﻿2 NICHOLSON, Notes on the Wilkinsons, Ironmasters. 



the village of Backbarrow (not Buckburrow), in the parish 

 of Coulton, five miles from Cartmel, but the settlement 

 must have been some years earlier, for in 1738, when Isaac 

 Wilkinson took out his first patent, he was described as of 

 the " parish of Coulton." This patent was for an im- 

 proved box smoothing iron, its special merit being that it 

 was cast in one piece in a mould invented for that purpose. 

 That it was an improvement, and not a new invention, is 

 shown by the words of the specification that the box-iron 

 was " ground and finished in the same manner as other 

 box-irons now in use are." Stockdale states that Isaac's 

 business, when first he went to Backbarrow, was the 

 manufacture of the ordinary flat smoothing iron, and 

 having no furnace of his own, the molten metal had to be 

 carried across the highway, from Machell's furnace close 

 by. About 1748 Isaac Wilkinson purchased or built the 

 iron furnace or forge at Wilson House, near Lindal, in the 

 parish of Cartmel, and endeavoured to smelt the rich 

 hematite iron ore with peat moss. A canal was cut into 

 the turbary wide enough for a small boat. This boat is 

 said by Stockdale to have been built of iron, and, if so, it 

 was the first of that material ever constructed, and pre- 

 ceded by nearly 40 years the iron vessels which John 

 Wilkinson constructed in Shropshire. Peat moss was 

 not found suitable for smelting purposes, though the 

 Wilkinsons tried it in its natural state, cut into peats and 

 dried in the sun, greatly compressed and charred ; so they 

 eventually used the common wood charcoal. Stockdale 

 says, they also made bricks from the clay which they 

 obtained under the peat moss, and that " bricks till then 

 had never been made in this country." This sounds 

 incredible, unless we assume that by "this country" 

 Stockdale means merely the Furness country. 



While at Wilson House Isaac Wilkinson, describing 



