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John Wilkinson (industrialist)
John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson (1728 – 14 July 1808) was an English industrialist who pioneered the manufacture of cast iron and the use of cast-iron goods during the Industrial Revolution. He was the inventor of a precision boring machine that could bore cast iron cylinders, such as cannon barrels and piston cylinders used in the steam engines of James Watt. His boring machine has been called the first machine tool. He also developed a blowing device for blast furnaces that allowed higher temperatures, increasing their efficiency, and helped sponsor the first iron bridge in Coalbrookdale. He is notable for his method of cannon boring, his techniques at casting iron and his work with the government of France to establish a cannon foundry. Biography Early life John Wilkinson was born in Little Clifton, Bridgefoot, Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), the eldest son of Isaac Wilkinson and Mary Johnson. Isaac was then the potfounder at the blast furnace there, one of the first to u ...
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Lemuel Francis Abbott
Lemuel "Francis" Abbott (1760/61 – 5 December 1803) was an English portrait painter, famous for his painting of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson (currently hanging in the Terracotta Room of number 10 Downing Street) and for those of other naval officers and literary figures of the 18th century. Life He was born Lemuel Abbott in Leicestershire in 1760 or 1761, the son of clergyman Lemuel Abbott, curate of Anstey (and later vicar of Thornton) and his wife Mary.Nisbet, Archibald (2004)Abbott, Lemuel Francis [Samuel] (1760/1761-1802), portrait painter, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', . Retrieved 23 November 2014 In 1775, at the age of 14, he became a pupil of Francis Hayman and lived in London, but returned to his parents after his teacher's death in 1776. There he continued to develop his artistic talents independently, but some authorities have suggested that he may also have studied with Joseph Wright of Derby.
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Bridgefoot
Bridgefoot is a village in Cumbria, historically part of Cumberland, near the Lake District National Park in England. It is situated at the confluence of the River Marron and Lostrigg Beck, approximately 1 mile south of the River Derwent. To the south it is seamlessly joined with the village of Little Clifton. Governance Bridgefoot, is part of the Workington constituency of the UK parliament. The current Member of Parliament is Mark Jenkinson, a member of the Conservative Party. The Labour Party has won the seat in every general election since 1979; the Conservative Party has only been elected once in Workington since the Second World War: in the 1976 Workington by-election. For the European Parliament residents in Bridgefoot voted to elect MEP's for the North West England constituency before Brexit in 2020. For Local Government purposes it is in the ''Dalton Ward'' of Allerdale Borough Council and the ''Cockermouth South Division'' of Cumbria County Council Cumbria C ...
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Wrexham
Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the county of Denbighshire, and later the county of Clwyd in 1974, it has been the principal settlement of Wrexham County Borough since 1996. Wrexham has historically been one of the primary settlements of Wales. At the 2011 Census, it had an urban population of 61,603 as part of the wider Wrexham built-up area which made it Wales's fourth largest urban conurbation and the largest in north Wales. The city comprises the local government communities of Acton, Caia Park, Offa and Rhosddu. Wrexham's built-up area extends further into villages like Bradley, Brymbo, Brynteg, Gwersyllt, New Broughton, Pentre Broughton and Rhostyllen. Wrexham was likely founded prior to the 11th century and developed in the Middle Ages as a regional centre for t ...
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Bersham Ironworks
Bersham Ironworks were large ironworks at Bersham, near Wrexham, Wales. They are most famous for being the original working site of John Wilkinson. They were also the first site in the world to use a new way of boring holes in cannon and steam engine cylinders. History Ironworking began at Bersham around 1640, and evidence shows that the cannon for the Royalists in the English Civil War were made there. In the 18th century, Isaac Wilkinson bought the ironworks and ran it for a considerable number of years. The main product was cannon, although the process to make them in iron was difficult, and cannonballs often became stuck in the barrel, leading to explosions. When Isaac's son John Wilkinson took over, he employed a boring machine to accurately make a smooth bore cannon, which became so popular that cannons produced using this technique were used in the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic wars. As well as cannon, the smooth bore machine could make cylinders for B ...
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Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.24 million. On the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, Liverpool historically lay within the ancient hundred of West Derby in the county of Lancashire. It became a borough in 1207, a city in 1880, and a county borough independent of the newly-created Lancashire County Council in 1889. Its growth as a major port was paralleled by the expansion of the city throughout the Industrial Revolution. Along with general cargo, freight, and raw materials such as coal and cotton, merchants were involved in the slave trade. In the 19th century, Liverpool was a major port of departure for English and Irish emigrants to North America. It was also home to both the Cunard and White Star Lines, and was the port of registry of the ocean li ...
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Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in electricity and other areas of science. He was a close friend of, and worked in close association with Benjamin Franklin involving electricity experiments. Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. Prie ...
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Caleb Rotherham
Caleb Rotheram D.D. (1694–1752) was an English dissenting minister and tutor. Life He was born on 7 March 1694 at Great Salkeld, Cumberland. He was educated at the grammar school of Great Blencow, Cumberland, under Anthony Ireland, and prepared for the Presbyterian ministry in the academy of Thomas Dixon at Whitehaven. In 1716 he became minister of the dissenting congregation at Kendal, Westmorland. After Dixon's death (1729) he took up from 1733 the work of a dissenting academy at Kendal, where he educated about 120 laymen, including Jeremiah Dyson, and fifty-six divinity students, among whom was George Walker. In 1743 he visited Edinburgh, where he was admitted M.A., and gained the degree of D.D. by public disputation on 27 May. His theology, and that of most of his divinity pupils, was Arian. In 1751 his health failed; leaving his congregation and academy in charge of Richard Simpson, he went to Hexham, Northumberland, to stay with his eldest son, a physician. He died ...
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Dissenting Academies
The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries (often institutions with aspects of all three) run by English Dissenters, that is, those who Nonconformist (Protestantism), did not conform to the Church of England. They formed a significant part of education in England, England's educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Background After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge and Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, required – until the Oxford University Act 1854 – a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for joining the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was required to take a bachelor's degree. English Dissenters in this context were Nonconformist (Protestantism), Nonconformist Protestants who could not in good cons ...
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Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their name from the presbyterian polity, presbyterian form of ecclesiastical polity, church government by representative assemblies of Presbyterian elder, elders. Many Reformed churches are organised this way, but the word ''Presbyterian'', when capitalized, is often applied to churches that trace their roots to the Church of Scotland or to English Dissenters, English Dissenter groups that formed during the English Civil War. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the Sola scriptura, authority of the Scriptures, and the necessity of Grace in Christianity, grace through Faith in Christianity, faith in Christ. Presbyterian church government was ensured in Scotland by the Acts of Union 1707, Acts of Union in 1707, which cre ...
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Nonconformist (Protestantism)
In English church history, the Nonconformists, also known as a Free Church person, are Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England (Anglican Church). Use of the term in England was precipitated after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed opposition to reforms within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians ( Presbyterians and Congregationalists), plus the Baptists, Brethren, Methodists, and Quakers. The English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1559 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists. By law and social custom, Nonconformists were restricted from many spheres of public life – not least, from access to public office, civil service careers, or degrees at university â ...
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Abraham Darby I
Abraham Darby, in his later life called Abraham Darby the Elder, now sometimes known for convenience as Abraham Darby I (14 April 1677 – 5 May 1717, the first and best known of several men of that name), was an English ironmaster and foundryman. Born into an English Quaker family that played an important role in the Industrial Revolution, Darby developed a method of producing pig iron in a blast furnace fuelled by coke rather than charcoal. This was a major step forward in the production of iron as a raw material for the Industrial Revolution. Early life Abraham Darby was the son of John Darby, a yeoman farmer and locksmith by trade, and his wife Ann Baylies. He was born at Wren's Nest in Woodsetton, Staffordshire, now part of Dudley, West Midlands. He was descended from nobility; his great-grandmother Jane was an illegitimate child of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley. Abraham's great-grandmother was a sister of the whole blood to Dud Dudley, who claimed to have smelted i ...
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Coke (fuel)
Coke is a grey, hard, and porous coal-based fuel with a high carbon content and few impurities, made by heating coal or oil in the absence of air—a destructive distillation process. It is an important industrial product, used mainly in iron ore smelting, but also as a fuel in stoves and forges when air pollution is a concern. The unqualified term "coke" usually refers to the product derived from low-ash and low-sulphur bituminous coal by a process called coking. A similar product called petroleum coke, or pet coke, is obtained from crude oil in oil refineries. Coke may also be formed naturally by geologic processes.B. Kwiecińska and H. I. Petersen (2004): "Graphite, semi-graphite, natural coke, and natural char classification — ICCP system". ''International Journal of Coal Geology'', volume 57, issue 2, pages 99-116. History China Historical sources dating to the 4th century describe the production of coke in ancient China. The Chinese first used coke for heating ...
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