Winlaton

Crowley comes to Winlaton

In 1690, the London ironmonger Sir Ambrose Crowley leased a disused corn mill in Winlaton and began building an ironworks to supply the Royal Navy with nails, chains, anchors and tools. It grew fast: by the early 1700s, Crowley's combined works at Winlaton, Winlaton Mill and neighbouring Swalwell employed up to a thousand people and were, by most accounts, the largest integrated ironworking complex in Europe.

A workforce two centuries ahead of its time

Crowley ran his works under a written constitution, the Law Book of the Crowley Ironworks, that gave his employees an elected workers' committee, company-funded sick pay, a resident doctor, a school and widows' pensions — benefits most British workers would not see again for the best part of two centuries. He is also credited with an early cheque-payment system, his "Current Bills," trusted and honoured by shops across the district from the 1690s. It is a genuinely progressive record for the age — though not an untroubled one: Crowley's works also produced shackles, collars and other ironware for the Atlantic slave trade, a part of the business history that sits uncomfortably alongside its reputation for enlightened management.

Winlaton after Crowley

The ironworks outlived Crowley by decades before eventually closing, and the skills developed here are credited with helping seed the later Sheffield steel industry. Winlaton today is a residential village on Gateshead's western edge, its industrial past marked by a scheduled monument at Winlaton Mill rather than any surviving machinery.