Part 6 of Bilston's History

The Glass Industry:

There was a glass factory, probably producing mainly cheap bottles and window glass, at Bradley from 1674 to 1790 but it never developed into a large industry, Stourbridge gaining a virtual monopoly. Glasshouse Bridge remembers the site of these works.

Japanning: (Japanning describes the European imit
ation of Asian lacquer-work, originally used on furniture. Japanned is most often a heavy black lacquer, almost like enamel paint.)

The first reference to japanning appears in 1710. At first it may have been wooden items that were decorated in this way but papier mache soon replaced it and, when thin steel sheet became readily available and cheap, that replaced papier mache in Bilston almost entirely (though it did not in Wolverhampton). Bilston seems to have specialised in making blank trays for supply to Wolverhampton japanners; and finished products of a cheaper and gaudier type than Wolverhampton’s which are said to have been exported in large quantities to South America. Japanning and tin plate work continued well into the 20th century.

Iron and Steel:

John Wilkinson set up in Bradley in 1767. It was an area well supplied with ironstone, limestone and coal, if not with water.

There may well have been small scale iron production in the area long before Wilkinson arrived but it is from his time that we can date this industry which was to become the chief industry of Bilston and the pride of the town.

Large steel works, supplying, it seems, the whole world, started to spring up all over the area. As we will see these eventually lessened in number until only Hickman’s was left; it survived well into the 20th century.

Industries spread out over all the old manorial lands, wreaking havoc with the landscape. Agriculture was not entirely excluded but, by the second half of the 18th century, it took place in the gaps between mining and manufacturing – and these gaps gradually became fewer though they did not disappear entirely until late in the 20th century.

Of this period Dr. Rowlands says of Bilston: “Here in the course of the hundred years before 1760 new trades, new men, new wealth and a new way of life were established. … In 1666 there were only 46 householders paying tax and 61 certified as exempt. Thirty years later in 1695 a list of the population for taxation purposes names 1006 men and women and children, including a high proportion of young single men. … In 1767 a return estimated the population of [Bilston] chapelry as ‘about 5,000’, that is, about ten times that indicated in the hearth tax return of a hundred years before”.

Joseph Price, writing of a time about 1780, says “The principal Trades at this time carried on in Bilston were the Buckle and Chape, the Japan, the Enamel and the Metal Box, vast quantities of which were Manufactured here”.

Bilston Town During the 18th Century.

Clearly the industrial revolution had hit Bilston and by 1760 the town and its people would have been largely unrecognisable as the town and its people in 1660. What is not clear is why this occurred. Geographical and geological determinism never were satisfactory explanations and their shortcomings are illustrated by the contrast Dr. Rowlands shows between Bilston and Sedgley, a place similarly situated but where the course of development was quite different.

In 1727 Bilston’s communications had been somewhat improved by the passing of the first Turnpike Act to include any road in the area. Eventually most of the roads out of the town were turnpiked and the town was surrounded by toll gates. Under an Act of 1776 the road from Bilston to Wednesbury was created, the road originally having gone via Darlaston. The point where what is now Oxford Street crossed the brook was almost certainly a ford; eventually it was crossed by Goddard’s Bridge, the original date of which is unknown but the records show its being repaired in 1670. Bilston lay on the Holyhead Road and was certainly a staging post on the coaching route, though probably not a major coaching centre, that role being taken, locally, by Wolverhampton.

But industry would have been given a great boost by the coming of the canal in 1767, making it easier and far cheaper to distribute (and receive) raw materials and finished goods. Joseph Price wrote that the canal “had been of vast importance to the Proprietors of Lands and Mines in this Town and the Neighbourhood: Blast Furnaces for the smelting of Iron began to be erected about this time in this Township, the first of which was that belonging to the late John Wilkinson Esq., near the Fireholes, and called the Old Furnaces; another was erected by the same Gentleman close to the canal at Upper Bradley, and one at the Western extremity of the Township by the late John Bickley Esq,”.

There were other improvements to the town. The Rev. Ames records a new burial ground being created; some of the town ways being paved; and, partly at the cost of Ames himself, a Poor House was established. This workhouse was established in 1700 and stood in Workhouse Fold in the town centre.

The population was greatly increasing. Population figures given by Lawley (which he got from census returns and, before that, by guessing) are:

These figures show the enormous increase in population and they suggest the problems that brought with it. They also reflect the changing economic climate, the 19th century being particularly prone to periods of boom and bust. Lawley says that since 1871 (and he writes in the 1890s) the population has decreased to a little over 24,000, because the coal mining industry was almost at an end and the iron trade was in deep recession.

In the 18th century the town was already beginning to show some of the drawbacks of industrialisation, overcrowding and poor drainage and sanitation. In 1728 and 1729 an “epidemical distemper” of an unknown sort caused a great mortality, with 172 burials being recorded in just two years from a population of about 1,000. In 1756 and 1757 they were other epidemics, this time of “putrid fever” or “flux of fever”. In 6 months this took off 51 people.

The parish registers show that the town had a Constable but his powers were distinctly limited. In 1694 the registers first record the installation of a pair of stocks, but these were certainly not the first. They had to be repaired from time to time and replaced completely in 1764. The stocks were in Lich Gates, where they stayed until moved to the headquarters of the new Peelers when they were established.

A typical set of stocks. There would have been a bench behind for the miscreant to sit on. (A pillory was a similar structure with holes for the arms and the head). How badly you were pelted with rubbish depended on what the locals thought of you and your offense. The main purpose of stocks and pillories was to humiliate the offender.

There was also a gibbet A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold), presumably set up where Gibbet Lane met the Wolverhampton Road.

It should be noted that the presence of a gibbet is not evidence of sentences being executed and criminals hanged in Bilston. It was only after you had been hanged (probably in Stafford) that your body was hung, in a metal cage, upon a gibbet, preferably near to where you came from or committed the foul deed. The image shows a seaside gibbet, probably displaying a pirate or mutineer.

"Shepherding the moonlit sheep" was a warning to others as much as a post mortem humiliation.

In 1719 a new house was provided for the curate of St. Leonard’s. The Rev. Ames moved in on the 9th May. The house stood “on the Church Street side of the churchyard, opposite the entrance to the grounds of Pipe Hall Hotel”. It moved from there in 1820, to a new building next to the church near the Mount Pleasant junction. The new house of 1719 was said to be near the school. Presumably this was a church school, possibly just a Sunday school. There seems to be little other reference to education in Bilston up to this time but doubtless there were a number of private schools and dame schools.

The town was not without entertainment. The ceremony of beating the bounds continued until 1827. The Gunpowder Plot was celebrated each 5th November, as was the Restoration of Charles 2nd each 29th May. Both occasions brought forth bonfires, fireworks and a good deal of drinking.

On the 11th April 1754 the Swedish industrial spy, Rheinhold Angerstein, visited the town and he reported:

“Bilston is a town that consists mainly of factories for metal boxes and other and punched work which comes under the heading ‘toy ware’ or ‘Quincaillerie’ [small metal goods]. I viewed here one or two of these works, where the people were occupied with the making of paste gems and enamelled work to be incorporated into boxes and watch chains and with the filing and carving of mother of pearl. Of this ware I was shown a set of tea caddies and boxes, which cost 60 guineas. For purchase of half-a-dozen or a dozen of these items a discount of 15 per cent is allowed”.

“In one farmhouse between Bilston and Wolverhampton there was a factory for making snuff-boxes and other enamelled work, where a large number of women were employed in preparing the enamel, dipping the copper sheets and painting. They were also occupied in firing and tempering the enamel … Later on I saw a factory making the same things in Wednesbury and there are also a large number of them in Bilston. The boxes fetch good prices when sold, according to the quality of the painting. A discount of 15 per cent is allowed if one takes a dozen or more”.

In June 1754 Angerstein was back again and making a new report:

“On the way [from Wolverhampton] to Wednesbury and Birmingham I went through Bilston, which manufactures many kinds of wares in non-ferrous metals such as pinchbeck, as well as engraved and turned mother-of-pearl for boxes and watch chains, buttons and all sorts of similar articles. Here are also workshops for enamelled boxes made of copper sheets, which are stamped in dies of various shapes. Lacquered boxes of sheets are also made around here. All these wares are sold at high prices, the actual figured depending on the pattern and novelty-value of inventiveness displayed by the painting, enamelling or lacquering.”