The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 288 • Kate Clark
nevertheless, suggests that water power remained important for industrial purposes until well
into the nineteenth century, and well after the steam engine had become firmly established
(Cossons 1987).
Waterwheels were cheap, easy to install, and could drive rotative machinery well before steam
engines could; only after the 1840s were steam engines built that were more powerful. The
technology of the waterwheel was well established by the sixteenth century, and by the early
eighteenth century simple undershot wheels were common. Key technical developments in
waterwheel technology through the eighteenth and early nineteenth century include improvements
to the buckets, and more elaborate means of driving wheels to take advantage of different
conditions. The water turbine was developed after 1820 by Benoit Fourneyron in France to take
advantage of low heads of water, and the technology spread, perhaps illicitly, to Northern Ireland
where they were manufactured by the MacAdam brothers of Belfast in the 1840s. Water turbines
remain in use today for the generation of hydro-electricity.
Many waterwheels survive in Britain, and at many sites field survey of the associated leats,
sluices and tailraces, and analysis of the relevant falls is often the only source of evidence for the
precise way in which the system worked. At Quarry Bank Mill, Styal in Cheshire, more explicitly
archaeological techniques have been used to untangle the sequence of use of water, steam and
gas as sources of power at a large textile mill complex. Although a steam engine was installed at
the site in 1810, waterwheels remained in use there until 1889 when water turbines were installed,
demonstrating that various sources of power often coexisted (Milln 1995). Archaeological analysis
has also been used at Bordesley, Worcestershire, where remains of a water-powered needle mill
were identified. Through time, many industrialized valleys developed extremely complex water
power systems, often with steam engines being used not to drive the machinery directly (although
such technology was available) but to pump water back up, so it could be recycled back around
the earlier dams and waterwheels. Indeed, Cossons (1987) argues that the decline in water power
may have had more to do with the diversion of water by land drainage schemes, or for urban
domestic consumption, than the inefficiency of water power itself.
Whilst water power remained common in rural areas until the nineteenth century, and indeed
survived in some places until the twentieth century, in urban areas the take-up of steam was more
widespread. This illustrates the ultimate advantage that steam had over water power—it was a
flexible, movable source of power that could be set up where required. Despite the importance
of water power (and its greater legibility in the archaeological record), the application of steam
engines to industrial uses from mining, and mineral production, through to textiles, manufacturing
and transport, undoubtedly made possible much higher levels of productivity, and ultimately
freed many areas of manufacturing from dependency upon human and horse power.
Newcomen engines remained in use for pumping coal mines where fuel was relatively cheap
and where vertical motion was the main requirement. However, the improvements in steam
engines created by Watt’s patents of the late eighteenth century resulted in engines that used less
fuel and thus were cheaper, and could turn as well as lift. Textile mills, forges, metal works, glass
making, breweries and water works all found ready uses for such engines, and by 1800 nearly 500
had been built. Steam engine development did not stop with Boulton and Watt, and throughout
the nineteenth century a series of patents resulted in smaller, more powerful and yet more portable
engines. Reciprocating steam engines were used for electricity production in the 1880s, but only
began to become redundant with the patenting of the steam turbine in 1884, which was immediately
useful for electricity generation.
The portability of steam engines is illustrated by the earliest surviving engine, a Newcomen
engine that today stands in Dartmouth. It was moved there, having been used successively at
Griff Colliery in Warwickshire, at Measham in Leicestershire and at Hawkesbury Junction on