IEEC1 – Papers proposed
- Please select a title below to read a summary of the material.
1. Geoff Wallis - Restoring the Elsecar Newcomen Engine: high ideals, deep mysteries Elsecar is an important industrial area, once the powerhouse of the famous Fitzwilliam dynasty of industrialists. Much of historic interest remains, including the extensive remains of the famous Elsecar Ironworks, mid nineteenth century workshops and the unique Newcomen Beam Engine with its shaft. After decades of Coal Board ownership and an uncertain future, the site was taken over in 1988 by Barnsley Metropolitan Council who started an ambitious programme of restoration and development of the Elsecar Heritage Centre. In 2009 focus turned to the conservation of the Newcomen Engine, and funding was obtained from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Council itself to carry out the work, which culminated in an official opening in November 2014. Although much modified over its working life, the Newcomen Engine is the only atmospheric beam engine in the world which remains virtually complete on its original site and over its mine-shaft. It is therefore of international importance, recognized by its Scheduled Monument status. Conservation of the site required adoption of the highest standards. This paper describes the extensive preliminary surveys, including under-water investigation of the flooded mine-shaft, the ethical dilemmas of conservation, and the challenges of interpreting an unique historic site for visitors, especially the difficulty of providing access to a cramped three-storey industrial building. On a project of such international profile high ideals were adopted, but some deep mysteries remain.
2. Philip Hosken - Cui bono? Inventors and the beneficiaries of their endeavours For millennia philosophers risked their lives and reputations to work with the Devil and control the violent forces that were released when water was heated to produce steam. While we all have our pet inventors there are five who contributed to the understanding of steam as a motive force and made the world a better place; Papin, Cugnot, Newcomen, Watt and, finally, Trevithick who left us with the ubiquitous cylindrical boiler that will remain the all-purpose, high pressure vessel forever but whose reputation was ruined by fellow Cornishmen, Humphry Davy and Davies Gilbert. Some were ignored but others were encouraged by numerous entrepreneurs who sought to benefit from the outcomes of their Inventiveness. These opportunists realised that whoever was the master of strong steam would have control, and control meant considerable financial gain, over industrial and possibly transport processes that were as yet only dreams. Driven by gold fever, these businessmen viewed a little deception and a few white lies as surely excusable when the advantages to be gained were so immense; men have murdered for less. Inventors are very seldom businessmen; few who harnessed the powers that lay in steam and atmospheric pressure realised true commercial success. They were followed by engineers who made contributions that significantly advanced the value of steam engines and created marketable products. It was not them nor the original inventors but the thousands of industrialists who exploited their labours and left their stamp on the world. With the possible exception of Thomas Savery, who may have exploited the work of others, the inventors died poor men. It is necessary to understand the jealously, greed and corruption that existed as the opportunists made appreciable sums of money.
3. John Hunter - Pumping Engines at collieries on the north side of the Don Valley in the Rotherham area
An unusual combination of geological and geographical features, coupled with the enterprise of some prominent local landed families, provided the impetus for introducing Newcomen-type steam engines to pump water from collieries in the Rotherham area of South Yorkshire during the second half of the eighteenth century.
This paper describes the circumstances surrounding the use of the technology at these collieries and identifies the locations of eleven engines of this type discovered to date. Eight of the engines were used for pumping water, although two of these may have combined pumping with winding. One engine may have been constructed for winding only and another was dedicated to air blowing for blast furnaces. The final Newcomen engine, the last of its type in South Yorkshire, was built in 1823 for colliery pumping and it operated for 110 years.
The general shapes and dimensions of most of the engine houses have been determined but the technical details of the engines were rarely recorded and, at the present time, are mostly unknown.
4. Tony Coverdale - John Padmore & use of a Water Commanding Engine - 1695 Author is Chair, Bristol Industrial Archaeology Society A number of histories of Bristol published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contain short references to John Padmore and his design for what is variously described as a ‘pump’, a ‘curious hydraulic machine’, and a ‘remarkable atmospheric engine’. The paper will draw together the known references and present them on a coherent timeline. That timeline will then be compared with the known development of the Savery and Newcomen engines to put Padmore’s work in context. The documentary evidence suggests that Padmore constructed three engines on the River Avon. The geography and topography of the Avon valley around those sites will be used to explore how the machines were being used and their possible performance. Padmore’s links with the copper and brass industry (which is where my research started) will be explored to identify possible influences on his work. One such link is his construction of a copper works at Llangyfelach near Swansea in 1717. Padmore was chosen to build the works on land owned by the Duke of Beaufort, who until inheriting the dukedom was the Marquis of Worcester. The evidence is circumstantial, but the link creates the possibility that Padmore had access to the works of the earlier Marquis.The paper will be a work in progress summarising the results of research to-date and hopefully stimulating future research.
5. Dr John Kanefsky - An analysis of total UK steam engine building before the introduction of Watt's engines
Based on Dr Kanefsky’s extensive database of early engines. The first iteration of this work (by John Robey and Dr Kanefsky) was published in Technology and Culture in 1980 and has been used extensively by historians and economists. The list has been considerably updated and expanded, with the help of many researchers working in particular local areas and on specific industries, and drawing on books and articles published since the original research.
The database now contains about 720 engines including around 42 “possible” engines erected before 1776, when the first commercially sold Watt engine started, including over 50 not on the original listing, and after the elimination of double counting and dubious references which were found to be erroneous. As a comparison, the original article made its cutoff 1780, following Harris’s date and the introduction of rotary engines; this enumerated 711 up to 1780, whereas there are now 782 listed, including some 55 “possibles”, for that date.
6. James Greener - The First Engine in Yorkshire: Austhorpe, 1714 (Short paper)
A short presentation linking the Fire Engine story to Yorkshire, covering the period 1712 to 1714, and highlighting the legacy of the Austhorpe engine: the death of John Calley and the career of John Smeaton.
7. Rick J. Stewart - John Smeaton and the fire engine This overview paper will be divided into five parts:
8. James Greener - Bromsgrove Revisited: The road to Dudley, 1712
This paper traces the logical chain of events which led to the construction of the engine engraved by Barney. Incorporating a review of all published research on the topic, the paper correlates archive evidence to present an integrated timeline:
Thomas Newcomen was by 1696 a leading merchant purchasing iron from the Midlands on behalf of ironmongers throughout the southwestern counties of England; Stephen Coley was Newcomen’s employee and a member of Netherton Baptist church; George Yearnold, elder of Bromsgrove Baptist Church, was likely a first cousin of John and William Yarnold who held Patent No. 355 for “an engine very useful for draining mines” granted 6 days prior to Savery’s famous 1698 Fire Engine Patent; Work on the Coneygree (Dudley) engine for Josias Bate likely started in early 1711; John Eckels, former co-pastor of Robert Steed in London and former pastor of Bromsgrove, died in Coventry on 26 January 1711/12, and it was likely in connection with his funeral that Newcomen and Calley met with the new lessees of the Newdigate collieries, Richard Parrott and George Sparrow, and made proposals to draw the water at Griff; William Bache’s engine at Wolverhampton for was likely relocated from Cornwall; Both engines were likely completed by July 1712; The public opening of the Dudley Fire Engine was likely in early September 1712.
9. Suhail Rana - Henry Beighton and new evidence regarding the development of the first Newcomen engine Henry Beighton was the first man of Science to study the Newcomen engine and was connected with the engine at Griff near Coventry. The paper I’m proposing looks at the life of Henry Beighton to discover actually how influential he may have been in the early development of the Newcomen Engine. It studies in detail Beighton’s drawing of the engine, along with entries in the Royal Society Journal, and suggests that they provide evidence to confirm that Thomas Newcomen was indeed responsible for all the key developments of the engine, including the self-acting valve gear, and reveals Beighton’s own contribution to its development.
10. Richard Lamb - The Newcomen Engine as measured by James Watt According to his notebooks, between 1770 and 1776 James Watt took measurements, using fairly simplistic techniques, of several Newcomen engines in order to determine the amount of work each was performing and the quantity of coal consumed to produce that work. Knowing the cylinder dimensions, the engine stroke and quantity of water pumped through a given height, he was able, following the discovery of latent heat and using rudimentary notions of what later became known as thermodynamics, to deduce the amount of theoretical steam required and compare this to the actual steam as supplied by the boiler. The difference, the so-called missing quantity which contributes nothing towards useful work, can be expressed as a mass per square foot (of cylinder surface area) per hour, being related to the surface area:volume ratio and temperature differential between the incoming steam and that of the hot well. Temperatures of both injection water and hot well allow calculation of the cold water:steam ratio, and the probable vacuum developed within the cylinder. In some instances, the Ranter engine for example, there is sufficient data to estimate what is nowadays known as brake (or water) horse power and indicated horse power, plus various efficiencies such as boiler, mechanical and thermal. This comprehensive analysis allows direct comparison between several engines, and complements similar recent results found with a model engine having a three inch diameter cylinder. Although Watt is deemed by Dickinson & Jenkins to be “the originator of systematic engine testing”, they thought that “the scientific value … obtained in these early trials may not be great …” because of the inexactness of the consumption of steam, feed water and coal. The pitfalls of placing too much reliance on these figures is noted, but nevertheless in the absence of accurate data, they are far better than having no figures at all, and with these provisos, are presented here.
11. Victoria Owens - James Brindley’s steam engines, 1756-1759
Although James Brindley’s chief claim to fame is his canal work, his extant manuscript notebooks indicate that between 1756 and 1759 steam power occupied much of his thinking. None of the engines that he built is known to survive and the detail that Brindley provides about their construction and efficiency is skeletal; nevertheless, his accounts indicate that he built up the nucleus of an impressive steam-engine client-base, which included the iron-founder Abraham Darby II of Coalbrookdale and Thomas Whieldon, master potter of Fenton, who owned coal measures near Bedworth. Brindley also built engines for the Staffordshire coal-owners Phineas Hussey of Little Wyrley and Thomas and/or Clara Maria Broade of Fenton Vivian. In 1758 he was sufficiently confident of success to take out a patent (no. 730) for the ‘Invention of A Fire Engine, for Drawing Water out of Mines…’
The Fenton Vivian engine came to the attention of James Spedding of Whitehaven, agent to Sir James Lowther, who mentioned it to William Brown of Throckley. Brown travelled to Staffordshire to inspect it in the Autumn of 1759 and his sketch of the boiler fleshes out the description in Brindley’s patent specification. He disputed Brindley’s claim that it was an ‘invention’, regarding his innovations more in the light of an ‘improvement.’ Brindley’s engagement with steam power was energetic but short-lived. After his death, his friends claimed that he would have perfected steam engine design, had not the activities of unnamed jealous rivals thwarted his endeavours. Evidence actually suggests that an approach from the Duke of Bridgewater in the summer of 1759 turned his attention to canal building. Although he may not have fully realised his steam engineering ambitions, his headlong records make a valuable contribution to our understanding of the day-to- day experiences of the eighteenth-century engine wrights.
12. Peter King - George Sparrow and the spread of the steam engine in the north Midlands
13. Bernard Champness - Fairbottom Bobs, a review of evidence
14. Professor David Perett - Henry Ford and Herbert Morton’s 1928 engine collecting endeavours The author is a past President of the Newcomen Society. By the 1920s Henry Ford had become possibly the world’s richest man and he started to expand his personal historical collections. Having been a steam engineer with the Edison Illuminating Co, steam engines were a particular passion. In 1929 he charged Herbert Morton, an engineer from his Trafford Park Works, with the task of assembling the complete history of steam by acquiring surviving engines from England even if they were in the Science Museum!. Ford put 10 million dollars put at Morton’s disposal! Together they inspected at least six surviving ‘Newcomen’ engines. Three were acquired, dismantled and shipped back to Dearborn. They were installed along with some 25 other large early engines including Watt Engines in the massive museum Ford was having built in his home town of Dearborn, Michigan. Most can still be seen there. This lecture, focussed on the Newcomen Engines, is based on both physical and archival research in both the UK and Dearborn.
15. Dr Michael Nevell, MCIfA, FSA - Power and innovation: Excavating pre-1812 steam engines in the Manchester City Region The author is Head of Archaeology at the University of Salford & Co-Editor of Industrial Archaeology Review. Manchester was one of the early adopters of the rotary steam engine to power textile mills. The first steam engine installed in a Manchester Mill was around 1782. By 1800 there were at least a dozen steam-powered textile mills in Manchester and by 1812 steam powered had spread to mills in surrounding cotton towns such as Salford and Stockport. This paper will review 15 years of developer-funded excavation work targeted at recording these early steam engine sites across more than a dozen sites. It will look at engine house and boiler house arrangements, the development of the technology from the use of water pumping engines to Boulton and Watt rotary design, looking along the way at how the archaeological evidence has been targeted and recorded, and in a few cases comparing this material with the early engineering drawings. What emerges is a picture of rapid technological adoption and variability.
16. John Barnatt - Investigating the 1794-95 Newcomen Pumping Engine at Watergrove Mine, Derbyshire The Watergrove lead mine near Foolow in the heart of the Derbyshire orefield was exceptionally rich but plagued by water. There was a Newcomen engine installed in 1748-51 but this failed to drain the workings. The fortunes of the mine changed when a ‘pipe’ with in-situ mineral and cave passages with rich alluvial deposits was found in 1771. This was followed ever deeper, running a long distance south-westwards with a series of shafts and engines installed as they went. Large profits were made between 1771 and 1785 totalling nearly £17,300. However, almost from the outset the miners encountered ongoing difficulties with water. Horse-powered engines were installed, superseded in 1794-95 by a 38 inch cylinder Newcomen pumping engine; even this was only powerful enough to allow work in the mine in the summer half of the year. In some wet years the engine was not even started, in others it failed to shift the water, while in only 16 of the years between 1896 and 1819 significant amounts of ore were raised; however, the running costs outweighed ore sales and between 1786 and 1819 the mine lost nearly £8.000. What remained of the engine house, ash pits, boiler plinths, chimney bases, coal chutes/hoppers and paved paths were archaeologically excavated in 2010-13 by volunteers from the Peak District Mines Historical Society. Despite the engine being intermittently used for pumping for only 24 years it was found that its boiler had been replaced twice. The original was a haystack boiler placed outside the engine house on the downslope side. This was replaced in 1803 with what may well have been a waggon boiler built on the upslope side, which in turn was replaced in 1819 with a haystack boiler.
17. David Kitching - Hidden in plain sight - Nathaniel Wright's pirate engine house at Norbury (Short paper)
18. Les Turnbull - William Brown’s Giant Tyneside Engines
19. David Hardwick - The UK's oldest complete Newcomen Engine House, Brislington 1740 The Newcomen Engine House at Brislington has been recorded by sketchers, painters and photographers for over 200 years, but only recently have details of the engine it contained and its construction been revealed. This paper outlines the history of the engine and house and sets out the findings of the full survey undertaken recently. The small Brislington Coalfield is one of a number of outliers of the better known Bristol Coalfield and all mining here had ceased by the early C19. The coalfield is covered by urban development and there are no surface remains with the notable exception of the tall Newcomen engine house set below Brislington Parish church, less than 100 yards from the busy A4. The first known sketch of the engine house in 1811 shows that it no longer fulfils its original purpose and local anecdote suggests it was constructed around 1790. The South Gloucestershire Mines Research Group (SGMRG) were advised that details of the engine and its operations were to be found in the archives of the Chelsea Water Works Company, this being occasioned by their visit to the Bristol Coalfield to examine local engines prior to commissioning their own. This source confirmed that the engine was operating in 1742 and probably constructed in 1739. In addition to the cylinder size, details of the shaft depth, water raised and coal consumed were also recorded. The construction of a similar engine for Chelsea Waterworks by the same engine wright and its subsequent drawing by Boulton and Watt prior to replacement by one of their own products has provided an unusually complete set of materials. When combined with a full survey and survival of a number of original features we can therefore reproduce the internal layout of this, the world’s oldest complete engine house with a high level of confidence.
20. Steve Grudgings - Discoveries and dilemmas - Excavating the 1791 Serridge Engine House
The South Gloucestershire Mines Research Group (SGMRG) have been uncovering and conserving the sub-surface remains of the Newcomen Engine House, constructed at Serridge, South Gloucestershire around 1791. The extensive remains of both the engine house and its surrounding structures have presented many interpretational challenges and this paper is concerned describing these. The construction of a fourth engine house on the Serridge Estate at Coalpit Heath is confirmed by eighteenth and nineteenth century maps, but other than the contract for its construction, further details are sparse. Since 2005 the SGMRG team have located, excavated and conserved:
- The lower two storeys of the engine house, including the beds
- Over 100 meters of large and small, high and low level passages linked to the engine house
- The locations of the reservoir shaft and the pumping shaft are confirmed
- One definite and a second probable boiler setting
- A substantial stone chimney base and twin flues leading to it
However this work has raised a series of puzzles and enigmas as follows:
The engine house shows clear signs of rebuilding and the engine beds probably date from the period after the rebuild. Whilst boiler locations have been identified, no stokehole or ashpit has been located
The purpose of the two substantial sub surface passages leading from either side of the engine house is not clear or obvious. The arrangements for raising water to the reservoir shaft (described in the contract) are uncertain. The opportunity to access all these features over such a protracted time is unusual and we believe there have not been other excavations in the UK of similar extent. However for every question we resolve a new one emerges and the purpose of this paper is to present these to a wider audience with the hope that further insights may emerge.
21. Ken Pointon - Constructing a Newcomen engine in the 21st Century Paper on the construction of building a small full size working Newcomen Atmospheric Steam Engine, that members of the society built to commemorate the tercentenary (300 years) of the Newcomen Engine that took place in 2012. The engine is approximately 18 feet high, pumps water over an eight feet diameter water wheel which then drives a wooden cog wheel and a lantern pinion transmission. This setup was known as a Returning Engine to give revolving motion to factory machinery at that time. Our engine and water wheel unit is timbered framed, similar to the Newcomen Memorial Engine in Devon, and has all the features of the first generation of Newcomen Engines. The engine was displayed at the Glenbrook Vintage Railway’s Steam and Country Festival which was held in March 2013.
The author represents the Auckland Steam Engine Society, New Zealand.
22. Steve Grudgings – “Old Sarah” - A survivor until 1917 at Newmarket Silkstone Pit (Short paper)