of almost sulphur-free Better Bed coal, and plentiful supplies of ironstone with a low phosphorous content made possible the manufacture of high grade cast-iron by the coke smelting process. The first, and smallest, of the new generation of ironworks to be established in that area. was Messrs Emmet's, in Birkenshaw (Gomersal), opened in 1782. In 1788 a second, and larger, ironworks went into production in nearby Bowling. Originally a subsidiary of the Fall Ing foundry in Wakefield, the Bowling concern was financed by a partnership of which the Leeds entrepreneur Richard Paley was a member. From the beginning the ironworks produced not only pig iron, but also a variety of cast-iron domestic goods, including iron fire grates, fire-irons and frying pans.

Plate 16. The original blast furnaces, Low Moor (North Bierley)

[PAYABLE AT THE WAREHOUSE OF RICHARD PALEY • "" • I

Figure 23. Trade token issued by Richard Paley in 1791

Probably the best known of all the ironworks established in the Bradford district, however, was that of the Low Moor Iron Company. In 1789 the mineral-rich manor of Royds Hall (North Bierley) was bought for £34,000 by four partners: John Hardy, a Bradford solicitor; John Jarratt, a draper; Richard Hind, a woolstapler; and Rev. Joseph Dawson, a nonconformist minister. None of the partners had experience of the iron industry, and so the technical details were left in the hands of a hired engineer, Edward Smalley. The mechanical power providing the air blast for the ironworks' two furnaces was provided not by water but by an atmospheric steam engine designed by Smalley himself Plate 17. The original blowing engine, Low Moor (North and built by Emmet's of Birkenshaw. It was, after all, only a Bierley) short step from the making of castings for machinery to actually manufacturing the machinery itself. By the end of Bowling ironworks partnership by Boulton and Watt for the century all the new ironworks in the Bradford district manufacturing steam engines which infringed the patent were involved in the rapidly expanding engineering rights of the latter. The 'Bowling Pirates', as Watt referred industry. In 1796 legal proceedings were taken against the to them, decided to settle out of court, agreeing to pay 32 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

The establishment and subsequent growth of the ironworks and its associated coal and ironstone mines, had a considerable impact on North Bierley, leading as it did to a substantial increase in population and the creation of new settlements: The once deserted moorland became covered by the houses of the ironworkers. Local landowners sold their lands to builders who erected upon a plot as many houses as they could 'huddled into line or shouldered each other into corners with a delightful contempt of regularity' .10

By 1801 the Low Moor Ironworks partnership was the largest single landowner in the township, owning one third of all taxable properties, and paying nearly seventy per cent of North Bierley's total Land Tax assessment. Of the 129 properties owned by them half were assessed at only 8¾d. , 0 10 20 30 40 50m these almost certainly being the cottages of the ironworkers and miners. As joint lords of the manor of Royds Hall the Figure 24. Low Moor Iron Works (North Bierley), 1811 partners also had the power of fixing rents and granting leases. Within three years of the opening of the Low Moor £1,640 for the patent rights of two engines. They were, Ironworks another was established in the neighbouring however, granted a licence 'for making and erecting steam township of Shelf. In 1793 John Elwell, one of the founders engines on Messrs Boulton and Watt's principle ... '. 7 of Bowling Ironworks, acting in partnership with John The outbreak of war with France in 1793, leading as it did Crawshaw, a gentleman from Sheffield, entered into an to a massive and sustained boom in the armaments industry, agreement with Richard Lumley Saville, landlord of the provided a powerful stimulus to the iron trade. Both the manor of Shelf, which gave them leave to exploit: Bowling and the Low Moor companies were awarded All those beds, veins or seams of ironstone lying or lucrative government contracts for the manufacture of being above the Black or Uppermost bed of coal in cannon and shot. and under the wasteground within the Manor of Shelf ... And also full and free liberty, power and Under these favourable conditions the Low Moor authority to erect and build upon any part of the said ironworks prospered and expanded. By 1806 slitting and Commons . . . one or more blast furnaces and all plate mills and a forge had been added to the works, whilst other buildings necessary for the working of the said the number of blast furnaces in operation had doubled to Iron Stone or for the habitations of workmen . . . four. The ironworks, for many years the largest in West and to get stone for the purpose and clay for making Yorkshire, came to be regarded as one of the wonders of the of bricks, and also making Newcastle Waggon area. George Head, on his tour of the manufacturing Ways . . . for the purpose of conveying Iron Stone districts in 1835, wrote of it: and Coals or any other to and from the said furnaces. 11 The most various operations are conducted within the interior of this large establishment; and the most ponderous articles manufactured, from an iron bridge to an attenuated plate or rod, amidst a scene wherein the four ancient elements are subjugated by human power and intelligence. Here, the ore dug from the bowels of the earth; there the steam-blast rushing through the furnaces, together with various contrivances for the economy of water, and applica­ tion of its power to the machinery-all these sights and sounds are sufficient to raise, even in the apathe­ tic mind, the sentiment of veneration.8 Head also described the effects of the ironworks upon the surrounding environment: In this region of iron and coal, for the whole surface of the moor is rich in both, the approach of these foundries bears the type of universal combustion, as in the vicinity of the crater of a volcano: to witness a more awful picture, produced by the combined features of fire, smoke and ashes, an individual must bend his steps at least towards ..IE.tna or Plate 18. A typical cottage of the type built for colliers, Vesuvius.9 North Bierley Iron and coal 33

Plate 19. Newlay Bridge, Horsforth, 1819

The coal mining rights having already been leased by Saville ironmasters, in turn, sought new purposes to which iron to two Halifax stuff manufacturers, Robert and Joseph could be put, a trend which did not escape the writers of Woodhead, a separate agreement was necessary in order to humourous songs: ensure an adequate supply of coking coal. In 1794 Elwell, Since cast iron is now all the rage who had been running Fall Ing foundry on his own account And scarce anything's now made without it since the_ dissolution of the original Bowling-Fall Ing As I live in this cast iron age partnership in 1792, sold his interests in that concern to I mean to say something about it. Crawshaw and Samuel Aydon, a Wakefield ironmaster. When Aydon bought into Fall Ing he also acquired a We have cast-iron coffins and carts twenty-five per cent stake in the Shelf project. Shortly after Cast-iron bridges and boats the turn of the century Aydon and Elwell severed their links Corn factors with cast iron hearts with the Wakefield foundry, concentrating their attentions Which I'd hang up in cast-iron coats. on building up the Shelf concern. This ironworks, in common with its predecessors, soon became involved in the The development of the iron industry was paralleled by engineering industry, making a reputation for itself as a the growth of an increasingly important engineering manufacturer of iron bridges. Two Aydon and Elwell industry. Leeds, which in 1662 n"!-lmbered among its bridges survive in West Yorkshire: Mearclough Bridge tradesmen a handful of millwrights and ironmongers, had (Norland) erected in 1816; and Newlay Bridge (Horsforth), by the end of the following century six machine makers and built in 1819 (see Pl. 19). About 1810 a further ironworks one founder. One of the best known of all the town's was established in the township of North Bierley. The engineering works was set up at this time, that of Fenton, Bierley Ironworks ( see Pl. 20), a much smaller concern than Murray and Wood, founded in 1795. The Newcastle-born its near neighbour at Low Moor, had not been in production engineer Matthew Murray was to make the firm ·one of the long when the British iron industry was hit by the recession most renowned in England through his contribution to the which followed the drying-up of government contracts development of the steam engine. Murray himself gained when the war with France ended in 1815. With the his first employment in Leeds as a mechanic at Marshall's conclusion of the Napoleonic wars the price of iron fell, and Adel flax mill; whilst there he took out his first patent (no. remained low for almost a decade. Popular distress 1752) which was for a spinning machine. Five years later he followed, especially in the iron making districts of South was persuaded to join David Wood, William Lister and Wales. In the Bradford district the only casualty was the James Fenton in establishing a works for the manufacture Birkenshaw Ironworks which dosed in 1815. and repair of machinery. The general adoption of the coke-fired blast furnace in Their first premises at Mill Green, Holbeck soon proved the latter half of the eighteenth century resulted in cast-iron too small to cope with the volume of trade, and so they were becoming increasingly plentiful and cheap. The forced to build new ones on Water Lane. Murray was in 34 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

Plate 20. Bierley Ironworks charge of the steam engine department; his aim was to however, coal was too bulky in relation to its monetary produce engines of simpler and more compact designs. Like value for it to be worth transporting any distance from its the partners in the Bowling Ironworks before him, Murray point of extraction. As a result mining tended to be on a soon found himself in conflict with Boulton and Watt, small scale, individual mines being designed to meet local which company successfully contested two of his patents. needs only. There is documentary evidence that coal was This led to the declaration of a state of war between the two being mined in West Yorkshire by the thirteenth century, concerns, Murray offering Boulton and Watt a 100 guinea the earliest date for which records survive. wager that he could build a better engine than they could. In this period most of the coal extracted was used for craft Boulton and Watt for their part bought up all the vacant or industrial purposes. One of the many uses in medieval land around the Leeds foundry in order to prevent its West Yorkshire was in creating quicklime from limestone, further expansion. Despite such tactics, the firm continued a process in which coal was mostly used as fuel. Some to thrive, Murray experimenting with high pressure engines mining leases stipulated that the coal removed from the of the type patented in 1804 by Richard Trevithick. In mine could only be burned by the licensee. 1811/12 he built a number of high pressure engines, one of The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a which he fitted to a captured French privateer L' Actif, and considerable growth in the coal mining industry of West two others which he used to power the world's first Yorkshire, possibly a reflection of the growing population commercially successful steam locomotives. After Murray's of the area. From the beginning the local gentry were death in 1826, the firm continued to manufacture marine heavily involved in the industry; indeed it has been argued and railway engines, establishing Leeds as one of the that: country's principal locomotive building centres, supplying engines to the Leeds and Selby, Great Western, North To a large extent the rapid growth of the Yorkshire Midland, and Paris and Versailles railway companies. coal industry was due to the efforts of the gentry who owned much of the coalbearing land ... in the period 1558-1642 at least eighty families had coalmining interests. 12 Coal A number of these men not only worked coal under their own land but also took out mining licences from the crown. In the Middle Ages coal was extracted from the ground by In 1582 Queen Elizabeth I granted all the coal held by the the same methods employed for the extraction of ironstone, crown in Northowram and a mine in Sowerby to Henry that is by means of bell pits. Unlike reduced ironstone, Farrar, a member of the local gentry. Other concessionaries Iron and coal 35 in this period included Sir Thomas Bland of Kippax Park, now be shipped relatively long distances at an economic John Mallet of Normanton, and John Freeston of Altofts. 13 price. The Act of Parliament, which authorised the construction of the canal, was not passed without The probate inventory sample for the Deanery of considerable opposition from the coal interest of the Tyne Pontefract includes only two men described as coal miners. and Wear, which feared that coal from West Yorkshire Of these two, neither, at the time of their deaths, .were in might begin to compete with theirs in the lucrative London possession of tools or materials which can be specifically market. As it turned out coal from West Yorkshire did not identified as relating to coal mining. One of the two, begin to arrive in London until the nineteenth century. The Edward Lockwood of Huddersfield, seems to have been canal did, however, open up a market for local coal outside engaged in three separate occupations, for if his inventory the county. Daniel Defoe noted the effects of the new described him as being a coal miner, his goods show him to navigation on the coal industry a quarter of a century later: have been also a clothier and a farmer. The inventories do, however, reveal that there were a number of men who, There is another trade in this part of the country, though not described as miners, were in fact, involved in the which is now become very considerable since the opening of the navigation of these rivers, and that is, industry. One of these describes the testator, Charles Best that from hence they carry coals down from Wake­ of Woodend, Hipperholme (died 1723), as a yeoman; Best, field (especially) and also from Leeds, at both which like Lockwood, was engaged in three separate occupations. they have a very great quantity, and such as they told His inventory too reveals him to have been a farmer, me could never be exhausted. These they carry clothier and also to have been working 'coalpitts on quite down into the Humber, and then up the Ouse Norwood green' .14 to York, and up the Trent, and other rivers, where there are abundance of large towns, who they supply In the seventeenth century coal was used in the glass, with coals; with this advantage too, that whereas the pottery, brick and iron industries, and also, increasingly, for Newcastle coals pay four shillings per chaldron duty domestic purposes. The greatest problem for the industry to the public; these being only called river borne remained, however, how to get the coal to the consumer coal, are exempted, and pay nothing; though strictly without incurring prohibitively high transport costs. To this speaking, they are carried on the sea too, for the end the coalworkings near to the lower Aire and Calder Humber is properly the sea. But they have been valleys were benefitted at the beginning of the eighteenth hitherto exempted from the tax, and so they carry century by the opening of the Aire and Calder navigation. on the trade to their great advantage.15 This new navigable waterway, opened to Leeds in 1700, The coming of the canal meant that coal mines on or near meant that coal from mines in close proximity to it could to it could now increase the scale of their workings. The

Plate 21. A Middleton collier, c. 1814 36 West Yorkshire: 1500-1830

Fentons, a family whose name was to be linked with The increase in output achieved by the larger mmmg industry for a further century, took advantage of the concerns in the eighteenth century would not have been opportunities offered by the navigation to sell coal from possible without a number of innovations in the field of their colliery at Rothwell Haigh to the rapidly growing town mining technology. The most important of these was of Leeds. In July 1730 they advertised in the Leeds Mercury undoubtedly the introduction in the early eighteenth that they hoped to deliver coal by water to a yard near the century of atmospheric steam engines to pump water out of town's public warehouse. the mines. Flooding had long been a problem in certain In February 1735/6 the first boat loaded with coal from parts of the Yorkshire coal field, preventing the sinking of the Fenton's 'New Colliery' arrived at Leeds, an event deep shafts in coal-rich areas. In 1582 it was complained that signalled by 'a triple discharge' of artillery. 16 Coal mines the Crown mines at Rothwell were 'drowned with water so which did not have such easy access to inland waterways as neither the said John Malet ( the lessee) nor any other were forced to remain reliant upon expensive road haulage have taken any proffet or commoditie . . . by the space of and therefore became increasingly uncompetitive. nyne yeres laste paste' .19 One such concern was the Middleton Colliery, owned The first pumping engine to be used to drain a coal pit in since 1697 by the Brandlings, a family of coal owners from West Yorkshire seems to have been one erected at Brown Tyneside. In 1749 Charles Brandling succeeded to the estate Moor, near Austhorpe c. 1714. Another was installed at the and soon after took steps to make Middleton coals more Fenton's New Colliery at Rothwell Haigh in the 1730s. competitive in the Leeds market. He did so by constructing These engines, which became an increasingly common sight a wooden waggonway from his coal pits to a staith near at West Yorkshire collieries in the latter half of the Leeds bridge. In order to get wayleave for his waggonway eighteenth century, enabled seams of coal, which had over lands which he did not own, Brandling entered into an previously not been reachable, to be exploited. In the last agreement with the township of Leeds to supply it with qu1;1.rterof the century the coal industry's growth was 23,000 tons of coal annually at a predetermined price. This stimulated by the boom conditions enjoyed by the majority agreement was sanctioned by Act of Parliament in 1758 and of the industries of West Yorkshire. The domestic market, was the first Act for the construction of a railway ever to go now the most important one, continued to grow at an ever­ onto the statute books. 17 With tht! opening of the increasing pace, whilst the rapidly expanding textile and waggonway the price of Middleton coal became the most iron industries both began to require coal in large competitive on the Leeds market. In 1778 the coal of quantities. Brandling's nearest competitor, the Halton Colliery, had a With the increase in size and technological sophistication pitbank price of 8s. per ton and sold in Leeds for 12s., of coal mines in the eighteenth century the capital necessary whereas Middleton coal, also 8s. on the pitbank sold in the to open and run them also increased. The single largest town for 9s. 6d. With Middleton coal now competitive, and expense for any colliery owner was the wages of his miners, a large market guaranteed, the colliery itself began to and the workforce of the average pit in 1800 was far bigger expand rapidly: than a century before. The cost of sinking new pits was Between 1750 and 1830 Middleton Colliery changed further increased by the buying of pumping, and later from a varying cluster of pits working Middleton winding engines and the laying of waggonways. Little Coal at a depth of 35 yards into a subterranean town 400 ft below ground, mining the Middleton main and Eleven Yard seams. IS