South Yorkshire Ironmasters
The Hall Family
The Hall family together with the associated families of Cotton and Kendall, played a pioneering role in the growth of the iron industry in Britain between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries.
The Hall family became involved in the iron trade with the marriage, of Michael Hall (1623/4-1670), son of Richard Hall of Greet, Shropshire, who married Elizabeth (Nee Cotton), sister of the ironmaster William Cotton (d. 1675). They had nine children. In 1662 Cotton became partner of the Myddelton family of Chirk Castle in their Denbighshire ironworks and by 1663 Michael Hall was living at Ruabon, where the partnership's blast furnace was situated. He died about 1670, being succeeded as clerk in the ironworks by his eldest son, Michael (1654–1684).
A younger son, Thomas Hall (1657-1715), born at Tenbury, Worcestershire, in 1657, operated the furnace at Madeley, Staffordshire, from 1683, by 1687 he was a partner in the Cheshire ironworks with his cousin William Cotton (1648-1703). During the 1690s he managed this partnership which from 1696 onwards was closely linked with the Staffordshire works. Hall married in 1697 to Cotton's sister, Joanna (d.1721).
After the building of the Vale Royal furnace by Thomas Hall in 1696, the family was of major importance for the development of the iron industry in north-west England. Vale Royal smelted haematite ores, so most of its product was tough pig iron, some of which went to his forge at Bodfari to supply North Wales. Vale Royal, Lawton, and Mear Heath were three of the largest furnaces of the period, and because the Cheshire partnership now had two large furnaces, it was able to make good the Staffordshire deficit of pig iron with either tough pig from Vale Royal or cold-short pig smelted from local ores at Lawton. This made the amalgamation of the two partnerships in 1707 a logical step. In the Staffordshire works Hall owned a seventh share, and after the death of John Wheeler he also acted as managing director for a short time. In Yorkshire after the death of William Cotton, he witnessed a wood agreement of 1704 and the new lease of Colne Bridge forge in 1706, on behalf of Anna Cotton (d. 1721), his sister-in-law. Thomas Hall died in 1715.
Thomas's younger brother Edward (1664-1750) is known to have delivered iron for the use of Sir Thomas Myddelton in 1685. In 1701 he married Anne Frances Maurice (d. 1758) ; they had three sons and three daughters. By 1700 his investment of £10,251 made him the largest shareholder in the Cheshire works. Hall's responsibility was Warmingham forge, though in 1706 he transferred to Vale Royal furnace and Bodfari forge. After the amalgamation of the partnerships he had a sixth share in the Cheshire works and a seventh in those of Staffordshire, and he gradually succeeded to the dominating role played by his brother. Already in 1711, along with his cousin Daniel Cotton, he had established a furnace at Cunsey in Furness, though the company continued to smelt haematite ores in Cheshire, until 1718 at Vale Royal and then at a new furnace built at Oulton in 1719. In 1720 Hall acquired a share in the new Bretton furnace–Kilnhurst forge partnership of his Yorkshire nephew, William Westby Cotton. The same year he built a furnace at Carr Mill, near St Helens.
Edward's eldest son was Thomas(1702-1748), who married Elizabeth Bayley of Nantwich in 1738, they had a son and a daughter. Thomas's will mentions his interest in Bodfari forge. He was involved with Sowley furnace in Hampshire, and in 1729 in connection with this he, along with Myles Troughton of Beaulieu, took a sixteen-year lease of Viscount Montagu's mines at Lindal and Dalton in Furness.
Edward Hall's youngest son, Maurice (1715–1741), was involved in wood-procurement in south Lancashire in 1741. The second son Richard Edward Hall (1703–1793), was a surgeon, and interest in the iron industry passed out of the family.
The failure of the male line in the Hall family, together with the major changes within the iron industry and the transition from charcoal to coke smelting, saw the Halls, like the Cottons, withdraw from the iron trade after a century of involvement.
Source: Oxford DNB