Andrew Yarranton

Andrew Yarranton (1619–1684) was an important English engineer in the 17th century who was responsible for making several rivers into navigable waterways.

He was born at Astley, just south of the town of Stourport-on-Severn in Worcestershire, and was from a yeoman family. He was apprenticed to a linen draper in Worcester circa 1632, but left after a few years to live a country life. According to John Aubrey he died violently; 'The cause of death was a beating and thrown into a tub of water'.

During the English Civil War he served in the Parliamentary army rising to the rank of captain. In 1646 he became a member of the Worcester County Committee to administer "parlimentary justice" to the county and to list and fine all "delinquents" who had supported the Royalist cause. After the war, he used the arrears of military pay to speculate in forfeited crown and royalist estates.

With other officers, he set up ironworks, a blast furnace at Astley, to smelt cinders from Worcester with iron ore from the Forest of Dean, using charcoal obtained locally. Neighbouring ironmasters leased Shelsley Forge to him to discourage him from building one of his own. He probably withdrew from the iron industry after the Restoration. However he still had a share in a furnace at Sudeley near Winchcombe in 1673. Yarranton had been a leading Roundhead before the Restoration and was therefore under political suspicion afterwards. He was imprisoned several times during the 1660s, at least twice on trumped up charges.

His other achievement related to making tinplate. The Stour Navigation proprietors, and certain notable men in the local iron industry commissioned him and Ambrose Crowley to go to Saxony to find out how tinplate was made. On their return, experiments were undertaken, including rolling (which was not part of the process in Saxony). This was sufficiently successful to encourage two of the sponsors Philip Foley and Joshua Newborough to set up a mill for the process on the Stour at Wolverley.

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