Backyard Industries

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Darlaston town must have reverberated to the sound of industry for the first time when nail makers began hammering in their small backyard workshops.

The industry was made possible by the invention of the slitting mill in 1565. This was a watermill, where bars of iron were slit into rods which were passed to nailers, who made them into nails by adding a point and a head. The slitting mill was probably invented in Belgium, and first appeared in England in 1590 at Dartford in Kent. The first local slitting mill was built on Cannock Chase in about 1611, and others soon followed along the River Stour between Stourbridge and Stourport, where they used iron transported along the River Severn to produce rods for the Black Country nailers.


An early slitting mill.

 The slitting mill had two sets of water-powered rolling mills to convert flat bars of iron, about three inches wide and half an inch thick, into rods.

Pieces were cut-off the bars by shears powered by a waterwheel, then heated in a furnace before passing between flat rolls to produce a sheet of the required thickness.

The sheet then passed through the second rolling mill where cutters with intersecting grooves slit it into rods.
 
 
An impression of a local backyard nail shop can be obtained from the the nail shop at the Black Country Living Museum. It has a typical hearth, but the nails are hand-forged without the use of an 'oliver'.
By 1710, Darlaston had 23 nailers producing a wide range of nails including brads, tacks, spriggs, dog-eared frost nails, sheath nails, and sparrables. The rods were advanced to nailers, who converted them into nails, and then returned them to the mill for payment. A bundle of rods weighed sixty pounds and was usually four feet six inches long. The nails were characterised according to the number produced from a given weight of iron. Long thousand (1,200) nails weighing 4 pounds, were known as four penny bundles. Larger nails were called ‘one hundred work’, and were priced by the hundred. They were more profitable than the smaller ones, as less work was required to manufacture them, and less waste produced.
This was the first type of mass production in the town. Large quantities of nails could be simply made by unskilled people, who often had a second occupation such as farming.

Frederick Hackwood, the local historian, stated that in 1780 there were between 35,000 and 40,000 nailers in the Black Country.

A typical workshop was only just big enough to house the hearth, bellows, and ‘oliver’ hammer. It usually had an open widow with bars, and a low ceiling, just high enough to accommodate the return spring pole of the treadle-operated hammer.

The introduction of machine nailing in 1810 led to a further increase in the number of people employed in the industry, but by 1888 there were no nailers left in Darlaston, because of the preference for light engineering.


An 'oliver' with two hammers.

Gunlocks

The town also had a large number of small backyard workshops used for the production of gun locks and barrels, which were supplied to the gun manufacturers in Birmingham. This was the first large-scale skilled occupation in the town. It was very much a family affair with skills being handed down from father to son. Gunlock makers usually supplemented their income by doing other types of work, because the gun trade suffered from periods of depression. In the late 1750s there were between 300 and 320 gunlock filers, 50 to 60 gunlock forgers, and 250 boys employed as filers, gunlock forgers, cock stampers, and pin forgers.

A 14 hour working day was usual, and the truck method of payment often used. During the Napoleonic wars, the Birmingham gun trade supplied over 3 million gun barrels, and 2.8 million gunlocks to the British Government. The largest recorded production in a single year was 490,838 gun barrels, and 457,616 gunlocks, in 1813.

After the Napoleonic wars had ended in 1815, demand fell and Darlaston went into a severe depression, which lasted until 1839. The remaining trade was mainly confined to the export market and sporting guns. By about 1870 the development of machine made locks had virtually eliminated the trade in Darlaston, which had however, produced a skilled pool of metalworkers. This can be seen in the 1818 edition of Parson & Bradshaw's Directory which lists the following products that were made in the town: bridle bits, buckles, bullet moulds, carpenter's tools, dog collars, files, fire irons, guns, gunlocks, handcuffs, harness buckles, hasp locks, nails, padlocks, and trunk locks.


One of the last remaining gunlock workshops in the town.

 By 1801 the population of 3,812 included 1,325 people employed in trade, manufacturing, and handicrafts, and 2452 people in other employment.

Only 35 people still worked in agriculture.
   
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