Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace

In July, 1779 the erection of the first iron bridge in the world, cast at the foundry of Abraham Darby III at Coalbrookdale, where earlier coke-smelting of iron had first been developed, was begun over the Severn nearby, to be completed in the brief period of three months. Restored at great expense in recent years and the crowning jewel of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum complex which covers forty-two acres in Shropshire, the first iron bridge has been the centre of celebrations 200 years later which have included an exhibition at the Royal Academy, the opening of the Coach House Gallery at Coalbrookdale to house Sir Arthur Elton's collection of prints and pictures of the Industrial Revolution – and this book, which Asa Briggs has used as a vehicle to explore the riches of that collection, to celebrate the construction of the iron bridge itself and to illuminate in words and pictures the period between 1779 and the Great Exhibition of 1851 when Britain, as a result of the exploitation of coal, cotton, iron and steam- power, became the first industrial nation and seemed in so doing to have become the workshop of the world.

Combining fascinating – and sometimes unexpected – contemporary quotations with a generous appraisal of the views of late twentieth-century historians and paying particular respect to the development of interest in industrial archaeology, Lord Briggs does not confine his attention to England, to Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford and Birmingham, but ranges through Europe, North America and the wider world, presenting his portrait of early industrial Britain in the larger context and a wider temporal span than his title suggests through a procession of 'p's – and first places. And who can deny, for an illustrated volume, the primacy of place, the genius loci, especially from the pen of the author of Victorian Cities. Wright of Derby, Loutherberg and the rest invested the smoke and noise and dirt of these primitive industrial plants with a romantic aura. To this vivid visual portrayal is linked the verdicts of writers from Wordsworth, who wrote of 'the harmonious doors of science', to Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin, who viewed the spread of industrialism with more sceptical eyes. Then people – the inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs – the heroic figures of the new age: Richard Arkwright, Mathew Boulton and James Watt, George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Josiah Wedgwood and the rest whose energy, with the aid of the ironworkers, the textile workers, the coalminers, the navvies and the other workers with brawn and brain, gave momentum to the process of industrial-isation. These were assisted by the new processes – the wide range of power sources and new methods of manufacture which enabled the manufacture of the fourth of Briggs' 'p's: the products – both old products produced more cheaply and in greater quantity and new products – which were displayed in such ebullient splendour in the Great Exhibition which was housed in Paxton's enormous greenhouse, the Crystal Palace, with its cornucopia of manufactures. But the volume closes not with a celebration but a note of caution. 'English overseers,' an American commentator wrote in 1851, 'are trained too much to one thing or machine and do not adapt themselves readily to circumstances – finding everything wrong which they have not been accustomed to.' Thus, in tracing the path from Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace, Lord Briggs has not only provided a splendid considered account of the impact and images of the Industrial Revolution but has also done something to set our present discontents in perspective.

Walter Minchinton

Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace: Impact and Image of the Industrial Revolution

Thames and Hudson, London, 1979; 208 pp.