A Brief History of Darlaston

It appears that a small stone-built furnace was working at Darlaston Green by 1799, which must have formed part of the first iron works in the town. In 1826 Richard Bills a gunlock maker of Church Street, established a furnace and foundry at Furnace Lane, Lower Green, where Heath Road is today. He made his stepson Samuel Mills a full partner on his 21st birthday in 1826, and the company became known as Bills & Mills. Richard died in 1849 and Samuel took over the company.

One of the blast furnaces to the north of the canal.

By the 1850s the site covered over 55 acres, on both sides of the canal. The southern part between the canal and Heath Road consisted of two blast furnaces, extensive puddling furnaces, cementation kilns, foundries, a vast metal processing complex, and Brown's patent rolling mills.

To the north of the canal stood the oldest of the three blast furnaces and several coal and iron ore mines. This was one of the earliest, largest, and most important iron and steel companies in South Staffordshire, and had a name for good quality iron. The company also owned a works at Kings Hill.

All sizes and shapes of iron plates and bars were produced including boiler plates, hoops, strip, tank plates, rails, wire rods and small sizes of rounds and squares. All kinds of steel were made using the cementation process and these were well known and appreciated in the market.

Samuel Mills became a wealthy man, thanks to the success of Bills & Mills, and the earnings from his many collieries in the area. In 1855 he leased the Essington Wood Colliery which was situated on the western side of Bursnips Road, Essington. He purchased the colliery in 1860 and ran it as a separate business alongside Bills & Mills.

Samuel Mills died in 1864. His death led to the formation of the Darlaston Steel and Iron Company.

The company's seal.

The rolling mills required very little manual labour and could automatically roll enormous quantities of strip in great lengths using Brown's patent process, where the strip being rolled is automatically passed through a second pair of rolls to complete the work. There were two of Casson's patent puddling furnaces and a Griffiths mechanical puddling machine, which worked well together.

The Darlaston Steel & Iron Company's works between the canal and Heath Road.

The company eventually employed around 2000 people, and was sold to the Lloyd family for a quarter of a million pounds. Mr. Sampson Lloyd of Wassel Grove, Stourbridge became company Chairman with Mr. Francis Lloyd as Managing Director. The business was re-registered as the Darlaston Steel and Iron Company on 7th November, 1872 and rapidly expanded. The number of puddling furnaces grew to 43 with 17 reheating furnaces, 8 rolling mills, a drawing-out forge, 63 steam engines, including the three 70h.p. blast engines for the blast furnaces, and rails, which were laid to all parts of the works.

The company's collieries and mines, mining a 12 yards thick seam, covered 850 acres, 350 of which were freehold and 500 leasehold. Some of the seams produced what was called "Brooch" coal and others "Heathen" coal. There were also ironstone mines thanks to thick seams of "Gubbin" ironstone, "New Mine", Whitestone", and "Blue Flats" ore.

The iron industry as a whole felt the effects of the depression between 1875 and 1886 during which many blast furnaces, forges and mills were closed. The Darlaston Steel and Iron Company was also badly effected and closed in 1877.

Another of the blast furnaces.

After the closure, Francis Lloyd brought a disused timber yard at James Bridge, and established a small foundry which eventually became F. H. Lloyd's James Bridge Steel Works.

In 1877 the Darlaston Coal and Iron Company (registered on 19th September, 1877) took over the Darlaston Steel and Iron Company's works with Ironmaster John Jones in charge. In 1878 he was replaced by E. Gem. At the same time A. E. Wenham became company secretary. The company also ran the Essington Wood Colliery which rapidly expanded with the opening of two new shafts, a coal screening plant, and a railway siding.

In 1882, during the depression in the iron trade, the Darlaston Steel & Iron Company went into liquidation and was auctioned at Wednesbury Town Hall. The coal company decided to concentrate on the mining operation at Essington, where in 1891 the colliery became Holly Bank Colliery, with the formation of the Holly Bank Colliery Company Limited.

The 1882 sales plan of the works.

In 1883 the Darlaston site was leased to I. and T. Bradley, and B. G. and W. H. Bradley. The two newer iron-bound brick blast furnaces on the northern side of the canal continued to be used. They had a charging stage, lift, and hot air oven 43ft. long, 18ft. wide and 23ft. high. In 1891 the part between Heath Road and the canal was acquired by Charles Richards for his Imperial bolt and nut works.

In 1900 the construction of a new steel-clad blast furnace began at Bradley Brothers, which came into operation in 1902. By 1905 two Cowper stoves had also been added. At this time the local iron ore would have been depleted and so scrap iron must have been used. In 1910 W. J. Foster joined the company as a foreman and by 1914 had become works director. Around the end of the First World War Rubery Owen & Company built and installed a new blast plant at the works but it was never completed because the demand for pig iron fell after the war. The furnace stood there until 1935 when it was dismantled for scrap.

The company went into liquidation, and by the end of 1918 the site had been acquired by Messrs Tolley, Sons and Bostock who opened Darlaston Green Iron Works. The company soon demolished the oldest blast furnace on the southern side of Heath Road. Within a few years the site was acquired by G.K.N. in order to gain control of the source of their raw materials.

A share certificate dated October 1875.

The works carried out all of G.K.N.'s puddling and rolling operations for their nuts, bolts and fastenings department, but the by then the plant was very old fashioned and so G.K.N. temporarily closed the works. As a result the site was sold to Bradley and Foster Ltd. who were there for many years.

The first page of the July 1873 price list.

An advert from the mid 1960s.

Workers at Bradley & Fosters. Courtesy of Brian Groves.
5th from left: Mary Groves, 5th from right: Elizabeth Millington.

Samuel Mills and his family

The family lived in Darlaston House on the western end of what is now Victoria Park, where Samuel died in 1864. The house and its surrounding land occupied the modern Rectory Avenue, the Post Office, and the area behind Pardoe's Cottage, where the dovecote still stands. In the 1920s when foundations were dug for the war memorial in Victoria Road, the ground gave way to reveal part of the cellars of Darlaston House. The workmen found a number of bottles of wine, much of which was drunk there and then, although some bottles of parsnip wine did find their way to The Green Dragon in Church Street, were they went on sale. The original All Saints Church in Walsall Road was built in 1872 in memory of Samuel Mills, who died in 1864.

Jane Mills, one of Samuel's daughters, was a public spirited lady who did much for the town. She founded the Jane Mills Institute in Rectory Avenue, in connection with the Parish Church to help the needy women and girls of the town. The building housed the institute and was given to the town when Jane moved to Whitton Court, Whitton, near Ludlow, in the late 1890s. The institute, later known as the "Mothers Meeting and Girl's Institute" eventually became a clinic and later "The Sons of Rest". The building is now a family home.

Rough Hay Furnaces

In the 1840s John Addenbrooke, a coal mine owner, and his brother George established the firm of Addenbrooke, Smith & Pidcock, Coal & Iron Masters, Rough Hay Furnace & Foundry, Darlaston Green. They were descended from the Addenbrookes of Wollaston Hall, Stourbridge. Their father, Edward Addenbrooke, and grandfather, John Addenbrooke Homfray were both ironmasters.

John and George were born in Old Swinford as part of a family of 11 children. Addenbrookes were Darlaston's second largest employer, until the business closed at the beginning of 1882, putting over 1,000 people out of work. They had three blast furnaces at Rough Hay, all traces of which have now disappeared. Their products included bar, rod and sheet iron.

Addenbrooke, Smith & Pidcock also owned Rough Hay Colliery, one of the largest coal mines in the area, employing 500 people.

The business ended after the tragic death of John Addenbrooke in Wednesbury on 15th February, 1882. That morning John visited his colliery at Leabrook, close to the Great Western Railway interchange basin sidings. He was a commissioner of the South Staffordshire Mines Drainage Commission and was anxious to attend their meeting in Wolverhampton. John hurried to catch the Wolverhampton train at Wednesbury station and took a short cut along the main line that ran from Birmingham Snow Hill station to Wolverhampton low level station (where the metro runs today). As he walked along the trackside he was struck by a passing train and died on the spot.

As a result of the tragic accident the business was put-up for sale. The contents of the works were sold in June 1882. The sale included 50 tons of casting boxes, 60 tons of pig iron, and 100 tons of scrap. The large amount of casting boxes suggests that they were from a reasonable sized foundry. No puddling equipment was included in the sale, so the factory must have produced pig iron that would have been sold to wrought iron producers.

Both sides of an Addenbrooke, Smith & Pidcock token. Courtesy of Joy Beasley.

George is remembered by the street that is named after him; Addenbrooke Street. He was a founder member of the Darlaston Local Board (the forerunner of the council) and churchwarden at St. George's. In fact the Addenbrooke company gave the land for St. George's vicarage. On his death in 1906 he was buried at the church.

The photograph shows the demolition of a bridge and tramway in Rough Hay. The opening under the bridge was known as "The Khyber Pass" and is commemorated today by the street named "Khyber Close". The old tramway must have been the one that ran between Addenbrooke, Smith & Pidcock's factory, Rough Hay Colliery, and a canal basin. The track under the bridge is now Hall Street, and the bridge beyond crosses another tramway that ran between two of the coal mines. The view looks southwest towards the Dudley-Sedgley ridge.

A map showing the location of "The Khyber Pass" and Addenbrooke, Smith & Pidcock's factory, which stood roughly at the junction of Rough Hay Road and Hall Street.

At each end of the lower tramway was a winding machine.

There were many abandoned mine shafts and spoil heaps in the area, which would have looked very different to today's flat landscape.

The council must have had an immense task clearing the area when the pre-war council estate was built.

The Albert Works and Moxley Iron Works

The Albert works were built in 1827 and run by David Rose. The Moxley Iron Works were founded by brothers Daniel and David Rose in 1830. Daniel retired in the early 1840s and the younger David ran both of the works. The works produced iron forgings and charcoal sheet iron of all kinds that was used for such things as boiler plates and gasometer sheets. Galvanising and corrugating were carried out on a large scale at the works and all kinds of bars including small rounds and fancy iron were produced. Other products included pan and tank plates, galvanised and corrugated sheets, and pig iron. The Victoria Works, founded by William Molineaux and James Jordan were also on the site producing strip iron for such things as locomotive and boiler tubes.

The location of the works.

Two blast furnaces were added in the 1840s and could turn out 20,000 tons of pig iron annually.
David Rose owned a number of mines in the area and the site included a sand pit were sand was dug and sold for use in blast furnace and mill furnace bottoms. The clay from some of David's mines produced high quality fire bricks and these were one of the company's many products. The mines also contained sufficient coal to supply the works for 20 years. By the1870s there were 40 puddling and ball furnaces, 5 sheet mills, 1 plate mill, 1 bar mill, and one hoop mill.

An advert from the 1870s.


Read the story of the Rose family and their iron works at Moxley

William Wesson's grave at Moxley.

Victoria Ironworks was acquired by William Henry Wesson in 1898 and he ran the works under the name of Wessons.

William died in 1936 and is buried in the graveyard at All Saints' Church, Moxley.

Wessons became known as Ductile Wesson, a part of Niagra LaSalle (UK) Limited.

In January 2009 the company announced that the future of the factory was in doubt, putting around 150 jobs in the balance. A further announcement was made in February confirming that the factory would close by the end of the year, and that 63 jobs would go by the end of April.

The factory, which covered the site of both the Victoria Ironworks and the Albert Ironworks was sadly demolished in 2011.

A large scrap yard and housing estate now occupies the site of the Moxley Iron Works.

Bull's Bridge Iron Works

Bull's Bridge Iron Works were situated in Bull Lane, Moxley, next to Bull's Bridge on the Walsall Canal. They were owned by the Cresswell family and put up for sale in November 1859. The factory occupied just over one acre and included eleven puddling furnaces, a bar mill, twelve other furnaces, a large cinder kiln, and a 25h.p. steam engine to drive the machinery. Adjoining the main factory was a double office, a smith's shop, a storeroom, stable and coach house.


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