There is a small sandstone building hidden behind the public library in the village of Winlaton, high on a hill across the river from Newcastle upon Tyne. This is Winlaton Forge, a 300-year-old grade II-listed building, which once glowed with the heat of a furnace and thrummed with the sound of hammer on anvil. Winlaton is an ancient place with several pubs and a large number of strange myths and legends. Perhaps most notable of these is the fact that the long-shuttered cottage forge is the last remnant of a remarkable industrial experiment, the legacy of which should be written in iron, but is barely known.

The emergence of the British (and therefore global) working class has often been dated by historians to the ‘classic years’ of the Industrial Revolution (sometime between the late 1700s and early 1800s). It is typically located in leading British industrial centres such as the mills of Manchester and the manufactories of the West Midlands, and seen as the result of workers’ responses to hostile economic and political conditions. But a full century before the Industrial Revolution apparently gathered steam, Winlaton was undergoing a profound transformation overseen by an innovative young ironmonger, which complicates the standard account of the birth of an industrial proletariat in the late-eighteenth century.

Ambrose Crowley III set up an ironworks in Winlaton in 1690. Located on the south bank of the Tyne, Winlaton was part of County Durham (and would remain so until 1974), and governed by the City of Durham’s ‘prince bishops’. Before Crowley, the tiny village was an agricultural outpost with a sideline in small-scale coal mining. In a model then common throughout Britain — and indeed much further afield — its inhabitants were tied to the land they lived on and obligated to work for the landowners. What Crowley established around his ironworks to change this model was genuinely revolutionary: a self-contained industrial society where work was constant, wages were regular, and social welfare was built into the fabric of life.

Crowley moved to the North East from his native Black Country in the English Midlands at the age of around twenty-six, after falling out with rival ironmongers, who he believed had treated him unfairly. Aiming to trade across the North Sea, he initially set up shop in Sunderland, before moving further north. He was attracted to Winlaton because it sat upon rich seams of coal and was located next to the River Derwent — which meant a ready supply of fuel for his iron forges and power for his water mills. The area by the Derwent, which runs into the Tyne, soon became known as Winlaton Mill.

The traditional, scattered nature of the iron industry frustrated Crowley. He envisaged a more efficient operation where raw materials were turned into finished goods ready for distribution, all in one centralised location. He wrote a bold letter to the Midlands ironmongers telling them that the low prices his large-scale works could offer would drive them out of business. And Crowley’s vision extended beyond workflow. He recognised that a stable and healthy environment would foster a more productive workforce.

Crowley referred to his workforce as ‘this society’ or ‘my people’. He adopted a paternalistic responsibility towards his workers’ well-being. As Winlaton grew, its layout — which he designed carefully — was arranged into enclosed squares of workplaces and living quarters. This concentration of spaces for labouring, living, and working together helped to create a new kind of social identity.

‘Crowley’s Crew’, as the ironworkers became known, were highly skilled specialists, producing everything from nails to weapons, always to meticulous standards. They made anchors for the Royal Navy. They made the gates for Buckingham House (the building that pre-dated Buckingham Palace). At the same time, the Crowley Ironworks also produced something much darker: chains for the slave trade.

There were other exploitative aspects to the enterprise. Although the workers had a relative amount of freedom for the time, they were still bound to Crowley’s will. The works operated under the progressive but still stringent ‘Law Book of the Crowley Ironworks’. Running to around a hundred thousand words, this document detailed everything from work schedules to personal conduct, ensuring that the works functioned to Crowley’s precise orders. Workers were registered in the book with fastidious detail — name, birthplace, height, religion, and even their smoking habits were all noted. 

Time-keeping was rigorously recorded, with timesheets noting employees’ arrival (‘Come’) and departure (‘Run’). Those arriving late faced penalties, with wages docked for lost time. It was long and hard work — thirteen and a half hours a day, six days a week. Crowley—a benevolent autocrat — regarded idleness as a personal abuse, and said he felt ‘cheated’ when workers failed to meet his requirements. Monitors enforced discipline, who patrolled the squares to ensure that swearing, smoking, and apparently drunken and riotous behaviour were kept in check. Fines were imposed for infractions. The gates of the squares were locked at night, and workers couldn’t leave between 9pm and 5am. There was however some evening entertainment to lighten the mood. Each square had its own alehouses, which is one of the reasons why modern Winlaton has such a high density of pubs. 

In exchange for obedience, Crowley provided stability. He paid his workers a weekly wage — a revolutionary concept, which offered the workers a degree of self-sufficiency and required Crowley to issue his own form of paper banknotes. (The Bank of England wouldn’t start issuing banknotes in set amounts for several decades.) A ‘poor’s fund’ provided various welfare allowances, including support for sick workmen and bereaved widows. The ironworks also funded a school, earning Winlaton the nickname ‘Knowledge Hill’. A doctor was appointed to tend to workers’ ailments, a rare privilege at the time. There was even a ‘Committee of Aggrievances’, which gave workers a voice in this pre-union age.

Crowley’s operation grew to become the largest iron manufactory in Europe. He set up a headquarters in London and ran the Winlaton operation from there. He was knighted by Queen Anne, and became a Sheriff of London and later an MP. He was also a founding investor in the South Sea Company (which would make copious use of his iron chains — while Crowley provided his workers with some form of escape from feudalism, he was happy to place others in subjugation). Although he died in 1713, the business continued to thrive under his son John and then, after John’s early death, his widow Theodisia, who ran the ironworks for more than 50 years.

Crowley’s Crew were fiercely protective of their rights, standing against rival works and government intimidation when necessary. During the 1800s, Winlaton became a hotbed of Chartism, with Crowley’s Crew taking up arms to support the reformers and protest their cause. In the 1830s, Winlatoners turned the village into an armed fortress, blocking approaches with cannons and pikes to defend themselves against government troops, then marched on Newcastle to face the local authorities. The unified spirit of Crowley’s Crew became part of the folklore of radicalism in the area.

A key member of Crowley’s Crew during this period was Joseph Cowen Snr, a former blacksmith’s apprentice at Crowley’s works who became a radical MP. His son, Joseph Cowen Jnr, was born in Winlaton and shared his father’s political ideology. Cowen Jnr succeeded his father as MP for Newcastle, and established the Newcastle Daily Chronicle newspaper. A charismatic champion for the working class, Cowen Jnr helped to found the Winlaton Literary and Mechanics’ Institution and its associated library, and brought Garibaldi to the Institution in 1854.

By then, Crowley’s ironworks had become a dwindling force, impacted by economic pressures and new technologies like machine nail-making. Its sites and stock were sold in 1863. Although Crowley’s Crew no longer existed, the people of Winlaton continued to celebrate their exploits and carry on their traditions, among them the proud institutions of the Winlaton Brass Band and the village’s ‘rapper’ sword dancing team, both regarded as being among the earliest and best examples of their kind.

Winlaton’s rebellious spirit found expression in song, most famously in ‘The Blaydon Races’, an anthem of Geordie pride that still echoes throughout the area’s pubs today. (During Crowley’s time, Blaydon was an outpost of Winlaton. Today, Winlaton is in the constituency of Blaydon.) Written by Geordie Ridley in 1862, the song immortalises the people of Winlaton and Blaydon not as faceless labourers, but as living, breathing characters, such as Coffee Johnny, a Winlaton blacksmith and bare-knuckle boxer who led the Winlaton Band. Though light-hearted, the song encapsulates the camaraderie and determination of the people shaped by Crowley’s industrial experiment.

Winlaton’s industrial heyday is now long gone. The last forge is silent, the factory squares redeveloped. Many of the pubs are shuttered. Its one surviving working men’s club is struggling to keep the lights on. In the corridors of the West End Club, a display of photos and artefacts tells the story of Winlaton, the Crowley ironworks, and its role in shaping our society. Before Manchester’s mills, Birmingham’s factories, or London’s docks became synonymous with the emergence of the world’s working class, it was here, on this hill in historic County Durham, that the foundations were laid.