![James Spooner 1887](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/James_Spooner_1887.jpg)
The Spooners of Porthmadog refers to the Spooner family of
Porthmadog
Porthmadog (; ), originally Portmadoc until 1974 and locally as "Port", is a Welsh coastal town and community in the Eifionydd area of Gwynedd and the historic county of Caernarfonshire. It lies east of Criccieth, south-west of Blaenau Ff ...
,
North Wales
North Wales ( cy, Gogledd Cymru) is a region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders Mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdonia N ...
who made important contributions to the development of
narrow gauge railways both locally and throughout the world. James Spooner, together with his sons James Swinton and Charles Easton and other members of their family, constructed and managed the
Ffestiniog Railway for over fifty years. In North Wales they were involved in the promotion of numerous railway schemes including many quarry lines, the
Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
, the
Festiniog and Blaenau Railway
The Festiniog & Blaenau Railway (F&BR) was a narrow gauge railway built in 1868 to connect the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in Wales with the slate quarries around Tanymanod and the village of Llan Ffestiniog, to the south. At Blaenau Ffes ...
, the
North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways
The North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (NWNGR) was a railway company that planned to build a number of inter-connected narrow-gauge railways across North Wales. The first two of these lines - jointly known as the "Moel Tryfan Undertaking" - were ...
and the
Carnarvonshire Railway
The Carnarvonshire Railway was a railway connecting Caernarvon railway station (terminus of the Bangor and Caernarvon Railway line from Bangor) with Afon Wen.
History
The Carnarvonshire Railway was absorbed into the LNWR in 1869. At the gro ...
. Through publications and overseas family commissions they influenced narrow gauge railway construction in Russia, America and throughout the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
.
James Spooner
;Dates 1790–1856
Family
James Spooner was born at Leigh near
Worcester
Worcester may refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England
** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament
* Worcester Park, London, Engla ...
in 1790. He trained as a land surveyor and is believed to have worked as a civilian member of an
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...
team. He married in 1813 and his first three children were Matthew, James Swinton, and Caroline. From 1818 to 1824, they lived at
Maentwrog
Maentwrog () is a village and community in the Welsh county of Merionethshire (now part of Gwynedd), lying in the Vale of Ffestiniog just below Blaenau Ffestiniog, within the Snowdonia National Park. The River Dwyryd runs alongside the vi ...
where Charles Easton, Louisa, Thomas and Amelia were born. When the North Wales survey was completed in 1823, Spooner, with his growing family, stayed and worked as a freelance surveyor. In 1825, Spooner took a lease of Wm. Madocks house Tanyrallt Isa at
Tremadog
Tremadog (formerly Tremadoc) is a village in the community of Porthmadog, in Gwynedd, north west Wales; about north of Porthmadog town-centre. It was a planned settlement, founded by William Madocks, who bought the land in 1798. The centre of ...
where Elizabeth and Harriet were born and Caroline was accidentally shot dead by Matthew. Finally, the family moved to Morfa Lodge in Porthmadog where William was born in 1834.
Ffestiniog Railway survey
Spooner was already well established as a local surveyor and he had surveyed inclines and a tramway (never to be built) from the Moelwyns to Porthmadog via the
Croesor
Croesor is a small village in Gwynedd, Wales, located at the foot of Cnicht, in Cwm Croesor, in the community of Llanfrothen. The Croesor Tramway travelled along the bed of the cwm, before rising steeply to Bwlch Rhosydd via Croesor Incline.
...
valley, when, in 1830,
Henry Archer
Henry Archer (1799 – 2 March 1863) was the son of an Irish landowner and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was called to the Irish Bar and spent most of his time between North Wales and London.
Ffestiniog Railway
In railway circ ...
commissioned him to survey a suitable route for the Ffestiniog Railway. James Swinton and Charles Easton both assisted their father in this work. Spooner also had an experienced assistant in Thomas Prichard who had worked for Stephenson.
Robert Stephenson
The survey completed,
Robert Stephenson
Robert Stephenson FRS HFRSE FRSA DCL (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of his father ...
walked the route with Archer, Spooner and his sons and Prichard. Stephenson gave his full approval to their plans. There has been much confusion and discussion concerning the Robert Stephenson involvement. The elder Robert Stephenson, who was the younger brother of
George Stephenson
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848) was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians
In the history of the United Kingdom and the ...
, surveyed and laid out the route of the Nantlle Tramway c.1825 and, especially in recent years, it has generally been thought that he was the inspector of the Ffestiniog route. However, Dr. M.J.T. Lewis argues convincingly (on the basis of the published content of Stephenson's evidence to the Parliamentary Committee in 1832) that it was indeed George Stephenson's distinguished son Robert who advised the Ffestiniog promoters.
Gravity working
Spooner introduced to the Ffestiniog Railway, from the start, the 'horse dandy', that peculiar practice (which may have been first used in Northumberland) whereby the horse, having fought against gravity for twelve long miles hauling empty slate wagons from bottom to top in four or five hours, was rewarded with a bag of oats and a ride from top to bottom behind eighty loaded slate wagons and propelled by 'that very same gravity against which he had for so long toiled upwards' – as a contemporary report put it. The carefully engineered downhill route with a continuous grade of about 1 in 80 for twelve miles was specifically designed for gravity operation and resulted in gravity and horse operation being successful and economical but slow. The line was soon operating to maximum capacity. As built the line was a pioneering model instantly appealing to many (in the mid nineteenth century) seeking to solve the problems of moving heavy loads down hill.
Charles Easton Spooner
;Dates 1818–1889
Work for Ffestiniog Railway
As a boy, with his eldest brother James he had assisted his father in laying out the Ffestiniog Railway and subsequently during construction. He appears to have remained in Porthmadog and been involved with the railway under his father who was Clerk to the company. Charles became Treasurer of the company in 1848 and following his father's death in 1856 was appointed Manager and Clerk. He held the position for thirty years and dominated Ffestiniog Railway management and engineering until his own health began to fail in 1887. Under Charles the blacksmiths' forge at
Boston Lodge
Boston Lodge is situated at Penrhyn Isa, Minffordd, Penrhyndeudraeth, on the A487 road about 1 mile SE across the Afon Glaslyn causeway from Porthmadog, Gwynedd in north-west Wales.
It has a station on the Ffestiniog Railway and is the ...
was developed into comprehensive railway manufacturing and repair workshops.
Capacity problem
Spooner was faced with the seemingly intractable problem of a railway working to maximum capacity yet unable to cope with the volume of traffic on offer. He was also aware that others were seeking alternative routes for the transport of
Blaenau Ffestiniog's growing slate traffic. Spooner investigated the option of conversion to double track but the added capacity could not have paid for the construction costs involved.
Steam power
Steam locomotives, never before tried on a narrow gauge line and declared by all the leading designers to be unworkable on so narrow a gauge, were inevitable. But they would not have been possible when the line was built in 1836 and could only be introduced 27 years later when locomotive development had advanced and after the line had been relaid with heavier steel rails.
George England locomotives
Charles Easton Spooner engaged Charles Holland to design the first six small engines built by
George England and Co.
George England and Co. was an early English manufacturer of steam locomotives founded by the engineer George England of Newcastle upon Tyne (1811–1878). The company operated from the Hatcham Iron Works in New Cross, Surrey, and began buil ...
for the Ffestiniog. The first four engines delivered in 1863 required significant modification by the Spooners in the light of experience. Two of the original four locomotives are still in regular operation. Later engines were delivered on the newly opened
Cambrian Railways to
Minffordd
Minffordd (''roadside'' in Welsh) is a village within the Welsh county of Gwynedd. It is situated on the A487 road between Porthmadog and Penrhyndeudraeth, and in the community of the latter.
The village has two adjacent railway stations, whi ...
where Spooner had laid out a pattern of exchange sidings that inspired many visitors from abroad to adopt narrow gauge as the inexpensive feeder line to the standard gauge.
Fairlie locomotives
It was through George England that Spooner commissioned
Robert Francis Fairlie
Robert Francis Fairlie (either March 1831 or 5 April 1830, in Glasgow – 31 July 1885, in London) was a Scottish-born railway engineer.
Early life
Fairlie was born in Glasgow, the son of T. Archibald Fairlie (an engineer) and Margaret Fairlie ...
to design and build 'Little Wonder' an
articulated locomotive
An articulated locomotive is a steam locomotive (rarely, an electric locomotive) with one or more engine units that can move independent of the main frame. Articulation allows the operation of locomotives that would otherwise be too large to neg ...
ideally suited to a relatively short, heavily curved and steeply graded narrow gauge line. Spooner and Fairlie brought the world to Porthmadog in February 1870 for a remarkable series of locomotive trials at which Russian observers were very prominent as were observers from the
Denver and Rio Grande Railroad
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United ...
. These trials and the writings of Spooner and Fairlie influenced the promotion of narrow gauge railways throughout the world. Concerning C. E. Spooner, on 27 December 1872 "Engineering" wrote "He shows an earnestness and enthusiasm, we may almost say an absolute devotion for the Festiniog Railway".
Spooner and Company
James Swinton Spooner
;Dates 1816–1884
James Swinton, an elder brother of Charles Easton, was the engineer to the
Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway ( cy, Rheilffordd Talyllyn) is a narrow gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1865Drummond 2015, page 17 ...
built in 1865.
George Percival Spooner
;Dates 1850–1917
George Percival (son of Charles Easton and a graduate of
Karlsruhe Polytechnic
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 w ...
) remained with the family firm (often catalogued as Spooner & Co., Portmadoc, England) and designed fine engines for the Ffestiniog Railway and other railways. The Ffestiniog Carriages Nos. 15 & 16 were built in 1872 to his design by
Brown, Marshalls and Co. Ltd.,
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
. These were the first
bogie passenger carriages of any gauge to run in the United Kingdom. These historic iron-framed carriages, the forerunners of all the carriages now running on British Railways, are still in use, and were fully restored in 2001 with the aid of a grant from the
Heritage Lottery Fund
The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom.
History
The fund's predecessor bodies were ...
. In 1879, George Percival was exiled to India (owing to the pregnancy of Eleanor Davies, one of the servants) where his career blossomed and he eventually became Locomotive Superintendent of the Indian State Railways. Unfortunately, he was not a businessman and lost most of his money. He eventually returned to England, becoming a
Special Constable at
Kings Cross, London
Kings Cross is a district on either side of Euston Road, in north London, England, north of Charing Cross. It is bordered by Barnsbury to the north, Clerkenwell and Islington to the east, Holborn to the south and Euston to the west. It is ser ...
during
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. He died in 1917.
Charles Edwin Spooner
;Dates 1853–1909
Charles Edwin Spooner
Charles Edwin Spooner was a British engineer who worked in Malaya. He oversaw the construction of many important buildings in Kuala Lumpur, and he reorganised and expanded the railway system in the Federated Malay States.
Early life
C. E. Spoo ...
, youngest son of Charles Easton, was resident engineer of the
North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways
The North Wales Narrow Gauge Railways (NWNGR) was a railway company that planned to build a number of inter-connected narrow-gauge railways across North Wales. The first two of these lines - jointly known as the "Moel Tryfan Undertaking" - were ...
from 1874 to 1876 during its construction. Afterwards he had a distinguished railway career in
Malaya.
Postscripts
Garden railway
Charles Easton Spooner was a Victorian 'family man' and he established his family at Bron y Garth where in 1869 he built a garden railway for the entertainment of family and friends. Such a feature was an undoubted novelty at that time. The brass trackwork and the engine and rolling stock were all made in the FR works at Boston Lodge (where the surviving track is now stored). 'Topsy', the famous 3¼ inch gauge model of an England engine was built at Boston Lodge by W. Williams, Works Engineer and it was thought to have been lost. However it was discovered and brought to Porthmadog Harbour Station in 1963 and it is now on display. This is the earliest known model of the first narrow gauge locomotive in the world.
Spooner Family Grave
In 1998, the Ffestiniog and the Welsh Highland Railway Heritage Groups together undertook the restoration of the Spooner Family Grave in
Beddgelert
Beddgelert () is a village and community in the Snowdonia area of Gwynedd, Wales. The population of the community taken at the 2011 census was 455, and includes Nantmor and Nant Gwynant. It is reputed to be named after the legendary hound ...
Churchyard. This consists of a large double plot with two carved slate memorial tops surrounded by iron railings, which had been specially made in the Ffestiniog Railway Boston Lodge works. One stone commemorates Charles Easton Spooner and his eldest son John Eryri, the other his wife Mary, with their infant son James and also their daughter Mary who died aged five allegedly of bubonic plague but more probably of typhoid. A separate grave alongside the first is that of the nurse Elizabeth Preece who cared for Mary and who herself died of the same disease two days later. The restoration work, which involved heavy weed clearance, the cleaning of the stones, and the rust proofing and painting the railings, caught the attention of
Cadw, resulting in the graves now being listed as grade 2 monuments.
Footnote
The reference above to
bubonic plague seems improbable.
Typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several d ...
is far more likely; it was both endemic and epidemic at the period, killing
Prince Albert in 1861, but bubonic plague had a heyday from 1348 to about 1700.
Cholera is just possible; there were outbreaks in 1832 in
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 populat ...
and reputedly as late as 1860 in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
References
Notes
Sources
* C.E.Spooner; Narrow Gauge Railways, 1871, revised edn 1879
* Railways or No Railways – The Battle of the Gauges Renewed. by R.F. Fairlie, London, Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1872.
* M.J.T.Lewis; How Ffestiniog got its Railway, 1965.
*
* M.J.T. Lewis, The 1870 Locomotive Trials in the Local Press, in the Heritage Group Journal (FR Society) No. 57. Spring 1999 (pages 21–27).
* The North Wales Chronicle and the Carnarvon & Denbigh Herald, Feb 1870.
The Ffestiniog Railway's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spooners of Porthmadog
British civil engineers
Locomotive builders and designers
Ffestiniog Railway
Talyllyn Railway