220 Mineral Trades 



load weighed about 320 pounds.^ The coal in the upper Severn 

 counties was carried down to the river in "small carriages, with four 

 wheels of above a foot diameter, thrust by men;" it was dumped into 

 "boats which lye in the Severn ready to receive" it.- These were the 

 first railways in the Isles and were first used between 1620 and 1650.^ 

 About 1750 such railways were introduced at the great Derby furnaces 

 and handled about 20,000 tons yearly; these cars were drawn by 

 horses and oxen.* During the last half of the seventeenth century 

 "the most common freight upon the Severn" came to be "pit coal 

 from Broseley, very famous for the collieries;" it was carried to Bridg- 

 north, Worcester, and other river towns.^ In this river in 1758 were 

 plying 376 vessels in inland na\dgation.'^ 297 of these were owned in 

 Shropshire, principally at Broseley, Bridgnorth and Madeleywood; 

 61 were owned in Worcestershire, Worcester and Tewksbury standing 

 highest in point of ownership. These 376 vessels were owned by 210 

 proprietors, an average of about two vessels each. The vessels were 

 of two sorts: the smaller were called "barges" and "frigates," were 

 from forty to sixty feet long, had a single mast and square sail, and 

 carried from twenty to forty tons; the larger were called "trows," 

 were of forty to eighty tons burden, had a main and top-mast about 

 eighty feet high, with square sails and mizzen masts, were from six- 

 teen to twenty feet wide and sixty long, and cost completely rigged 

 about 300 pounds sterling. They were navigated by three or four men. 

 During the Tudor period the Severn traffic was handicapped by tolls 

 levied at Worcester, Gloucester, and other places along the stream.^ 

 The character of the Severn carriers was none too commendable.^ 



But the great termini of the coal trade from the remote days of 

 Henry V till the nineteenth century were Newcastle and London. 

 Newcastle and Sunderland supplied the whole eastern and southern 

 coast of England from Portsmouth to Whitby, as well as all the parts 

 of the interior which had river connections with these ports, with the 



' Pococke, I, 49; see alsoV. C. H., Shrops. I, 465. 



- Galloway, Annals, 202. 



■' V. C. H., Shrop. T, 46,S. For further data on the use of railways see Cralloway, 

 64-6. 



' Ibid., 463. 



•' Shrop. .\rch. Soc. Trans. IX, 197; V. C. H., Shrop. I, 454. 



'' See Gent. Mag. 1758: 271-cS, for the data from which the facts are drawn and 

 computations made. 



'V. C. H., Worces. II, 250-1; Nash. Worces. II. 46. 



^ V. C. H., Shrop. I, 426. 



