The Birth of Modern Britain: A Journey into Britain’s Archaeological Past: 1550 to the Present. Francis Pryor
are happening.
And while on the subject of bias, I should also add that I plan to pay more attention to those aspects of the period which have tended to be ignored. A classic case in point is the very start of what some historians have referred to as the Agricultural Revolution. For me this is when modern Britain really begins to emerge. I like to think I can identify with those independent farmers who, freed from old ties of feudalism, set about creating, possibly for the first time in British history, a true market-based economy. These were extraordinary times, in many respects far more interesting than the Open Field farms of the Middle Ages which are usually taught in preference at school. And while on the subject of revolutions, of course, what about the big one that everyone still talks about and takes thoroughly for granted?
When, in 1884, the great historian Arnold Toynbee published a book of his Oxford course under the title Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England, he probably didn’t realise that the phrase would immediately stick and remain current into the twenty-first century; indeed, by that time television documentaries would proclaim it as proven fact. Some people were even able to tie it down with precision. One of the best post-war historical accounts, by Professor T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830, published by Oxford University Press in 1948, compresses the period into a truly revolutionary seventy years – or roughly three (short) generations.8
Anyone who has any experience of life outside academia will immediately realise that the idea of such a short period of revolutionary change is manifestly absurd. The world – and especially the world of work – simply doesn’t behave like that.9 All change requires time and things never happen with a single bang: there are always mistakes, false starts and heroic failures such as Brunel’s broad gauge for the Great Western Railway and John Logie Baird’s mechanically based system of television transmission of 1926. But the idea of the ‘Industrial Revolution’ has certainly fixed itself firmly in the popular imagination and I doubt whether it will ever go away completely.
I think there are at least three reasons for this. First and foremost it plays very well in Britain where most of the early innovations were developed, if not (like the blast furnace) actually invented. Second, for the revolution to have happened there had to be heroes to push it forward and, of course, everyone likes to admire a hero. One thinks of James Watt or Abraham Darby; it’s even better if these larger-than-life industrial pioneers were also highly enlightened men, like Robert Owen, Josiah Wedgwood or Titus Salt. Finally, the very idea of revolutionary change is exciting: we can gasp at the sheer pace of the events, wring our hands at the misery of the workforce and then thrill to the mastery of their monumental achievements, many of which are still out there in the landscape.
But for most of the post-war decades nobody working in the academic study of industrial archaeology has believed in a literal Industrial Revolution. Laying aside the impossible pace, revolutions are meant to sweep all before them, like so many aristocrats fleeing France at the onset of the Terror. Factories were supposed to have swept away small hand workshops, but in fact these persisted – and successfully – well into the twentieth century. We can also appreciate that the great heroes were actually ordinary individuals, many of whom didn’t so much invent from scratch as modify a pre-existing machine, like James Watt who adapted Newcomen’s engine to make the steam drive the piston in both directions, thereby more than doubling its power.10 Similarly, as we will see shortly, great ironmasters such as the various Abraham Darbys used their commercial and marketing expertise to develop good ideas often produced by others working in their foundries. When we examine industrial Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we see that it has many similarities with the contemporary world of the agricultural ‘Improvers’ such as Coke of Norfolk or Jethro Tull. Both history and the British propensity to admire heroes have been very kind to these men, many of whom were indeed great but probably less than heroic.
The final nail in the coffin of the rapid revolution idea has been the realisation that, far from starting in 1760, many of the industries of the period were already fully mature by then, with histories extending back over two centuries or even more, as we will see in Chapter 5 when we look at the early cutlery trade along the rivers of Sheffield, or the latest excavations in and around Ironbridge. In most instances, too, the pattern of trade and industry that developed in specific areas in early post-medieval times determined the shape of what was to happen in the era of massive expansion which began in the later eighteenth century. This was the time when infrastructure – canals, waggonways and roads – was improving rapidly. It also saw the introduction of new technologies such as coal-powered steam. Perhaps most important of all, social circumstances were changing in a way that first allowed and then actually facilitated the growth of industry. We must not forget that the era of industrial expansion was as much about social change as technology.
One might suppose that industrial archaeologists would strive to retain an idea with such popular appeal as the Industrial Revolution, but for many decades it has been only too clear that the process of industrialisation had been extended and in many instances can be traced back to the Middle Ages. One way round this dilemma has been to write of an extended or ‘long’ Industrial Revolution.11 Another has been to subdivide the extended Revolution into sub-Revolutions, such as a ‘chemical’ followed by an ‘extractive’ Revolution. In Chapter 6 I will discuss the merits of various ‘ceramic revolutions’. These were indeed fast, and revolutionary in their effects. But on the ceramic market alone. They never transformed people’s lives. My own feeling is that these sub-Revolutions are really clutching at straws and are helping to perpetuate the use of a term that ought to be dropped, for the simple reason that it is both inaccurate and misleading.
Students of industrial archaeology study the physical remains of early factories and workshops. They make extensive use of documents – if they are available – but perhaps most important of all they closely examine the archaeological evidence for contemporary housing, for both workers and management. Increasingly today industrial archaeologists are concerned with the long roots of industrialisation and its social consequences.12 The trend towards social perspectives has affected the scope of archaeologists who are now more concerned with the wider relationship between housing, factories and workshops; the effect has been to look at industries within the landscape: how and why they arose in a particular area and the influences they had on a given region’s population and economy.13
The concept of landscape is particularly significant within industrial archaeology, because it can be used to decide why certain sources of power were originally selected – coal and water are obvious examples. Landscapes can also help to explain why workers’ housing, for example, was located in certain areas, but social considerations always seem to have remained pre-eminent. For example, the switch from waterwheels to steam power in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries often necessitated twenty-four-hour shift working to cover the additional costs of coal. This in turn meant that housing had to be positioned close by the factory or mill, whether or not the terrain was actually suited to such a change. Sometimes underlying social motives could be less apparent. For example, many of the great mill owners aspired to emulate the landed gentry (which they often achieved with notable success) and to do this they built their new homes to resemble the great country houses of the nobility. Their houses were placed relatively nearby (to enable them to keep an eye on the shop), but the positioning carefully avoided any visual reminders of the mills and back-to-back housing that actually generated their wealth. But all rules have exceptions, as we will see when we come to look at where the great industrialists Robert Owen and his much-underrated father-in-law placed their houses in the model town they created at New Lanark.
I have always had an interest in what one might term modern archaeology and found I had more time for it after I had completed work on the report of my excavations at Flag Fen, a process that occupied me, night and day, for some five years in the mid-1990s. When that was finished I decided I really had to get out more, see the world and ‘get