Ironmasters
The Kendall Family
The Kendall family (per. c.1700-1807), ironmasters, of Staffordshire, Furness, and Brecknockshire, together with the families of Cotton and Hall, played a leading role in the development of the iron industry in Britain between the mid-seventeenth and the early nineteenth centuries.
The family came to prominence with Edward Kendall (1684-1746), the fourth son, but ultimate heir, of Jonathan Kendall (1648–1716) of Austrey, Warwickshire, and of his wife, Jane, daughter of Edward Dyson of Inkberrow, Worcestershire. By 1702 he was an agent under John Wheeler in the Foley partnership for the Stour valley and forest of Dean ironworks. In 1710 he became, with William Rea of Monmouth, joint manager of the Staffordshire ironworks, and the far-flung nature of his family's later interests was foreshadowed in 1712. In that year he married Anna Cotton (1685–1763), daughter of the former Yorkshire ironmaster William Cotton (1648/9-1703), of Haigh Hall, they had two sons and two daughters. In common with the Cotton family, Kendall was staunchly nonconformist, and he led those who petitioned quarter sessions to license a new meeting-house in Stourbridge in 1715, after the original one was destroyed by a mob. In 1743 the congregation built a house for the new minister at Stourbridge on land conveyed to them by Kendall and his wife.
In Shropshire, together with his brother-in-law William Westby Cotton (bap. 1689, d. 1749), Kendall acquired Kemberton furnace in 1714. In 1724 he leased Cradley ironworks on the Stour and from there he supplied pig iron to the Stour valley forges, especially during the 1740s. In Staffordshire in the 1720s he was probably involved in Rushall furnace. Anna Cotton (d. 1721), widow of William Cotton, assigned Colnbridge forge in Yorkshire to her son William Westby Cotton in 1716, and further assignees were Kendall and another son-in-law, William Vernon, a move which probably marked Anna Cotton's retirement from active participation in management. By 1718 Kendall was involved as partner of Edward Hall and Daniel Cotton at Cunsey furnace in Furness. This had been built in 1711 so that some of the haematite ores of the area could be smelted on the spot, rather than after shipping to furnaces on the Cheshire plain. The building of a second northern furnace on the River Duddon in 1736 endorsed this move.
Kendall died in February 1746. He willed his ironworks to be continued for six years by his widow, who survived her husband until 1763, and his son Jonathan Kendall (1714-1791), with his servant Samuel Hopkins as manager. Meanwhile the Cheshire–Staffordshire works were deprived by death of all managing partners: Thomas Hall of the Hermitage, son of the senior partner Edward Hall, of Cranage, died in 1748; Thomas Cotton of Eardley End, followed in 1749; and then Edward Hall himself died in 1750. Because their heirs were not interested in iron, Jonathan Kendall was left as senior partner, assisted by Samuel Hopkins, now also one of Cotton's executors. In 1741 Kendall married Elizabeth Smith of Birmingham, but the marriage did not produce any children.
Major difficulties impended. In Furness seven furnaces were now in competition, forcing up the price of the most expensive raw material, charcoal, and in the nail trade, cheap coke-smelted rod iron was soon to replace rod made from cold-short charcoal-smelted iron. It made sense to concentrate on tough pig iron, convertible into best merchant bar at the forge, and also suitable for making tin plate. The manufacture of tin plate spread rapidly about 1740, especially within south Wales; but its shipping in small quantities down the Weaver Navigation during the 1740s by Thomas Cotton suggests that the company's forge at Oakamoor was then already producing tin plate.
To escape rising charcoal prices a Welsh furnace, situated on the Conwy, ideally placed to smelt haematite ore shipped from Furness, had already been erected in 1748. It could ship its product to the company's own forges in Cheshire, to south Wales, or to the Severn valley. In 1755 another Welsh furnace was built at Dyfi, where Kendall's partner was his cousin Ralph Vernon, while at the still more remote Scottish furnace, built the same year at Goatfield on Loch Fyne, Jonathan's younger brother Henry Kendall (1718-1787) was involved. Henry matriculated at Glasgow University in 1740 and married Ellen Jacques; they had four sons and one daughter. He was established at Ulverston by 1750 and in the north he was partnered by the manager at Duddon, William Latham, another Austrey man. Jonathan's partner in Staffordshire was Samuel Hopkins; banking was provided by Jonathan's brother-in-law Samuel Notton, a London grocer, husband of Elizabeth Kendall.
Meanwhile, the furnaces at Cunsey, at Carr mill in south Lancashire, and at Lawton in Cheshire were closed about 1750. Mear Heath in Staffordshire closed before 1763. Cranage forge had also closed, so smelting was concentrated at Doddington and Madeley furnaces, with Cumbrian haematite ores being used at Doddington after carriage across the Cheshire plain. The two furnaces were close to the company's small forges at Lea, Norton, and Winnington, and not far from the forges at Warmingham and Consall, which with annual outputs of 300 tons of bar iron were among the largest in Britain. Tin-plating at Oakamoor was joined by an iron and tin plate works in Aston, where the Kendalls were partnered by Thomas Hopkins, lessee of Cannock forge from 1775.
William Latham's Duddon furnace account books show that, to coordinate the affairs of such widely scattered works, company meetings were held regularly in Cheshire, the places mentioned including Warrington (1775), Middlewich (1760), Hilcot (in Staffordshire, 1762), and Holmes Chapel (1763). Managing personnel were compelled to move too: Henry Kendall's son Edward replaced Ralph Vernon as manager at Warmingham forge before 1773; by 1762 Jonathan Kendall had established himself at Hilcot, but by 1779 he had moved on to Market Drayton; by 1790, when he made his will, he had moved back to Stourbridge, where he died on 7 March 1791.
In 1779, in a complete break with the past, members of the Kendall family showed their usual flexibility by building the coke-fuelled Beaufort furnace above Ebbw Vale in south Wales, on land leased from the duke of Beaufort. The Cheshire forges were not maintained beyond 1784. Conwy furnace had closed by 1774, Dyfi continued in 1794 but was abandoned during the next ten years, Goatfield was blown out in 1813, and though William Latham's sons, Joseph and Richard, continued to operate Duddon, it too was sold to Harrison, Ainslie & Co. in 1828.
Beaufort furnace produced 1500 tons of pig iron per year; the addition of a second furnace in 1798 and of steam-powered blast enabled production to soar to 7000 tons in 1825. Edward Kendall (1750-1807), who had formerly been at Warmingham, was the driving force at Beaufort. His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Irton, of Irton Hall, Cumberland; they had one son. His second wife, whom he married in 1801, Elizabeth Bevan of Crickhowell, was a widow who had two sons by her former marriage. Kendall was chairman of the Monmouthshire Canal, which afforded transport for his iron to Newport. He also interested himself closely in local affairs, perhaps more so than any other ironmaster of Brecknockshire, was a justice of the peace, and ultimately became high sheriff of the county. ‘Nothing like iron’, he thought, and he fenced the river front land of the estate which he acquired in 1804 at Dan y Parc, on the Usk near Crickhowell, with a massive iron deer fence, which still stood unimpaired in 1906.
Edward Kendall died suddenly on 7 March 1807. Since his own son, Edward, born in 1789, showed little interest in the works, he wished his stepson William Hibbs Bevan to succeed him. During Bevan's minority Joseph Latham carried on as manager until retirement in 1816, when Bevan, now Latham's son-in-law, succeeded him.
In 1833 the concern was taken over by its near neighbours, Joseph and Crawshay Bailey of Nant-y-glo ironworks, and Edward Kendall disposed of his remaining share in the works, so ending an involvement of well over a century, during which, rather unusually, his family had successfully negotiated all the technical, commercial, and logistical problems entailed in the changeover from charcoal smelting of iron to smelting with coke.
Source: Oxford DNB
©2004