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127-684: Stamford Canal , now disused, is one of the earliest post-Roman canals in England. It opened in 1670, around 100 years before the start of the Industrial Revolution which brought about the " golden age " for canals in Britain. Parts of the route can be traced on the ground, though only one lock survives intact. It was part of the Welland Navigation in Lincolnshire . First authorised in 1571, during

254-400: A better way could be found to remove the seed. Eli Whitney responded to the challenge by inventing the inexpensive cotton gin . A man using a cotton gin could remove seed from as much upland cotton in one day as would previously have taken two months to process, working at the rate of one pound of cotton per day. These advances were capitalised on by entrepreneurs , of whom the best known

381-455: A chain or rope was attached to the mid-stream edge of the gate and to the bank. While this would have made opening the gates possible, it is not obvious how they were shut. The measurements match those of the surviving structures, with the exception of Briggin's lock, which appears to only be 56 feet (17 m) long. There is no visible evidence that it was shortened at some point, nor any obvious reason why it would have been built shorter than all

508-520: A cottage industry under the putting-out system . Occasionally, the work was done in the workshop of a master weaver. Under the putting-out system, home-based workers produced under contract to merchant sellers, who often supplied the raw materials. In the off-season, the women, typically farmers' wives, did the spinning and the men did the weaving. Using the spinning wheel , it took anywhere from four to eight spinners to supply one handloom weaver. The flying shuttle , patented in 1733 by John Kay —with

635-606: A groundswell of enterprise and productivity transformed the economy in the 17th century, laying the foundations for the world's first industrial economy. Britain was already a nation of makers by the year 1700" and "the history of Britain needs to be rewritten". Eric Hobsbawm held that the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Rapid adoption of mechanized textiles spinning occurred in Britain in

762-425: A major turning point in history, comparable only to humanity's adoption of agriculture with respect to material advancement. The Industrial Revolution influenced in some way almost every aspect of daily life. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists have said the most important effect of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for

889-421: A mechanised industry. Other inventors increased the efficiency of the individual steps of spinning (carding, twisting and spinning, and rolling) so that the supply of yarn increased greatly. Steam power was then applied to drive textile machinery. Manchester acquired the nickname Cottonopolis during the early 19th century owing to its sprawl of textile factories. Although mechanisation dramatically decreased

1016-708: A more even thickness. The technology was developed with the help of John Wyatt of Birmingham . Paul and Wyatt opened a mill in Birmingham which used their rolling machine powered by a donkey. In 1743, a factory opened in Northampton with 50 spindles on each of five of Paul and Wyatt's machines. This operated until about 1764. A similar mill was built by Daniel Bourn in Leominster , but this burnt down. Both Lewis Paul and Daniel Bourn patented carding machines in 1748. Based on two sets of rollers that travelled at different speeds, it

1143-593: A new group of innovations in what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution . These included new steel-making processes , mass production , assembly lines , electrical grid systems, the large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and the use of increasingly advanced machinery in steam-powered factories. The earliest recorded use of the term "Industrial Revolution" was in July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto , announcing that France had entered

1270-406: A number of subsequent improvements including an important one in 1747—doubled the output of a weaver, worsening the imbalance between spinning and weaving. It became widely used around Lancashire after 1760 when John's son, Robert , invented the dropbox, which facilitated changing thread colors. Lewis Paul patented the roller spinning frame and the flyer-and- bobbin system for drawing wool to

1397-522: A port during the first part of the 20th century leaving only very small craft being able to use this route. A re-survey of the coastline of the Wash carried out by the Ordnance Survey in 2011 revealed that an estimated additional 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) on its coastline had been created by accretion since previous surveys between 1960 and 1980. The Wash varies enormously in water temperature throughout

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1524-410: A reverberatory furnace, coal or coke could be used as fuel. The puddling process continued to be used until the late 19th century when iron was being displaced by mild steel. Because puddling required human skill in sensing the iron globs, it was never successfully mechanised. Rolling was an important part of the puddling process because the grooved rollers expelled most of the molten slag and consolidated

1651-438: A simple, wooden framed machine that only cost about £6 for a 40-spindle model in 1792 and was used mainly by home spinners. The jenny produced a lightly twisted yarn only suitable for weft, not warp. The spinning frame or water frame was developed by Richard Arkwright who, along with two partners, patented it in 1769. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built by Kay, who was hired by Arkwright. For each spindle

1778-620: A variety of cotton cloth, some of exceptionally fine quality. Cotton was a difficult raw material for Europe to obtain before it was grown on colonial plantations in the Americas. The early Spanish explorers found Native Americans growing unknown species of excellent quality cotton: sea island cotton ( Gossypium barbadense ) and upland green seeded cotton Gossypium hirsutum . Sea island cotton grew in tropical areas and on barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina but did poorly inland. Sea island cotton began being exported from Barbados in

1905-446: A water mill dating from around 1700, to reach Horse Holmes Lock. A railway line crossed the tail of the lock, but after the demise of the canal, the line was widened, and the lock is thought to be buried beneath the embankment. The canal then looped around the northern edge of Horse Marsh to reach West Deeping , where there was another lock. There are visible remains of this lock, indicating that it had stone piers at both ends to support

2032-488: A weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with fluting along the length. The water frame was able to produce a hard, medium-count thread suitable for warp, finally allowing 100% cotton cloth to be made in Britain. Arkwright and his partners used water power at a factory in Cromford , Derbyshire in 1771, giving the invention its name. Samuel Crompton invented

2159-430: Is Arkwright. He is credited with a list of inventions, but these were actually developed by such people as Kay and Thomas Highs ; Arkwright nurtured the inventors, patented the ideas, financed the initiatives, and protected the machines. He created the cotton mill which brought the production processes together in a factory, and he developed the use of power—first horsepower and then water power—which made cotton manufacture

2286-580: Is also a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I, a National Nature Reserve , a Ramsar site , a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area . It is in the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and part of it is the Snettisham Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature reserve. The four most distinctive man-made landmarks that can be seen from

2413-704: Is also the regional boundary between the East Midlands and the East of England ) meeting just beyond this point before it continues eastwards to Ongar Hill where it meets the mouth of the River Great Ouse . The eastern coast of the Wash is entirely within Norfolk, and initially extends from the mouth of the River Great Ouse just north of the town of King's Lynn north eastwards towards the small village of Wolferton close to

2540-568: Is evidence that his regalia were intact after the journey. The accident was said to have occurred somewhere near Sutton Bridge on the River Nene . John may have left his jewels in Lynn as security for a loan and arranged for their "loss". But that is considered an apocryphal account. He was recorded as staying the following night, 12–13 October 1216, at Swineshead Abbey , moving on to Newark-on-Trent , and dying of his illness on 19 October. The name of

2667-525: Is made up of multiple estuaries, marshland, deep water channels (in particular the Boston and Lynn Deeps), and shifting shallow water channels which are all surrounded by multiple sandbanks. Due to these features, it is claimed to be one of the most challenging and hazardous places for sea navigation in the world. It is fed by the rivers Witham , Welland , Nene and Great Ouse . It is a 620 km (240 sq. mi.) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest . It

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2794-524: Is made up of multiple estuaries, marshland, deep water channels (in particular the Boston and Lynn Deeps), shifting shallow water channels which are all surrounded by multiple sandbanks. There are several large settlements near its coastline, the largest is the town of King's Lynn in Norfolk followed by the two slightly smaller towns of Boston in Lincolnshire and Wisbech in Cambridgeshire . These are

2921-507: Is mentioned in the popular dictionary Promptorium parvulorum of about 1440 as a water or a ford ( vadum ). A chronicle states that King Edward VI passed the Wasshes as he visited the town of King's Lynn in 1548. By then, documents began to refer to the Waashe or Wysche , but only for the tidal sands and shoals of the rivers Welland and Nene. Sixteenth-century scholars identified the Wash as

3048-573: The British Agricultural Revolution , to provide excess manpower and food; a pool of managerial and entrepreneurial skills; available ports, rivers, canals, and roads to cheaply move raw materials and outputs; natural resources such as coal, iron, and waterfalls; political stability and a legal system that supported business; and financial capital available to invest. Once industrialisation began in Great Britain, new factors can be added:

3175-605: The Dog in a Doublet sluice on the River Nene. There are currently no plans to restore navigation to Stamford. The Dog in a Doublet sluice near Peterborough was built in 1937; the Nene is tidal below it. Stamford Wharf was the upper limit of navigation, and was situated below Town Bridge, which carries the A43 road over the river at Stamford. There were buildings associated with the canal on both sides of

3302-619: The East India Company . The development of trade and the rise of business were among the major causes of the Industrial Revolution. Developments in law also facilitated the revolution, such as courts ruling in favour of property rights . An entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution helped drive industrialisation in Britain, which after 1800, was emulated in Belgium, the United States, and France. The Industrial Revolution marked

3429-660: The Kingdom of England of the Hanseatic League of ports. During the 14th century, Lynn ranked as the most important port in England, when sea trade with Europe was dominated by the League. It still retains two medieval Hanseatic League warehouses: Hanse House built in 1475 and Marriott's Warehouse. King John of England is said to have lost some of his jewels at the Wash in 1216. According to contemporary reports, John travelled from Spalding , Lincolnshire, to Bishop's Lynn , Norfolk, but

3556-466: The Lincolne-Washes in his stage play King John (1616). During the 17th and 18th centuries the name Wash came to be used for the estuary itself. Drainage and reclamation works around the Wash continued until the 1970s. Large areas of salt marsh were progressively enclosed by banks and converted to agricultural land. The Wash is now surrounded by artificial sea defences on all three landward sides. In

3683-592: The Royal Greenwich Observatory and by the Bidston Observatory in Birkenhead that the tide had actually been going out, and by further studying the lay of the now reclaimed land, he ascertained that the cause had been a reverse tidal surge, whereby the outgoing tide suddenly sped up at a certain point. However, scholars cannot agree on whether the king's jewels were in the baggage train, and there

3810-577: The Sandringham estate before heading northwards from Snettisham to the low lands of Heacham , the town of Hunstanton, and the village of Old Hunstanton , before reaching its northern extremity at Gore Point near Holme-next-the-Sea , where the Norfolk coast turns eastwards. Inland from the Wash the land is flat, low-lying and often marshy: these are the Fens of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Deposits of sediment and land reclamation have altered

3937-616: The Silver Pit is one of many. This process gave the Silver Pit its depth and narrowness. When the tunnel valley was free of ice and seawater, it was occupied by the river. This kept it free of sediment, unlike most tunnel valleys. Since the sea flooded it, the valley seems to have been kept open by tidal action. During the Ipswichian Stage , the Wash River probably flowed by way of the site of

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4064-593: The South Forty-Foot Drain , from where Boston could be reached. A bill for this, together with one for a rival scheme to link Stamford to the Grand Junction Canal , which also included a connection to the South Forty-Foot Drain, were put before Parliament in 1811, but neither met with any success. The idea was raised again in 1815 and 1828, but no further action was taken. With the arrival of

4191-488: The spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves 's spinning jenny in the same way that a mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey . Crompton's mule was able to produce finer thread than hand spinning and at a lower cost. Mule-spun thread was of suitable strength to be used as a warp and finally allowed Britain to produce highly competitive yarn in large quantities. Realising that

4318-566: The technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent ; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal , through the activities of

4445-650: The Æstuarium Metuonis ("The Reaping/Mowing/Cutting-Off Estuary") mentioned by Ptolemy in Roman times. They claimed the word was still in occasional use. William Camden characterized The Washes as "a very large arme" of the "German Ocean" (the North Sea ), "at every tide and high sea covered all with water, but when the sea ebbeth, and the tide is past, a man may pass over it as on dry land, but yet not without danger", as King John learned not without his loss (see below). Inspired by Camden's account, William Shakespeare mentioned

4572-479: The 12th century, when drainage and embankment efforts led by monks began to separate the land from the estuarine mudflats, the Wash was a tidal part of the Fens that reached as far as Cambridge and Peterborough . Local people put up fierce resistance against the Normans for some time after the 1066 Conquest . The name Wash may have been derived from Old English wāse meaning mud, slime or ooze. The word Wasche

4699-441: The 1650s. Upland green seeded cotton grew well on inland areas of the southern U.S. but was not economical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the cotton gin . A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to Natchez, Mississippi , in 1806 became the parent genetic material for over 90% of world cotton production today; it produced bolls that were three to four times faster to pick. The Age of Discovery

4826-449: The 1780s, and high rates of growth in steam power and iron production occurred after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe and the United States in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium and the United States and later textiles in France. An economic recession occurred from the late 1830s to

4953-493: The 1970s, two large circular banks were built in the Terrington Marsh area of the Wash, as part of an abortive attempt to turn the entire estuary into a fresh water reservoir. The plan failed, not least because the banks were built using mud dredged from the salt marsh, which salinated fresh water stored there. From 13th century the market town and seaport of Bishop's Lynn became the first member trading depot ( Kontor ) in

5080-492: The Indian industry. Bar iron was the commodity form of iron used as the raw material for making hardware goods such as nails, wire, hinges, horseshoes, wagon tires, chains, etc., as well as structural shapes. A small amount of bar iron was converted into steel. Cast iron was used for pots, stoves, and other items where its brittleness was tolerable. Most cast iron was refined and converted to bar iron, with substantial losses. Bar iron

5207-472: The Industrial Revolution, thus causing the Great Divergence . Some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts , have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and that the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians. Six factors facilitated industrialisation: high levels of agricultural productivity, such as that reflected in

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5334-575: The North Norfolk Coast Special Protection Area. To the north-west, the Wash extends to Gibraltar Point, another SPA. The partly confined nature of the Wash habitats, combined with ample tidal flows, allows shellfish to breed, especially shrimp , cockles and mussels . Some water birds such as oystercatchers feed on shellfish. It is also a breeding area for common tern , and a feeding area for marsh harriers . Migrating birds such as geese , duck and wading birds come to

5461-572: The Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson in 1828, was the most important development of the 19th century for saving energy in making pig iron. By using preheated combustion air, the amount of fuel to make a unit of pig iron was reduced at first by between one-third using coke or two-thirds using coal; the efficiency gains continued as the technology improved. Hot blast also raised the operating temperature of furnaces, increasing their capacity. Using less coal or coke meant introducing fewer impurities into

5588-588: The Silver Pit, but the tunnel valley would not have been formed at this stage, as its alignment seems inconsistent. In Roman Britain , embankments were built around the Wash's margins to protect agricultural land from flooding. However, they fell into disrepair after the Roman withdrawal in 407 CE. From 865 to about 1066, the Wash was used by the Vikings as a major route to invade East Anglia and Middle England . Danes established themselves in Cambridge in 875. Before

5715-611: The Wash in large numbers to spend the winter, with an average total of around 400,000 birds present at any one time. It has been estimated that some two million birds a year use the Wash for feeding and roosting during their annual migrations. The Wash is recognised as being internationally important for 17 species of bird. They include pink-footed goose , dark-bellied brent goose , shelduck , pintail , oystercatcher , ringed plover , grey plover , golden plover , lapwing , knot , sanderling , dunlin , black-tailed godwit , bar-tailed godwit , curlew , redshank and turnstone . At

5842-621: The Wash: both via the large channel known as the Lynn Deeps. Each of the three shipping lanes has maritime pilot stations to guide and navigate incoming and outgoing cargo ships. Large boats can now only access the River Welland as far as Fosdyke Bridge since the replacement of the old swing bridge which carries the A17 road over the river with a fixed bridge in 1990 following the decline of Spalding as

5969-542: The Western European models in the late 19th century. The commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, the following gains had been made in important technologies: In 1750, Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton, most of which was spun and woven by the cottage industry in Lancashire . The work

6096-507: The bay are: The Outer Trial Bank , a remnant of a 1970s experiment, lies some two miles (three kilometres) off the Lincolnshire coast near the mouth of the River Nene. The most notable nature feature is Hunstanton Cliffs , comprising strata of orange, red and white chalk . In 1934 a proposal was made, supported by racing driver Malcolm Campbell , to build a 15-mile-long (24-kilometre) race track on reclaimed land from Boston to Gibraltar Point , near Skegness . It would have been used as

6223-551: The canal is just to the north of the river, and a public footpath follows it through Uffington Park until it reaches the Uffington to Barnack road. The adjacent bridge over the River Welland has three arches and dates from the seventeenth century but the canal bridge has been filled in to protect its structure. There were three locks in open countryside on this section before the canal reached Tallington where Tallington Village Lock

6350-471: The coal do not migrate into the metal. This technology was applied to lead from 1678 and to copper from 1687. It was also applied to iron foundry work in the 1690s, but in this case the reverberatory furnace was known as an air furnace. (The foundry cupola is a different, and later, innovation.) Coke pig iron was hardly used to produce wrought iron until 1755–56, when Darby's son Abraham Darby II built furnaces at Horsehay and Ketley where low sulfur coal

6477-447: The coastline of the Wash markedly in historical times. Several towns once on the coast of the Wash (notably King's Lynn) are now some distance inland. Much of the Wash itself is very shallow, with several large sandbanks, such as Breast Sand, Bulldog Sand, Roger Sand and Old South Sand, which are exposed at low tide, especially along the south coast. These form hazards to navigation. Three commercial shipping lane channels lead inland from

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6604-409: The coke pig iron he made was not suitable for making wrought iron and was used mostly for the production of cast iron goods, such as pots and kettles. He had the advantage over his rivals in that his pots, cast by his patented process, were thinner and cheaper than theirs. In 1750, coke had generally replaced charcoal in the smelting of copper and lead and was in widespread use in glass production. In

6731-461: The column of materials (iron ore, fuel, slag) flowing down the blast furnace more porous and did not crush in the much taller furnaces of the late 19th century. As cast iron became cheaper and widely available, it began being a structural material for bridges and buildings. A famous early example is the Iron Bridge built in 1778 with cast iron produced by Abraham Darby III. However, most cast iron

6858-491: The cost of cotton cloth, by the mid-19th century machine-woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand-woven Indian cloth, in part because of the fineness of thread made possible by the type of cotton used in India, which allowed high thread counts. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand-spun and woven fabric in low-wage India, eventually destroying

6985-537: The cotton textile industry in Britain was 2.6% in 1760, 17% in 1801, and 22.4% in 1831. Value added by the British woollen industry was 14.1% in 1801. Cotton factories in Britain numbered approximately 900 in 1797. In 1760, approximately one-third of cotton cloth manufactured in Britain was exported, rising to two-thirds by 1800. In 1781, cotton spun amounted to 5.1 million pounds, which increased to 56 million pounds by 1800. In 1800, less than 0.1% of world cotton cloth

7112-427: The country. Steam engines made the use of higher-pressure and volume blast practical; however, the leather used in bellows was expensive to replace. In 1757, ironmaster John Wilkinson patented a hydraulic powered blowing engine for blast furnaces. The blowing cylinder for blast furnaces was introduced in 1760 and the first blowing cylinder made of cast iron is believed to be the one used at Carrington in 1768 that

7239-493: The course of the Welland, after which the two river locks and weirs at Deeping St James were encountered. Beyond Market Deeping, the course consisted of an artificial cut with 10 more locks, by which it reached the eastern edge of Stamford, after which it rejoined the river to reach the town wharf. The length of the cut was 6.5 miles (10.5 km), although the length of the canal is usually quoted as 9.5 miles (15.3 km), to include

7366-412: The death of Daniel Wigmore, his son-in-law Charles Halford became the owner of the toll rights. In 1695, he was receiving between £400 and £500 per year, most of it derived from the carriage of sea coal. The trade amounted to 3,000 chaldrons that year, and he tried to get the tax on sea coal, which Parliament had approved, reversed. He did not succeed, and failed again in 1706, by which time he stated that

7493-467: The design or methods of construction of the canal and nothing about its opening. However, a report from 1632 on alterations to the river noted that 600 men were involved in the work, so presumably there was sufficient labour locally for such tasks. Wigmore probably used handbills at local inns to recruit his workers, since there were no newspapers to carry advertisements. The work would have been done using pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows. The excavated ditch

7620-452: The eagerness of British entrepreneurs to export industrial expertise and the willingness to import the process. Britain met the criteria and industrialized starting in the 18th century, and then it exported the process to western Europe (especially Belgium, France, and the German states) in the early 19th century. The United States copied the British model in the early 19th century, and Japan copied

7747-600: The early 1840s when the adoption of the Industrial Revolution's early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as their markets matured; and despite the increasing adoption of locomotives, steamboats and steamships, and hot blast iron smelting . New technologies such as the electrical telegraph , widely introduced in the 1840s and 1850s in the United Kingdom and the United States, were not powerful enough to drive high rates of economic growth. Rapid economic growth began to reoccur after 1870, springing from

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7874-456: The end of the latest glaciation , and while the sea level remained lower than it is today, the rivers Witham, Welland, Glen , Nene and Great Ouse joined into a large river. The deep valley of the Wash was formed, not by an interglacial river, but by ice of the Wolstonian and Devensian stages flowing southwards up the slope represented by the modern coast and forming tunnel valleys , of which

8001-460: The expiration of the Arkwright patent would greatly increase the supply of spun cotton and lead to a shortage of weavers, Edmund Cartwright developed a vertical power loom which he patented in 1785. In 1776, he patented a two-man operated loom. Cartwright's loom design had several flaws, the most serious being thread breakage. Samuel Horrocks patented a fairly successful loom in 1813. Horock's loom

8128-519: The first highly mechanised factory was John Lombe 's water-powered silk mill at Derby , operational by 1721. Lombe learned silk thread manufacturing by taking a job in Italy and acting as an industrial spy; however, because the Italian silk industry guarded its secrets closely, the state of the industry at that time is unknown. Although Lombe's factory was technically successful, the supply of raw silk from Italy

8255-400: The first successful cylinder for a Boulton and Watt steam engine in 1776, he was given an exclusive contract for providing cylinders. After Watt developed a rotary steam engine in 1782, they were widely applied to blowing, hammering, rolling and slitting. The solutions to the sulfur problem were the addition of sufficient limestone to the furnace to force sulfur into the slag as well as

8382-404: The gates, with turf sides between them. It then crossed King Street. An enclosure map dating from 1810 shows that the road crossed the canal by a ford, but that there was also a footbridge to allow pedestrians to cross the canal. From West Deeping to Market Deeping , the canal was close to the northern bank of the northern river channel. There were two more locks in open countryside, and another at

8509-529: The general population in the Western world began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians agree that

8636-429: The importance of the natural marshes has increased in the 21st century, the seawall at Freiston has been breached in three places to increase the salt-marsh area and provide extra habitat for birds , particularly waders , and as a natural flood-prevention measure. The extensive creeks in the salt marsh and the vegetation that grows there help to dissipate wave energy, so enhancing the protection afforded to land behind

8763-459: The improved river sections at both ends. Just below Stamford, the canal crossed the River Gwash on the level. There was a weir on a bypass channel and a sluice on the main river channel, which enabled the river levels to be controlled, so that barges could cross. Trade thrived, for Richard Blome recorded the prosperous Stamford malt trade in 1673, which depended on barley being carried by boat. With

8890-451: The increasing use of water power and steam power ; the development of machine tools ; and the rise of the mechanised factory system . Output greatly increased, and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth . The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested. Many of

9017-517: The iron industries during the Industrial Revolution was the replacement of wood and other bio-fuels with coal ; for a given amount of heat, mining coal required much less labour than cutting wood and converting it to charcoal , and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce before the enormous increase in iron production that took place in the late 18th century. In 1709, Abraham Darby made progress using coke to fuel his blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale . However,

9144-648: The job. He built the cut and 12 locks, which included the High Lock and the Low Lock on the river at Deeping St James, at a cost of £5,000. In return for his expenditure, he was given the lease of the tolls for the next 80 years, for which he paid a rent of one shilling (five pence). The cut was the longest canal with locks in the country, when it was opened in 1670. Its construction preceded the 'canal age' by around 100 years, making it one of England's earliest post- Roman canals. There are no known contemporary documents describing

9271-492: The late 19th century, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee , whose 1881 lectures gave a detailed account of the term. Economic historians and authors such as Mendels, Pomeranz , and Kridte argue that proto-industrialisation in parts of Europe, the Muslim world , Mughal India , and China created the social and economic conditions that led to

9398-520: The line at auction, but failed because their ownership of it was disputed. Since its closure, the canal has largely disappeared but some parts are still viewable on maps and on the ground. The foundations of the two river locks are visible in the Deepings. The River Welland is currently only navigable to Crowland but plans for the Fens Waterways Link include a new link from above Crowland to above

9525-467: The mass of hot wrought iron. Rolling was 15 times faster at this than a trip hammer . A different use of rolling, which was done at lower temperatures than that for expelling slag, was in the production of iron sheets, and later structural shapes such as beams, angles, and rails. The puddling process was improved in 1818 by Baldwyn Rogers, who replaced some of the sand lining on the reverberatory furnace bottom with iron oxide . In 1838 John Hall patented

9652-419: The mouth of the River Welland just north east of the village of Fosdyke , and is entirely within Lincolnshire. The southern coast from Fosdyke to King's Lynn runs roughly north-west to south-east, connecting these two river mouths, and is punctuated by the mouth of a third river, the River Nene, which flows into the Wash just north of Sutton Bridge with the county boundary between Lincolnshire and Norfolk (which

9779-400: The north east to cross the River Gwash at right angles. It then entered Uffington Park, where the remains of the weir that regulated river levels at the crossing can still be seen. The Gwash now has much less flow than it did when the canal was active, since the construction of the reservoir at Rutland Water further upstream. The earthworks of the canal continue through the park. The route of

9906-502: The north-west corner of the East Anglian region. The coastline stretches from Gibraltar Point just south of the seaside town of Skegness to Gore Point near the village of Holme-next-the-Sea , just east of the seaside town of Hunstanton in Norfolk . These two points are over 75 miles (121 km) from each other by road, but only eleven and a half miles (18.5 km) by sea. The bay

10033-587: The number of cotton goods consumed in Western Europe was minor until the early 19th century. By 1600, Flemish refugees began weaving cotton cloth in English towns where cottage spinning and weaving of wool and linen was well established. They were left alone by the guilds who did not consider cotton a threat. Earlier European attempts at cotton spinning and weaving were in 12th-century Italy and 15th-century southern Germany, but these industries eventually ended when

10160-418: The onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in human history since the domestication of animals and plants. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes . According to Cambridge historian Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Britain was already industrialising in the 17th century, and "Our database shows that

10287-556: The others. When the Melton Mowbray Navigation was being planned in 1785, there were discussions of a link to Oakham , which eventually became the Oakham Canal , and onwards to Stamford. The idea of a canal from Stamford to Oakham, 11 miles (18 km) due west, was revived in 1809, with plans for a 7-mile (11 km) link from Stamford to the Nene at Peterborough , and a connection from near Market Deeping northwards to

10414-410: The pig iron. This meant that lower quality coal could be used in areas where coking coal was unavailable or too expensive; however, by the end of the 19th century transportation costs fell considerably. The Wash The coastline is partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Norfolk . The Lincolnshire side forms part of the only coastline of the East Midlands region whilst the Norfolk side forms

10541-496: The race to industrialise. In his 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , Raymond Williams states in the entry for "Industry": "The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen , between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the [19th] century." The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change

10668-459: The railways, river trade declined. The Midland Railway reached Peterborough in 1846, and opened their line to Melton Mowbray , passing through Stamford, in 1848. Carriage of coal on the canal stopped, as the railways brought cheaper coal from the Midlands. The locks quickly deteriorated, and there were problems with leakage. By April 1863, all traffic had ceased, and Stamford Corporation tried to sell

10795-409: The reign of Elizabeth I , construction did not start until 1664, under powers granted in 1620 and ratified by James I . It ran for 9.5 miles (15.3 km) from Stamford to Market Deeping and had 12 locks, two of which were on the river section at Deeping St James . No plans of its construction survive, although one of the locks was documented by a visiting water engineer in 1699. It contributed to

10922-560: The river changed as a result of redirection of the Great Ouse in the 17th century. Bishop's Lynn was renamed as King's Lynn in the 16th century as a result of King Henry VIII 's establishment of the Church of England . A Ministry of Defence weapons Range Danger Area lies along a small region of the Wash coastline, reserved for Royal Air Force , Army Air Corps and NATO-allied bombing and air weapons training. RAF Holbeach , active since 1926,

11049-463: The river, including a large warehouse next to the bridge, parts of which date from 1671, and which is Grade II listed . Barges followed the river down past the ruins of St Leonard's Priory , established in 1090 by the Benedictines , to Hudds Mill, where the cut began, on the north side of the mill. Hudds Mill Lock was almost at the start of the cut. The canal flowed initially to the east, but turned to

11176-529: The salt marsh. This is an example of the recent exploration of the possibilities of sustainable coastal management by adopting soft engineering techniques, rather than with dykes and drainage. The same scheme includes new brackish lagoon habitat. On the eastern side of the Wash, low chalk cliffs, with a noted stratum of red chalk, are found at Hunstanton. The gravel pits (lagoons) found at Snettisham RSPB reserve are an important roost for waders at high tide. This Special Protection Area (SPA) borders onto

11303-418: The slag from almost 50% to around 8%. Puddling became widely used after 1800. Up to that time, British iron manufacturers had used considerable amounts of iron imported from Sweden and Russia to supplement domestic supplies. Because of the increased British production, imports began to decline in 1785, and by the 1790s Britain eliminated imports and became a net exporter of bar iron. Hot blast , patented by

11430-457: The smelting and refining of iron, coal and coke produced inferior iron to that made with charcoal because of the coal's sulfur content. Low sulfur coals were known, but they still contained harmful amounts. Conversion of coal to coke only slightly reduces the sulfur content. A minority of coals are coking. Another factor limiting the iron industry before the Industrial Revolution was the scarcity of water power to power blast bellows. This limitation

11557-524: The supply of cotton was cut off. The Moors in Spain grew, spun, and wove cotton beginning around the 10th century. British cloth could not compete with Indian cloth because India's labour cost was approximately one-fifth to one-sixth that of Britain's. In 1700 and 1721, the British government passed Calico Acts to protect the domestic woollen and linen industries from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from India. The demand for heavier fabric

11684-417: The tax had decreased the amount of coal carried to just 500 chaldrons. Besides coal, the canal carried malt and agricultural produce, groceries, timber, slate and stone. Boats used on the canal were small lighters , 35 feet (11 m) long by around 7 feet (2.1 m) wide, capable of carrying from seven to fourteen tons, and normally worked in trains of four vessels. Although there are no known records from

11811-457: The three main inland ports in the Wash area; a fourth smaller port is also available for shipping on the River Nene at Sutton Bridge and a small marina for pleasure craft is also accessible on the tidal River Welland at Fosdyke Bridge . Nearby, on either side of the Wash at almost opposite ends to each other, are the seaside towns of Skegness which is located on the top of the Lincolnshire side just north of Gibraltar Point and Hunstanton on

11938-517: The time the canal was constructed, the lock at Hudd's Mill was documented by Thomas Surbey in 1699. Surbey was a water engineer, and made notes and drawings when he visited it, during a journey from London to York . The lock chamber was 86 feet (26.2 m) long and 11 feet (3.4 m) wide. The gates were hung on stone piers, but the banks between them were of earth. The gates were conventional 'V' gates, similar to modern ones, which included some sort of paddle, but did not include balance beams. Instead,

12065-443: The top of the Norfolk side north of the nearby royal estate of Sandringham . The Wash makes a large indentation in the coastline of Eastern England that separates Lincolnshire from the curved coast of East Anglia . It is a large bay with three roughly straight sides meeting at right angles, each about 15 miles (25 kilometres) in length. The western coast, which is roughly parallel to the east coast, runs from Gibraltar Point to

12192-415: The use of low sulfur coal. The use of lime or limestone required higher furnace temperatures to form a free-flowing slag. The increased furnace temperature made possible by improved blowing also increased the capacity of blast furnaces and allowed for increased furnace height. In addition to lower cost and greater availability, coke had other important advantages over charcoal in that it was harder and made

12319-406: The use of roasted tap cinder ( iron silicate ) for the furnace bottom, greatly reducing the loss of iron through increased slag caused by a sand lined bottom. The tap cinder also tied up some phosphorus, but this was not understood at the time. Hall's process also used iron scale or rust which reacted with carbon in the molten iron. Hall's process, called wet puddling , reduced losses of iron with

12446-410: The water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fibre which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fibre length. Too close a spacing caused the fibres to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather-covered and loading on the rollers was applied by

12573-462: The wealth of Stamford, allowing barley to be transported to the town for malting . Plans to link it westwards to the Oakham Canal , northwards to the South Forty-Foot Drain and southwards to the River Nene in 1809 came to nothing, and it closed in 1863, soon after the arrival of the Midland Railway in the area. Although Stamford Corporation attempted to sell it after closure, its ownership

12700-593: The western edge of the town, after which the cut re-joined the river. The final two locks were built on the River Welland, Briggins Lock in Deeping St James , and Low Lock to the south-east of the village. Download coordinates as: [REDACTED] Media related to Stamford Canal at Wikimedia Commons Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution , sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution ,

12827-568: The work, and the act enabled them to charge tolls for its use, set initially at three pence (1.25 p) per lock, which could be charged once the work was completed. The decision was ratified in 1623 by a grant of James I , and the corporation expected to have the work completed by 1627. However, they were unable to find a suitable contractor to carry out the work, and failed to reach agreement on terms with David Cecil in 1636, and two other potential contractors after that. Nothing happened until 1664, when an Alderman from Stamford called Daniel Wigmore took

12954-512: The year. Winter temperatures are brought near freezing by the cold North Sea flows. Summer water temperatures can reach 20–23 °C (68–73 °F) after prolonged high ambient air temperature and sun. This effect, which typically happens in the shallow areas around beaches and often only in pockets of water, is exaggerated by the large sheltered tidal reach . The Wash is made up of extensive salt marshes , major inter-tidal banks of sand and mud, shallow waters and deep channels. As understanding of

13081-502: Was 7,800 tons and coke cast iron was 250,000 tons. In 1750, the UK imported 31,200 tons of bar iron and either refined from cast iron or directly produced 18,800 tons of bar iron using charcoal and 100 tons using coke. In 1796, the UK was making 125,000 tons of bar iron with coke and 6,400 tons with charcoal; imports were 38,000 tons and exports were 24,600 tons. In 1806 the UK did not import bar iron but exported 31,500 tons. A major change in

13208-407: Was a means of decarburizing molten pig iron by slow oxidation in a reverberatory furnace by manually stirring it with a long rod. The decarburized iron, having a higher melting point than cast iron, was raked into globs by the puddler. When the glob was large enough, the puddler would remove it. Puddling was backbreaking and extremely hot work. Few puddlers lived to be 40. Because puddling was done in

13335-636: Was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution . Beginning in Great Britain , the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States , from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines ; new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;

13462-600: Was available (and not far from Coalbrookdale). These furnaces were equipped with water-powered bellows, the water being pumped by Newcomen steam engines . The Newcomen engines were not attached directly to the blowing cylinders because the engines alone could not produce a steady air blast. Abraham Darby III installed similar steam-pumped, water-powered blowing cylinders at the Dale Company when he took control in 1768. The Dale Company used several Newcomen engines to drain its mines and made parts for engines which it sold throughout

13589-584: Was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui 's description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle . Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society". Although Engels wrote his book in the 1840s, it was not translated into English until

13716-414: Was converted to wrought iron. Conversion of cast iron had long been done in a finery forge . An improved refining process known as potting and stamping was developed, but this was superseded by Henry Cort 's puddling process. Cort developed two significant iron manufacturing processes: rolling in 1783 and puddling in 1784. Puddling produced a structural grade iron at a relatively low cost. Puddling

13843-552: Was cut off to eliminate competition. In order to promote manufacturing, the Crown paid for models of Lombe's machinery which were exhibited in the Tower of London . Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of hand manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry sometime after 1000 AD. In tropical and subtropical regions where it

13970-403: Was designed by John Smeaton . Cast iron cylinders for use with a piston were difficult to manufacture; the cylinders had to be free of holes and had to be machined smooth and straight to remove any warping. James Watt had great difficulty trying to have a cylinder made for his first steam engine. In 1774 Wilkinson invented a precision boring machine for boring cylinders. After Wilkinson bored

14097-583: Was disputed, and they were unable to do so. Its course and some of its structures can still be traced in the landscape. These include warehouses at the terminus in Stamford, and a weir which regulated water levels on the River Gwash , which it crossed on the level. The River Welland was one of the earlier on which improvements, in this case to allow navigation to Stamford, were authorised by an act of Parliament . The Welland Navigation Act 1571 ( 13 Eliz. 1 . c. 1)

14224-553: Was done by hand in workers' homes or occasionally in master weavers' shops. Wages in Lancashire were about six times those in India in 1770 when overall productivity in Britain was about three times higher than in India. In 1787, raw cotton consumption was 22 million pounds, most of which was cleaned, carded, and spun on machines. The British textile industry used 52 million pounds of cotton in 1800, which increased to 588 million pounds in 1850. The share of value added by

14351-532: Was followed by a period of colonialism beginning around the 16th century. Following the discovery of a trade route to India around southern Africa by the Portuguese, the British founded the East India Company , along with smaller companies of different nationalities which established trading posts and employed agents to engage in trade throughout the Indian Ocean region. One of the largest segments of this trade

14478-400: Was granted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, and the preamble explained how Stamford had prospered as a result of the river, but also stated that mills built between Stamford and Deeping had resulted in it no longer being navigable, as they had diverted the water. Powers were granted to restore the river using either the old channel or the new one, although it is not clear exactly what

14605-569: Was grown, most was grown by small farmers alongside their food crops and was spun and woven in households, largely for domestic consumption. In the 15th century, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing. Almost everywhere cotton cloth could be used as a medium of exchange . In India, a significant amount of cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers. Some merchants also owned small weaving workshops. India produced

14732-518: Was historically originally part of the former RAF Sutton Bridge station. Another air-weapons training range located on the Wash ;– RAF Wainfleet , operating from 1938, was decommissioned in 2010. Sailing from out of the South Lincolnshire Fens into the Wash, especially for shell-fishing, is traditionally known locally as "going down below". The origin of the phrase is unclear. The bay

14859-469: Was improved by Richard Roberts in 1822, and these were produced in large numbers by Roberts, Hill & Co. Roberts was additionally a maker of high-quality machine tools and a pioneer in the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement. The demand for cotton presented an opportunity to planters in the Southern United States, who thought upland cotton would be a profitable crop if

14986-632: Was in cotton textiles, which were purchased in India and sold in Southeast Asia , including the Indonesian archipelago where spices were purchased for sale to Southeast Asia and Europe. By the mid-1760s, cloth was over three-quarters of the East India Company's exports. Indian textiles were in demand in the North Atlantic region of Europe where previously only wool and linen were available; however,

15113-400: Was later used in the first cotton spinning mill . In 1764, in the village of Stanhill, Lancashire, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny , which he patented in 1770. It was the first practical spinning frame with multiple spindles. The jenny worked in a similar manner to the spinning wheel, by first clamping down on the fibres, then by drawing them out, followed by twisting. It was

15240-447: Was located just to the north of St Lawrence Church, parts of which date from the 12th to 15th centuries, with later additions. Remains of bridge piers were uncovered during archaeological excavations carried out in 1998 when a water pipeline running from Tallington to West Deeping was installed. No details of the bridge have survived, but the levels suggest that it was probably a movable bridge. The canal then passed close to Tallington Mill,

15367-437: Was made by the bloomery process, which was the predominant iron smelting process until the late 18th century. In the UK in 1720, there were 20,500 tons of cast iron produced with charcoal and 400 tons with coke. In 1750 charcoal iron production was 24,500 and coke iron was 2,500 tons. In 1788, the production of charcoal cast iron was 14,000 tons while coke iron production was 54,000 tons. In 1806, charcoal cast iron production

15494-487: Was meant by this. There is no evidence that any work was carried out under the terms of the act. However, the powers were revived in 1620, when Stamford Corporation was given permission by the Commission of Sewers to build a new artificial cut, which would run from the eastern edge of Stamford near Hudd's Mill, to Market Deeping , where it would rejoin the river. The corporation estimated that it would cost £2,000 to carry out

15621-419: Was met by a domestic industry based around Lancashire that produced fustian , a cloth with flax warp and cotton weft . Flax was used for the warp because wheel-spun cotton did not have sufficient strength, but the resulting blend was not as soft as 100% cotton and was more difficult to sew. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, spinning and weaving were done in households, for domestic consumption, and as

15748-413: Was overcome by the steam engine. Use of coal in iron smelting started somewhat before the Industrial Revolution, based on innovations by Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal reverberatory furnaces known as cupolas. These were operated by the flames playing on the ore and charcoal or coke mixture, reducing the oxide to metal. This has the advantage that impurities (such as sulphur ash) in

15875-425: Was produced on machinery invented in Britain. In 1788, there were 50,000 spindles in Britain, rising to 7 million over the next 30 years. The earliest European attempts at mechanised spinning were with wool; however, wool spinning proved more difficult to mechanise than cotton. Productivity improvement in wool spinning during the Industrial Revolution was significant but far less than that of cotton. Arguably

16002-469: Was taken ill and decided to return. While he took the longer route by way of Wisbech , he sent his baggage train , comprising horse-drawn wagons, along the causeway and ford across the mouth of the Wellstream, a route usable only at low tide. The wagons moved too slowly to escape the incoming tide and many were lost. However, the treasure hunter and researcher Alan Marshall has proven from data supplied him by

16129-449: Was then lined with blue clay to make it watertight. Excavations for a sewer in 1974 and work on a rubbish tip in 1979 revealed the layers of blue clay, and there were clay pits near Stamford, which supported a pottery industry, although their precise location is unknown. The canal enabled goods to reach Stamford from The Wash , which was 34 miles (55 km) away, by way of Spalding and Crowland . The lower 24.4 miles (39.3 km) used

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