The Man in the Iron Tomb

IF YOU were asked where the British iron industry began, would you choose Sheffield, Scunthorpe, Teeside or Ironbridge in Shropshire?

My first choice would have been Ironbridge - but I would have been wrong.

To find the answer I travelled to the Lake District, turning off the M6 onto the A590 and then to the left at the village of Lindale.

Lindale is overlooked by towering cliffs of limestone covered in gorse, which even in winter seems to be smothered in yellow flowers.

Gorse is related to the pea family, as a close look at the flowers shows.

In late summer pods form on the gorse and in hot sunshine these explode with a loud crack and hurl out the seeds.

In time, this method of seed dispersal spreads the plant over large areas.

Since it was bypassed by a new road cutting through the rocks, it is hard to imagine that Lindale was once a source of terror for motorists.

It must have been even worse in the days of coaching, when the paying passengers had to get out and put their shoulders to the wheels to help the sweating horses pull the coach up the hill.

During the days when the village was on the main road, most people knew the tall iron monument which stands at the corner of the side road leading to Grange.

This celebrates the father of England's modern iron age. The monument itself is made of cast iron and celebrates the iron master John Wilkinson, who was among the first to build iron ships.

He was one of the 18th century's great eccentrics and even had an iron coffin made to hold his body. This was brought to Lindale over the sands of Morecambe Bay and during its journey the cart containing it was overtaken by the tide.

It was recovered during the next low tide.

John Wilkinson died in 1809 and, in accordance with his instructions, he was placed in the iron coffin which was then buried in the garden of his house at nearby Castlehead.

The iron column was his massive tomb marker.

Later owners of the house found this a bit scary and had the coffin removed to Lindale's pretty little church and the column re-erected by the roadside, where it still stands.

Castlehead is now a privately-run field studies centre.

The Wilkinson monument has been given a facelift in recent years.

All its rust has been removed and it has been painted black. This was its original colour as it was part of the iron man's tomb. Both the monument and the village of Lindale - meaning valley of the lime trees - seem far-removed from belching blast furnaces and the clanking of machinery.

Iron-making, however, began as a woodland industry.

There are iron deposits locally and these were smelted using the charcoal obtained from local trees and produced in the woodlands above the village.

In those days industry and nature could easily live together, which I realised as I watched a buzzard soaring high above the monument.

The next time you scrape your face with a Wilkinson Sword razor blade - not the ladies, of course - spare a thought for the man who started it all - the man in the iron tomb.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.