Two Brothers and an Industrial Revolution
The Fowler Family of Whittington Hall and the Making of Sheepbridge
William Fowler, founder of the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company, and his brother Sir John Fowler, engineer of the London Underground and the Forth Bridge
Introduction
In the 1850s, a family from Wadsley Hall near Sheffield acquired Whittington Hall and set in motion one of the most dramatic industrial transformations in the history of north Derbyshire. Within a decade, the Fowler brothers had converted open fields and agricultural land between Old Whittington and Dunston into a complex of blast furnaces, coal mines, ironstone pits and workers’ housing that would grow into the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company — one of the great Victorian industrial enterprises of the East Midlands.
What makes this local story remarkable is its national dimension. While William Fowler was building his ironworks in the fields below Whittington Hall, his elder brother John was simultaneously constructing the world’s first underground railway beneath the streets of London, and would go on to design the Forth Bridge — a structure recognised today as one of the wonders of the industrial world. The two brothers represent, in a single family, the full reach of Victorian engineering ambition: one reshaping the landscape of Old Whittington, the other reshaping the landscape of an empire.
The Fowler Family of Wadsley Hall
John Fowler senior was a land agent and estate valuer based at Wadsley Hall near Sheffield. His wife was Elizabeth Swann, daughter of William Swann of Dykes Hall. Theirs was a large and talented family. The eldest son, John, born on 15 July 1817, became one of the most celebrated engineers of his age. William, his younger brother, founded large ironworks near Chesterfield and became a significant figure in Sheffield industrial life. Henry, another brother, was an engineer who died comparatively young on his return from India. Charles became an architect and emigrated to Australia. Robert became a solicitor in Westminster. Frederick expanded the family’s land agency business at home. One sister married a railway engineer in New South Wales; another married a Captain Holmes of Norfolk.
The family’s roots were in the Ecclesfield area of south Yorkshire. Their ancestor Samuel Fowler had married Hannah Dixon of Shiregreen in 1731 — a connection that would, generations later, give the family a particular affinity with the Dixon-dominated landscape of Old Whittington, where Henry Dixon had built Whittington Hall and risen to dominate the 1825 Enclosure Award. When John and William Fowler acquired Whittington Hall in the 1850s, they were in a sense completing a circle that had begun with that Dixon marriage more than a century before.
Sir John Fowler: Engineer of Two Worlds
Early Career
John Fowler left Wadsley Hall in 1833 to begin his engineering apprenticeship under John Towlerton Leather, engineer of the Sheffield waterworks. He then moved to London to work in the offices of Mr Rastrick, who was engaged on railway construction between Sheffield and Manchester. In 1844, at the age of twenty-seven, he set himself up in London as a consulting engineer, specialising in railways. His career from that point was one of almost uninterrupted advance.
Among his early projects were railways between Sheffield and Grimsby and between London and Brighton. He designed the Pimlico railway bridge over the Thames — the first railway bridge to cross the river in London. In 1865 he was elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the highest honour in his profession.
The Metropolitan Railway
The work for which John Fowler first achieved national fame was the design and construction of the Metropolitan Railway — the world’s first underground railway, running beneath the streets of London. This remarkable feat of engineering, built by the cut-and-cover method, opened in January 1863, just as his brother William was completing the formation of the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company. While William was sinking his first collieries in Derbyshire, John was solving the unprecedented problem of running steam locomotives through enclosed underground tunnels in a city of more than two million people. The Metropolitan Railway was the foundation of everything that followed — the vast underground network that Londoners still use today.
The Forth Bridge
John Fowler’s greatest achievement, and the work for which he received his baronetcy, was the design of the Forth Bridge — begun in 1883 and opened by the Prince of Wales on 4 March 1890. Designed in partnership with Benjamin Baker (also knighted for the work), the bridge was a response to the catastrophic collapse of the Tay Bridge in December 1879. The earlier Tay Bridge had been a suspension design; its failure, in a storm with a passenger train crossing, killed all seventy-five aboard and shook public confidence in Victorian engineering to its foundations.
Fowler and Baker’s answer was the cantilever principle, executed in steel on a scale that had never been attempted. Three great double cantilever towers rise from piers set in the Firth of Forth, their arms reaching out to support suspended central spans. The bridge carries two railway tracks and remains in continuous operation today, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015. At its opening in 1890 it was, by almost any measure, the most remarkable engineering structure in the world.
Sir John Fowler was created a baronet on 17 April 1890, the year of the bridge’s opening. He died at Bournemouth on 20 November 1898, aged eighty-one. A portrait by Sir John Millais and a bust at the Institution of Civil Engineers are among his memorials. He married in 1850 Elizabeth Broadbent of Manchester and had four sons, the eldest of whom succeeded to the baronetcy.
The Highland Estates
As his wealth and reputation grew, Sir John Fowler invested in Highland Scotland on a grand scale. In 1865 he purchased an estate at Braemore in Ross-shire, and in 1867 a further estate at Inverbroom nearby, eventually holding some 40,000 acres in total. He applied his engineering mind to the Highland landscape with characteristic thoroughness: planting nine million trees, maximising agricultural production, building one of the earliest private hydro-electric systems to power the house, and constructing the dramatic suspension bridge across the Corrieshalloch Gorge that still stands and is now a National Nature Reserve. His Scottish estate was, in microcosm, a demonstration of what Victorian engineering could do to a wild landscape — the same ambition that drove his brother in the fields below Old Whittington.
William Fowler and the Transformation of Sheepbridge
Whittington Hall and the First Venture
While John was conquering London, William and their father took a different course. They took up leases on large amounts of land between Chesterfield and Whittington Moor and began the task of coal extraction. The acquisition of Whittington Hall — built by Henry Dixon around 1835 and the grandest house in the parish — gave the family a commanding presence in Old Whittington and a base from which to develop their industrial ambitions.The Hall became the home of William.
The Dunston and Barlow Mineral Company was established in 1857-58, with William Fowler as its driving force. The original land document was signed by William (Land Agent) and John (Civil Engineer) which suggests William was taking advantage of his brothers expertise to set up the company. He designed the processing plant at Sheepbridge himself and supervised the taking over of existing mines in Dunston and Whittington. The ironworks’ original offices on Dunston Lane still stand, with a weather vane incorporating the date 1857. By 1861-62, the hot blast and mild iron from the three furnaces was being supplied to John Brown and Company of Sheffield for the manufacture of armour plating for the new generation of ironclad naval vessels — iron tested by the military at Portsmouth in November 1861 and reported to have exceeded every test previously made.
The Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company
In 1862 the enterprise was formally incorporated as the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company Limited, backed by London financier Arthur Hankey alongside the Fowler family. When the company was fully launched in 1864, William Fowler became its first chairman and managing director. In 1868 J. Stores Smith became managing director, with Fowler retaining the chairmanship. The company’s subsequent growth was extraordinary.
By 1864 the company operated three coal mines and twenty-eight ironstone pits at Whittington and Barlow, feeding twenty-three coke ovens, four blast furnaces and a large iron foundry with a mechanics shop. The ironworks covered thirty-seven acres at Key Green, Sheepbridge, connected by eight and a quarter miles of standard-gauge railway to the Midland Railway and to the Chesterfield Canal. Three miles of narrow-gauge railway served the works internally and extended to the iron pits at Cobnar and Rough Piece Wood. The canal and railway connection gave the company access to Sheffield’s steel makers to the north and to the national railway network in every direction.
The New Settlement
The Fowlers did not merely build an ironworks; they built a community. The Dunston and Barlow Mineral Company constructed forty-eight cottages for valued and essential workers — known as Cavendish Square — which were purchased by the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company on its formation. The company soon added to this stock using bricks made on site, building Belvoir Terrace, Dunston Villas and the Crescent. This planned industrial settlement, built from scratch in the fields below Old Whittington, created the social geography of Sheepbridge as it remained for the next century: company housing, a Sheepbridge Club for the workforce, and the middle management meeting at the Sheepbridge Inn on Broomhill Road before that famous public house was converted into housing as the new industrial village grew around it.
Master Cutler
William Fowler’s standing in the Sheffield industrial world was recognised by his election as Master Cutler of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire — the most prestigious civic office in Sheffield’s industrial life, held by one year’s term, and representing the full range of the city’s metal trades. Secondary sources record that he served a term, though the precise year has not yet been confirmed from the Company’s records. A query to the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire or to Sheffield Archives, where the records are held, should settle the point. The office of Master Cutler had been extended to steelmakers in 1860, and by the 1860s it was the ironmasters and steel manufacturers rather than the old cutlery trades who dominated the Company’s affairs — of which William Fowler, as chairman of one of Derbyshire’s largest iron companies and a major supplier to Sheffield’s steel industry, was a natural representative.
The Legacy
The Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company continued to develop long after William Fowler’s chairmanship. By the 1880s, steel was replacing iron in demand, and plant was installed at Sheepbridge to produce steel alongside iron. During the First World War the works produced munitions under the Ministry of Munitions. Between the wars it moved into centrifugal castings for the motor car and aircraft industries. In 1948, anticipating nationalisation, the company formed Sheepbridge Engineering as a separate entity. After nationalisation in 1952 the engineering works continued alongside the iron and steel production. In 1979 it joined forces with GKN to form GKN Sheepbridge Stokes — a lineage traceable in an unbroken line back to William Fowler’s processing plant of 1857.
Old Whittington and the Fowler Legacy
The transformation brought about by the Fowlers is best understood against the landscape of Old Whittington that preceded it. The 1825 Enclosure Award had set out the agricultural landscape of the parish — strips consolidated into fields, roads straightened, commons enclosed. The dominant family at that moment was the Dixons, who held Whittington Hall and much of the best land. Within thirty years, the Fowlers had acquired the Hall and were converting the agricultural land between the parish and Dunston into an industrial complex that would eventually employ hundreds of men.
The social hierarchy of the parish shifted with it. Charles Steade at Broom House — retired officer, gentleman investor, collector of canal and railway shares, principal fundraiser for the new church of 1863 — represented the transitional world between the old gentry order and the new industrial one. He had married Elizabeth Mary Smith of Dunston Hall, whose family held substantial land in Barlow, Holmesfield and Dronfield; Charles and Elizabeth Mary had no children. A memorial east window was given in their joint memory by a member of the Smith family when the new church was built in 1863. His death around 1861, just as the Sheepbridge company was being formed, marks the moment of transition. His estate, including the former Sheepbridge Inn site and surrounding properties, passed through a marriage settlement and a series of trustees — among them Edward Strelley Pegge Burnell of Winkburn Hall, a descendant of the old Pegge family of Derbyshire — and was sold in 1872 to the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company for £3,650. The old gentry landscape was absorbed into the new industrial empire.
The Sheepbridge Inn, at which Steade’s tenants had drunk and the local community had gathered, was already converted into five dwellinghouses before the Sheepbridge Company acquired the site. In its place came Cavendish Square, Belvoir Terrace, Dunston Villas — a new community named not after the old local families but after the aristocratic Cavendish dukes of Devonshire who held the mineral rights, and after the Duke of Rutland’s estate at Belvoir. The Fowlers built in the manner of their age: ambitious, systematic, and with an eye on the patronage of the great.
Samuel Pegge, who had presided over the parish church as rector for forty-five years until his death in 1796, would have found the landscape of the 1870s unrecognisable. The fields he knew — Half Acres, Tomkinford Meadow, the closes and parcels described in the old deeds — were now sunk shafts, coke ovens and blast furnaces. His black marble memorial in the chancel of St Bartholomew’s, preserved through the demolition of the Norman church and the building of the new one in 1863, would survive another thirty years before the fire of January 1895 destroyed it. The church that Charles Steade had done so much to build, and that the Fowlers’ industrial wealth had transformed the parish to make necessary, outlasted its benefactors only by a few years before burning to the ground.
Chronology of the Fowler Family and Sheepbridge
1817 — John Fowler born at Wadsley Hall, 15 July.
1833 — John begins engineering apprenticeship under J. T. Leather, Sheffield.
1844 — John sets up as consulting engineer in London.
c.1855 — John Fowler senior and William Fowler acquire Whittington Hall.
1857 — Dunston and Barlow Mineral Company established. Processing plant at Sheepbridge designed by William Fowler. Ironworks offices on Dunston Lane built (weather vane dated 1857).
1858 — First collieries sunk; Albert Colliery (Deep Hard seam at 218 feet) among the first operations.
1860 — Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire extends membership to steelmakers.
1861 — Sheepbridge iron tested at Portsmouth for armour plate; reported to exceed all previous tests. Cavendish Square cottages (48 dwellings) built for workers.
1862 — Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company Limited formed. John Fowler opens the Metropolitan Railway (world’s first underground railway) in London.
1863 — New church of St Bartholomew’s, Old Whittington, built — largely funded by Charles Steade of Broom House.
1864 — Company formally launched. William Fowler chairman and managing director. By this date: 3 coal mines, 28 ironstone pits, 23 coke ovens, 4 blast furnaces, ironworks on 37 acres.
1865 — John Fowler elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Purchases Braemore estate, Ross-shire (40,000 acres).
1868 — J. Stores Smith becomes managing director; William Fowler retains chairmanship.
1870 — Marriage settlement of Charlotte Melicent Smith places Sheepbridge Inn site in trust with E. S. P. Pegge Burnell and W. B. Badnall.
1872 — Pegge Burnell and Badnall sell Sheepbridge Inn site (now 175-177 Broomhill Road and 1 George Street) to Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company for £3,650.
1875 — John Fowler takes Benjamin Baker into partnership. Rolling mill installed at Sheepbridge; diversification begins.
1880s — Steel production added at Sheepbridge alongside iron.
1883 — Construction of the Forth Bridge begins.
1890 — Forth Bridge opened, 4 March. Sir John Fowler created 1st Baronet, 17 April.
1895 — St Bartholomew’s Church destroyed by fire, 29 January. Sir John Fowler’s memorial and Samuel Pegge’s black marble tablet both lost.
1896 — Rebuilt church (architect E. R. Rollinson) reopened, September.
1898 — Sir John Fowler dies at Bournemouth, 20 November, aged 81.
1914-18 — Sheepbridge Works produces munitions under Ministry of Munitions.
1948 — Sheepbridge Engineering formed in anticipation of nationalisation.
1952 — Sheepbridge Coal and Iron nationalised.
1979 — Sheepbridge Engineering joins GKN to form GKN Sheepbridge Stokes.
Sources
Derbyshire Historic Environment Record, MDR5384: Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Works (including Albert Colliery), Chesterfield
Old Miner (oldminer.co.uk): Sheepbridge — detailed industrial and colliery history
Chris Hobbs (chrishobbs.com): Sir John Fowler (1817-1898) and the Forth Rail Bridge — includes full family details
Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 Supplement: Fowler, John (1817-1898), civil engineer — Wikisource
- Mackay: The Life of Sir John Fowler, Engineer, Bart., K.C.M.G. (1900) — Internet Archive
Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History: John Fowler; Cutlers Co: Master Cutlers
Wikipedia: Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet; Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire; Forth Bridge
Whittington History & Heritage Group: Mettam family archive deeds and title bundle, 175 Broomhill Road (research notes, 2026)
Land deed bundle, 175 Broomhill Road and 1 George Street, Sheepbridge: Conveyance 25 June 1872 (Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company purchase); Conveyance 24 November 1967; Conveyance 1971 and related mortgage documents