Ironmaster

An ironmaster is the manager, and usually owner, of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain.

The ironmaster was usually a large scale entrepreneur and thus an important member of a community. He would have a large country house or mansion as his residence. The organization of operations surrounding the smelting, refining and casting of iron was labour-intensive, and so there would be a large number of workers reliant on the furnace works.

There were ironmasters (possibly not called such) from the 17th century onwards, but they became more prominent with the great expansion in the British iron industry during the Industrial Revolution.

An early ironmaster was John Winter (about 1600–1676) who owned substantial holdings in the Forest of Dean. During the English Civil War he cast cannons for Charles I. Following the Restoration, Winter developed his interest in the iron industry, and experimented with a new type of coking oven. This was a precursor to the later work of Abraham Darby I who successfully used coke to smelt iron.

Three successive generations of the same family all bearing the name are renowned for their contributions to the development of the English iron industry. Their works at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire nurtured the start of improvements in metallurgy that allowed large-scale production of the iron that made the development of the steam engine and railways possible, although their most notable innovation was The Iron Bridge.

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