CHAPTER VII. BRINDLEY AS MASTER WHEELWRIGHT AND MILLWRIGHT. BRINDLEY had now been nine years at his trade, seven as apprentice and two as journeyman; and he began business as a wheelwright at Leek at the age of twenty-six. He had no capital except his skill, and no influence except that which his character as a steady workman gave him. Leek was not a manufacturing place at the time when Brindley began business there in 1742. It was but a small market town, the only mills in the neighbourhood being a few grist-mills driven by the streamlets flowing into the waters of the Dane, the Churnet, and the Trent. These mills usually contained no more than a single pair of stones, and they were comparatively rude and primitive in their arrangement and construction. Brindley at first obtained but a moderate share of employment. His work was more strongly done, and his charges were consequently higher, than was customary in the district; and the agricultural classes were as yet too poor to enable them to pay the prices of the best work. He gradually, however, acquired a position, and became known for his skill in improving old machinery or inventing such new mechanical arrangements as might be required for any special purpose. He was very careful to execute the jobs which were entrusted to him within the stipulated time, and he began to be spoken of as a thoroughly reliable workman. Thus his business gradually extended to other places at a distance from Leek, and more especially into the Staffordshire Pottery districts, about to rise into importance under the fostering energy of Josiah Wedgwood. At first Brindley kept neither apprentices nor journeymen, but felled his own timber and cut it up himself, with such CH. VII. MASTER WHEELWRIGHT AND MILLWRIGHT. 139 assistance as he could procure on the spot. As his business increased he took in an apprentice, and then a journeyman, to carry on the work in the shop while he was absent; and he was often called to a considerable distance from home, more particularly for the purpose of being consulted about any new machinery that was proposed to be put up. Nor did he confine himself to mill-work. He was ready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the pumping of water, the draining of mines, the smelting of iron and copper, and the various mechanical arrangements connected with the manufactures rising into importance in the adjoining counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Whenever he was called upon in this way, he endeavoured to introduce improvements; and to such an extent did he carry this tendency, that he became generally known in the neighbourhood by the name of "The Schemer." A number of Brindley's memoranda books* are still in existence, which show the varied nature of his employment during this early part of his career. It appears from the entries made in them, that he was not only employed in repairing and fitting up silk-throwing mills at Macclesfield, all of which were then driven by water, but also in repairing corn-mills at Congleton,, Newcastle-under-Lyne, and various other places, besides those in the immediate neighbourhood of Leek, where he lived. We believe the pocket memoranda books, to which we refer, were the only records which Brindley kept of his early business transactions; the rest he carried in his memory, which by practice became remarkably retentive. Whilst working as an apprentice at Macclesfield, he had taught himself the art of writing; but he never mastered it thoroughly, and to the end of his life he wrote with difficulty, and almost illegibly. His spelling was also very bad; and what with the bad *In the possession of Joseph Mayer, Esq., of Liverpool, who has kindly permitted the author to inspect the whole of his valuable manuscripts relating to Brindley, so curiously illustrative of his start in life as a working and consulting Engineer. spelling and what with the hieroglyphics in which he wrote, it is sometimes very difficult to decypher the entries made by him from time to time in his books. We find him frequently at Trentham. On one occasion he makes entry of a "Loog of Daal 20 foot long;" at another time he is fitting a pump for "Arle Gower," the Earl being one of Brindley's first patrons. The log of deal, it afterwards appears, was required : Between Leek and Trentham lay the then small pottery village of Burslem, which Brindley had frequent occasion to pass through in CHAP. VII. ERECTS FLINT-MILLS. 141 going to and from his jobs for the Earl. The earthenware then manufactured at Burslem was of a very inferior sort, consisting almost entirely of brown vessels; and the quantity turned out was so small that it was hawked about on the backs of the potters themselves, or sold by higglers, who carried it from village to village in the panniers of their donkeys. The brothers Elers, the Dutchmen, erected a potwork of an improved kind near Burslem, at the beginning of the century, in which they first practised the art of salt-glazing, brought by them from Holland. The next improvement introduced was the use of powder of flints, used at first as a wash or dip, and afterwards mixed with tobacco-pipe clay, from which an improved ware was made, called "Flint potters." The merit of introducing this article is usually attributed to William Astbury, of Shelton, who, when on a journey to London, stopping at an inn at Dunstable, noticed the very soft and delicate nature of some burnt flint-stones when mixed with water (the hostler having used the powdered flint as a remedy for a disorder in his horses' eyes), and from thence he is said to have conceived the idea of applying it to the purposes of his trade. In first using the calcined flints, Mr. Astbury's practice was to have them pounded in an iron mortar until perfectly levigated; and being but sparingly used, this answered the demand for some time. But when the use of flint became more common, this tedious process would no longer suffice. The brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood carried on the pottery business in a very small way, but were nevertheless hampered by an insufficient supply of flint powder, and it was found necessary to adopt some means of increasing it. In their emergency the potters called "The Schemer" to their aid; and hence we find him frequently occupied in erecting flint-mills, in Burslem and the neighbourhood, from that time forward. The success which attended his efforts brought Brindley not only fame, but business. It happened that, while thus occupied, Mr. John Edensor Heathcote, owner of the Clifton estate near Manchester, became married to one of the daughters of Sir Nigel Gresley, of Knypersley, in the neighbourhood of Burslem, and that the marriage festivities were in progress, when the remarkable ingenuity of the young millwright of Leek was accidentally mentioned in the hearing of Mr. Heathcote one day at dinner. The Manchester man, in the midst of pleasure, did not forget business; and it occurred to him that this ingenious mechanic might be of use in contriving some method for clearing his Clifton coal-mines of the water by which they had so long been drowned. The old methods of the gin-wheel and tub, and the chain-pump, had been tried, but entirely failed to keep the water under: if this Brindley could but do anything to help him in his difficulty, he would employ him at once; at all events, he would like to see the man. Brindley was accordingly sent for, and the whole case was laid before him. Mr. Heathcote described as minutely as possible the nature of the locality, the direction in which the strata lay, and exhibited a plan of the working of the mines. Brindley was perfectly silent for a long time, seemingly absorbed in a consideration of the difficulties to be overcome; but at length his countenance brightened, his eyes sparkled, and he briefly pointed out a method by which he thought he should be enabled, at no great expense, effectually to remedy the evil. His explanations were considered so satisfactory, that he was at once directed to proceed to Clifton, with full powers to carry out his proposed plan of operations. This was, to call to his aid the fall of the river Irwell, which formed one boundary of the estate, and pump out the water from the pits by means of the greater power of the water in the river. With this object Brindley contrived and executed his first tunnel, which he drove through the solid rock for a distance of six hundred yards, and in this tunnel he led the river on to the breast of an immense water-wheel fixed in a |