[BITList] Fwd: Big bottle, long flute

[John Feltham]

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Reynolds,  William  (1758-1803), ironmaster and scientist, was born at Ketley, Shropshire, on 14 April 1758, the elder of the two children of Richard Reynolds  (1735-1816), ironmaster of Coalbrookdale and Bristol, and his first wife, Hannah (1735-1762), daughter of Abraham Darby  (1711-1763). His sister, Hannah (b. 1761), married William Rathbone. He had three half-brothers, the children of his father's second marriage, of whom Joseph Reynolds (1768-1859) lived to adulthood and was his partner in the Ketley ironworks.

Between 1766 and 1769 Reynolds was educated by a resident tutor, George Harrison. Nothing is known of his subsequent education except that he spent some time studying chemistry with Dr Joseph Black (1728-1799), and that by his late teens he was experimenting with Leyden jars and reading the works of Joseph Priestley. Reynolds's interests were concentrated in the Shropshire coalfield, in his lifetime the leading ironmaking area in Britain. By 1777, when he was nineteen, he was employed in his father's ironworks and was negotiating with James Watt (1736-1819) over the installation of new steam engines at Ketley. He was subsequently responsible for similar Boulton and Watt engines at the partners' other works at Coalbrookdale and Horsehay. He was also involved in the establishment of a new blast furnace complex at Donnington Wood in 1783-5.

Reynolds married Hannah Ball of Bridgwater, Somerset, on 3 November 1789. They were first cousins and were consequently disowned by the Society of Friends, from whose tenets they gradually moved away, although Reynolds always wore a Quaker broad-brimmed hat, refused to pay church rates, and was interred in the Quaker burial-ground at Coalbrookdale. They had three sons, William, Joseph, and Michael, all of whom died before reaching adulthood, and two daughters, Susannah, who married the Revd John Bartlett, and Hannah, who lived for less than two months in 1796.

In 1789 Reynolds, with his brother Joseph, received his father's shares in the Coalbrookdale concerns, and took over direction of the works at Ketley. The affairs of the partnerships were becoming increasingly complex, and in 1796 the interests of the Darby and Reynolds families were separated, William and Joseph Reynolds taking charge of the Madeley Wood and Ketley ironworks. The latter was the fifth largest in Britain in 1804 and was valued at £110,000 in 1803 at the time of William Reynolds's death. Reynolds encouraged experiments by Adam Heslop and James Sadler in devising new configurations for steam engines, and in 1782 used one of the first rotative steam engines to work a flour mill at Ketley. His most significant metallurgical achievement was perhaps his process for making manganese steel, which was patented in 1799. His status in the iron trade was shown in 1795-6, when he acted as arbitrator in the bitter dispute between the brothers John and William Wilkinson. After Reynolds died his interests in the Ketley works passed to his brother, Joseph, while those in the Madeley Wood concern and at Coalport passed ultimately to his wife's nephew, William Anstice (1781-1850), who had worked for Reynolds in Shropshire from 1796.

It was due to Reynolds's initiative that tow-paths were constructed along the River Severn between 1796 and 1809, allowing the use of horses for towing vessels. He was responsible for the construction of much of the tub-boat canal system of the east Shropshire coalfield. In 1786-7 he promoted two short private canals at Wombridge and Ketley, the latter incorporating an inclined plane. He personally surveyed the line of the Shropshire Canal, the strategic north-south link across the coalfield, before it received parliamentary sanction in 1788, and supervised the construction of the canal. Reynolds was also an active shareholder in the Shrewsbury Canal, which extended the coalfield network to the county town. He suggested the installation of a cantilevered tow-path through the 970 yard Berwick Tunnel, and the castings for the iron aqueduct at Longdon upon Tern were made at his ironworks at Ketley. Reynolds established the canal port at the eastern end of the Ironbridge Gorge, which from 1794 gained the name of Coalport. He constructed a riverside warehouse for general cargoes, and developed facilities for the downstream dispatch of coal brought to the banks of the Severn by canal. He was a shareholder in the Preens Eddy Bridge, which crossed the Severn near to the interchange. He invested in the potteries established there by John and Thomas Rose, and exploited the natural bitumen found in 1786 when his workmen were digging a canal tunnel into the side of the gorge.

Reynolds was involved with a glassworks at Wrockwardine Wood and an alkali works at Wombridge, both of which used innovative technology. He was probably responsible for the construction at Coalbrookdale by Richard Trevithick in 1802 of the first steam railway locomotive, and his death seems to have ended the project. In 1799 Simon Goodrich was told that Reynolds was experimenting with what appears to have been some kind of oil engine. He had close associations with Archibald Cochrane, ninth Earl Dundonald, and at his ironworks built kilns of Dundonald's design for making coke and extracting by-products, foreseeing that coal gas would be used for lighting and heating. He encouraged Dundonald in his plans, ultimately never realized, to construct an alkali plant at Coalport. At his home at Ketley Bank House, Shropshire, he displayed to visitors his collection of fossils, his library, and his laboratory. He was a pioneer of scientific geology, and influenced the subsequent work of Joseph Prestwich and Roderick Murchison. Part of his collection, after many vicissitudes, passed to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1956. Reynolds's scientific interests were allied with a zany sense of humour. In 1795 he remarked that he hoped when the war was over to construct a flute 150 feet long, blown by a steam engine, and the following year he displayed to visitors a colossal bottle with a capacity of over 70 gallons.

Reynolds's attachment to the Society of Friends did not prevent him from acting sociably within the local community. He presided over a dinner at the Tontine Hotel, next to the Iron Bridge, when a new landlord took over in 1795, and he was accustomed to meet regularly with his contemporaries at a public house known for the quality of its ale. He contributed substantially to the sections on transport and manufactures in Joseph Plymley's General View of the Agriculture of Shropshire (1803). His sketchbook, preserved in the library of the Science Museum, London, shows the range of his engineering interests. After some years of ill health, Reynolds died on 3 June 1803 at Coalbrookdale and was interred in the Quaker burial-ground there. He was survived by his wife.

Barrie Trinder 

Sources  B. Trinder, The industrial revolution in Shropshire, 2nd edn (1981) + B. Trinder, ed., The most extraordinary district in the world, 2nd edn (1988) + Mrs E. Greg, ed., Reynolds-Rathbone diaries and letters, 1753-1839 (privately printed, London, 1905) + Thomas Telford, engineer [Ironbridge 1979], ed. A. Penfold (1980) + A. Raistrick, Dynasty of iron founders: the Darbys and Coalbrookdale (1953) + J. Randall, History of Madeley, ed. B. Trinder, 2nd edn (1975) + H. W. Dickinson, 'An 18th-century engineer's sketch book', Transactions [Newcomen Society], 2 (1921-2), 132-40 + H. S. Torrens, 'The Reynolds-Anstice Shropshire geological collection, 1776-1981', Archives of Natural History, 10 (1981-2), 429-41 + N. Cossons and B. Trinder, The iron bridge: symbol of the industrial revolution (1979) + B. Trinder, The Darbys of Coalbrookdale, 4th edn (1993) + VCH  Shropshire + R. Reynolds, memorandum, Pocket companion (1762) + H. M. Rathbone, Letters of Richard Reynolds with a memoir of his life (1852), 69
Archives Sci. Mus. + U. Lpool | Library of Birmingham, Boulton and Watt MS + Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Shropshire, accounts of Coalbrookdale ironworks + Staffs. RO, executors' accounts
Likenesses  Wilson, portrait, 1796, Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Shropshire [see illus.] · W. Hobday, portrait, Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Shropshire · Sharp, engraving (after W. Hobday), priv. coll.



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