Ironbridge Uncovered The Great British Story: Regional Histories

The town of Ironbridge in Shropshire, famous for being the

birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. To me, boxer Richie

Woodhall, it's home. I grew up a mile away and Ironbridge was my

childhood playground. In the school holidays, I'd find myself down here

almost every day. I'd go fishing just down the hill there on the

river. Like many people, I've taken my home town for granted. Now I'm

going on a journey to unlock this town's history.

Nick, I must have walked past this memorial 1,000 times and never give

it a second glance. It's a journey of discovery and

revelation, with some surprises on the way.

That's incredible, isn't it? He wasn't actually killed in the

war. So he died at a later time. I've lived in this area for 42

years. I've never really asked the questions about the history of the

area and also the people and now I This is the bridge that made

Ironbridge in Shropshire famous. Built by local ironmaster Abraham

Darby III in 1779, it was the world's first iron bridge. The town

then grew up around it. In the 1800s, in its industrial heyday,

over 2,500 people lived here. I want to find out who those people

were and how they lived, but I've got no idea where to start. I've

drafted in a bit of help. Historian Nick Barrett is going to give me

tips on what to look for. Lesson one.

I feel I'm on a journey. I want to find out in-depth about the history

of this area. How do I go about that? How do I go about finding the

history about buildings, people - where do I look? First of all,

start with what fascinates you. This is your personal experience.

It's very easy to take it all for granted because you've grown up

here. You take all of the various bits of architecture as given, but

you need to look at them with a fresh pair of eyes, that's the

exciting thing about it. Just walk up and down the street. Focus on

things that perhaps you haven't really noticed that much before.

Everything has got an explanation. Everything links into the much

bigger picture. It's taking those small clues and then expanding them

out so you really understand how Ironbridge formed and changed.

the answers are here, just doing a bit of exploring, I suppose.

Walking around is always the best place to start.

Whenever you look at your home town, the best place to start is the high

street. Not only is it the closest but also the oldest part of town as

well. You always need shops. You can start to see some of the clues.

Many people just look at the shop fronts to work out where they're

going to go into. Raise your eyes a bit and you have fantastic clues

that you sometimes don't spot. Some of these buildings are very

different in style. They've been built at different moments in time.

Clues like that window, just bricked up. Glass was taxed, so you

brick them up to save a bit of money.

I've never even questioned why windows would be bricked up. This

small detail shows me I've really got to start thinking differently,

if I want to understand how people used to live.

Nick, this street looks like it holds a couple of stories. It looks

fantastic. I love the angle. Shall we have a little explore? You get a

sense of different brickwork as well. It's very yellow on this side,

but there's a lot more blue brick back here. Worth the climb, isn't

it? Great view. It's fantastic, but you get a sense of what it's like

to be above the town, all the roofs are jumbled together. If you can

get above the town, always try and do so.

Then the town's war memorial catches Nick's attention.

Nick, I must have walked past this memorial about 1,000 times and I've

never give it a second glance. is the first port of call for

anyone trying to do local history. It's a fixed point in time, but

also you've got the names of so many residents here.

What about this, though, three soldiers all with the same surname,

Speake. We see the surname Speake - there's

three soldiers there that have been tragically killed. I mean, they

could be from the same family. Almost certainly, yes. It's a

fairly small, self-contained place, so we can actually use this to find

out what happened here, the particular tragedy of losing three

members of a family, they could be cousins or brothers, but it gets

you to the heart of the community, what life was like before the First

World War came along, what they were doing, their occupations. It's

a great entry point to finding out more about Ironbridge. So far it's

the names of the soldiers that have really captured my imagination.

There's one name in particular, the Speake family. Were they brothers

or cousins? Did their deaths destroy an entire Ironbridge

family? Already I'm starting to ask questions. Walking up the high

street's been a great start, but Nick wants to meet local people.

The key to uncovering any town or village's history is by talking to

the people who live there. So I've organised a bit of a do at the

Tontine Hotel, the town's oldest building. All I need to do now is

guarantee people will come. BBC Radio Shropshire. ..Well, we

need people to come and speak to us, really. We're going to be in the

Tontine Hotel from 4pm till 7pm. That's Richie Woodhall on the show

talking about this documentary on the BBC. They're going to be at the

Tontine Hotel, Monday, in Ironbridge, 4pm until 7pm. If

you've got any stories, old footage, photographs about Ironbridge and

how it has changed over the years, do go down and see Richie and the

team. I suppose in these situations,

speaking to local people, I mean, it's hands-on experience, it's

crucial. It is, yes. We think of archives as being documents in

libraries, museums, but actually we're all archives. We all remember

things. We all like telling stories. That's what we want to get here

today. It's really personalising your journey and finding out from

the people who've lived through quite a lot of this history what it

meant to them. We've had a tie with Ironbridge for

over 50 years with my grandfather here, who was working in the pie

shop. The sewer is there. What happened in the old days then - it

pumped into the river, I suppose? Everything went into the river. Yet,

we learned to swim in the river. Oh, my goodness, what have you got

there? These are just local people on here going back, gosh, 40 years

or more there. This is a treasure trove. To actually be able to find

people who were here at a crucial point in the town's history is

stunning, really lucky stuff. Nick was right, simply by listening

I'm starting to understand Ironbridge's ancestry. But when

Rosemary Clegg and her friends arrive, I discover it's not just me

interested in the town's war memorial. I did some research on

the war memorial, into each individual man. On the website was

answering questions about the individuals, so yeah. The war

memorial here in Ironbridge fascinates me because there are

certain surnames on there, there's one surname, Speake, there's three

people who were called Speake, who have lost their lives. Were they of

the same family, do you know? They were? There were quite a few

brothers of different families. That was Word War I, am I right?

Yes. Is this a photo of... That's out of the newspaper. That's one of

the Speakes? I can't believe my luck and neither can Nick.

Rosemary's coming up with answers I thought would take hours, even days

of research. Why did you do it originally? Pure interest, just I

thought, they're going to be forgotten. Was it a case of you

looking at that memorial one day and thinking, "I want to find out

about these people"? Yes. Here you have a goldmine of information.

This is why it's so important to talk to people who have got that

local knowledge. In many ways it would have been easy to run around

and try to replicate some of this. It's here. You're beginning to

answer some of those early questions. The war memorial is the

starting point. You've got some names and there it is, all done for

you. It's now a case of working out what other questions need answers.

It's now focusing back in on what you need to find out and what's

missing. I think Richie's going to go on a

really exciting journey. What's he going to expect? Well, expect the

unexpected. There's a world of possibility and he has to start

being ruthless and focus on one or two things.

So day two, and Nick's words are ringing in my ears. I've got to

follow what interests me and start to be ruthless. I've had a night to

think about it, and I've decided, there's a couple of families that

really caught my imagination, the Speake family. Three brothers lost

their lives. This is a very small town, is Ironbridge. That must have

been absolutely devastating. It's devastating to lose one soldier,

but three from the same family. I'd like to know about them.

I'm going to research the lives of the Speake brothers. By building a

picture of how they and their family lived, I can start to

understand what life was like here in the early 1900s. Mary McKenzie,

one of the experts at Shrewsbury Archives, has done some digging for

me using the 1911 census. Interestingly enough, we did a bit

of research into the family and we found that they were a very...

There was a lot of children, nine children. Nine! The parents

actually got married after they had a few of the children. OK. That was

not particularly unusual in those days. They were married in 1891.

The family, they lived in Ironbridge. They appear to have

lived in Lincoln Hill. We can see from the census that the father in

1911, the father was a labourer and the boys seem to work as moulders

in the iron works, which I understand is the people who made

the moulds in which the iron was poured into.

So the Speake soldiers were from a family of nine children, Henry,

Alfred, James, Percy, Albert, Violet, Nelly, Thomas and Daisy.

Their parents were Thomas and Susanna Speake and on the night of

the census in 1911, they were living at number 15 Lincoln Hill,

Before they signed up for the Army, all four brothers worked in the

iron industry. It's incredible, already with these few details I'm

starting to build a picture of their life. A great day. I really

wanted to find out about the Speake family and I have done. I found out

about even their occupations, finding out that their parents had

nine kids. I've got an address where they actually lived on

Lincoln Hill. I want to go back to that cottage, where is it? I want

to have a look at it and try to picture how these people lived.

Armed with the address, I've recruited Ron Miles, local amateur

historian to help me out, as the house numbers on Lincoln Hill might

have changed over the last century. Speake family was well known in

Ironbridge. Where we're standing now I'm 90% certain, the Speakes

had a shop here at the bottom of Lincoln Hill. They lived in a

cottage, probably number 15, halfway up Lincoln Hill on the

left-hand side. There's one solitary cottage there. Is there

anything you don't know about Ironbridge? I don't know much about

Ron, the cottage is on the drawing, they're here then, aren't they?

Yeah, the cottage is right here. About ten of them here. Looking

through there, there's whatlooks like a fireplace there. Would that

have been in the house or not? would have been at the rear of all

these eight or nine cottages. That would have been the remnants of

limestone burning on this hill. you look closely, there's like

walls on walls and steps, so all these cottages, these are the

remains of the cottages that were all along here? Yeah, they were

here probably until 1970. I've had a cup of tea in one of them. So Ron

thinks number 15 has been demolished, but I'm not convinced.

I think it could have just been renumbered. So in my new capacity

as historian, I might do a bit of my own research.

We are after number 15, you see. Yes, I don't know where 15 is.

12. That's 14. Do you think 15 would be down or further up? Really,

it's anybody's guess. I suspect it might have been on the road on that

side, because that is also Lincoln Hill. The road just at the back

here? Yeah, Lincoln Hill is up there, Lincoln Hill is up there and

there's a junction up there and it's still Lincoln Hill up there to

the brow of the hill. I've just spoken to a resident who

lives at number 12. She's pointed me in this direction. It's got a

good case that it could be up this road here.

The more closely I look at number 16, the more I think that this

could have been two cottages at one point. It was two cottages

originally. The other one is next door to it. So what's the one next

door down to it from that, it would have come up, 16, 15, it's

definitely two. This could be the end of the line. I've actually

spoken to someone who knows all about the history of these two

cottages here and this is number 16 Lincoln Hill. We think at some

point there was two cottages here. If you look at the bricks, we think

that this could have been the path. We think this was the front door to

number 15. And if that is the case, then 15 Lincoln Hill is where the

Speake family lived. But am I right? I've invited

historian Nick Barrett back to test out my theory. Now I've done my own

bit of research. I actually think that they lived here. Well, I've

been doing a bit of research of my own as well. Not to check up on you,

obviously, but out of curiosity, because I was fascinated by their

story. Back then, I picture this cottage being two cottages. Back

then, they lived in... Working- class families lived in smaller

cottages, could this have been two cottages?

So Nick cross-references the old maps with the electoral register

and something called the 1910 valuation office survey, which

lists who owned and rented properties at the time. So a little

more in depth than my research. Thomas Speake was not living at

this property. He's not there. you sure, Nick? Absolutely certain.

The maps that I've seen, they assign numbers to each of these.

This one is definitely only numbered as number 16. So in 1910

this wasn't two buildings, it was one? It was only one building, it

was number 16. You've disappointed me. I'm very sorry. I hopefully can

give you some good news. It looks like he was living, at the time of

the 1911 census, in number 15. At some point later, certainly by late

1913, he was in number 11. But the 1910 records show that he was in

property number 12. He was on a weekly rent in number 12. I guess,

having a large family, nine children, he needs space. Now if

times are hard and you can't afford to live in a large house, he'd have

to downsize. Numbers 12, 13 and 14 were all grouped together. And at

certain points in time he was living in each and every one of

those. He would literally move from place to place. Not that many

possessions, perhaps - it all goes on rent and food. You wouldn't have

large amounts of furniture. Many of these houses would be ready-

furnished, with just bed space. Of course, this is a very different

time. It's hand to mouth existence. Yes, in this sense, very common.

I've made the common mistake most amateur historians make. I wanted

that cottage to be number 15. I looked for the evidence to back up

my theory. Next time I will do it Nick's way. It's very easy to jump

to conclusions. Because you desperately want it to be true, you

seize on one piece of evidence and forget all the other bits. It's

like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You've got the first clue, but it may not

be the whole picture. That's why you have to keep going back and

asking questions maybe of people you've already spoken to. Go back

to house number 12 where you've met someone and you think this can't be

the right house - it's over there. Actually you re-appraise what you

found. How many metaphors do you want to use - jigsaw puzzles,

layers of onions. It's about depth and perception and getting your

teeth into it, and he's done that so well.

So I'm making good progress, by understanding a bit more about this

one family, I'm learning how difficult life would have been in

the early 1900s here in Ironbridge, especially with nine children.

Moving house from week to week and constantly looking for work.

However, there's still one mystery I haven't solved and that's where

the three brothers died. I found records of the deaths of Percy and

Alfred, who were killed in battle a year apart.

Got him. He's Speake, Ironbridge, I can't find anything about H

Speake, Henry or Harry as he was known. Neither can anybody else

I've spoken to. We certainly found that there were two brothers who

appear to have been killed in the First World War. Alfred, who died

in March 1915, and Percy, who died in April 1916. We haven't been able

to find, I think you thought there was a Harold or an H. Yes, there's

three Speakes on the memorial itself. There was an A, a P and

another one. There's one I cannot find any information on at all, one

of the brothers. He's on the war memorial, but I contacted lots of

people in the area and none of them But then I make a breakthrough.

We've tracked down Naomi Hindly. She's the granddaughter of Daisy

Speake, the youngest of the Speake children. So today, I might uncover

the mystery of where and how Harry It's probably the final piece of

the jigsaw to be honest, to speak to a relative of those brothers and

she might be able to just shed a little bit more light on the

Hello. Naomi, yeah? Yeah. Richie. Pleased to meet you. You

OK? I like the dog. He ain't going to bite me, is he? No, he's not.

How are you, you OK? I'm fine, thank you. We have another of

Alfred and Percy's brothers commemorated on the Ironbridge war

memorial, H Speake. At this moment no trace can be found of H Speake.

We think he was killed with the brothers. He wasn't actually killed

in the war. So, he died at a later time in the Beeches Hospital. He

wasn't killed in the war, so hence probably there are no records.

Beechers Hospital was just a stone's throw from the house.

Absolutely. He never died in the war? No. He didn't die in the war

at all. Four brothers went, two were killed. Two came back. I think

she was quite proud that her brothers actually went. But she was

young at the time. I think she used to point out on the war memorial

that they were all there. We used to laugh because Harry was actually

there and didn't actually die. She went, well he got his name there,

but he didn't actually die there. She was quite... Did she have any

pictures at all? I've got a few pictures that she's written on the

back of. Funny enough, Harry. That's Harry there. That's Harry.

Later on in life, obviously. Funny teeth. Right, OK. So just, again it

backs up the story. Because he's a lot older here than he would be in

the war. Yes. So he came back. I'm a little bit surprised, to be

honest. I thought the three brothers died in the Great War.

Only two did. That would explain why Harry Speake, H Speake, there

was no record of his death or anything like that. A little bit

surprised. In a way, I mean, it must have been terrible to lose two

sons, but at least they didn't lose three sons, that's all I can say

about that. I think it's brought closure to the story now on the

Speake family. Very proud of them, actually, and speaking to a

relative, I think it's just capped it off nicely. But my journey isn't

over yet. Nick told me to concentrate on what interests me.

Well, there's another name I want to know more about that's Maurice

EA Darby. He was one of the soldiers listed on the neighbouring

village Coalbrookdale's war memorial. If, like me, you grew up

around here, you'll know the name Darby. My school was even called

Abraham Darby. It was the Darby family that built the iron bridge

and for over 150 years, they owned the largest ironworks in

Coalbrookdale. Round here they're an industrial dynasty. Come on. I

know Maurice Darby is a direct descendant of the family. I'd love

to know more about his life and how it compares to working class Speake

family. He came from a totally different background. His family

were very, very wealthy. It was just interesting, obviously, he was

killed as well, finding out about him. His life was totally different

to the Speakes. They were working- class, hard, hard grafting people,

I'm not saying he wasn't hard grafting, hard working, but he led

a totally different life. I'm heading to Coalbrookdale Archives

to see Gillian Cramton. Hopefully she'll help me fill in the missing

gaps. Maurice is born in London. That's the life that he knew. He

was educated at Eton. He went to Sandhurst. He would have been very

well aware of the company, I'm sure, when he came up here. But he wasn't

actually involved in the ironworks. Generations before that, all his

family are from this area, but he had no real connection living here?

I think he would have had other relatives living, but certainly no

connection to the actual industry itself in terms of him knowing

anything about how to run an ironworks as his forefathers did.

Maurice's father, he was the last Darby to be associated with the

company itself. Yes, with the Coalbrookdale company, Alfred Darby

II, he was the last chairman from the family. He died in 1925. That

ended the association with the Coalbrookdale company with the

Darby family. He was the last person to be in charge. So with the

family connection to Coalbrookdale at an end, Maurice was free to

pursue his own dreams. After leaving school, he went to

Sandhurst and became a captain in the Army. So aged just 20, he found

himself in the trenches leading 100 men to battle. Only eight months

into the war, Maurice was killed in action. But Gillian wants to show

me an incredible artefact they have here in the archives. He was killed

in battle in 1915, on the 11th of March. This is the letter that says

"I hereby certify that Lieutenant Maurice AE Derby, 1st Grenadier

Guards, died of wounds received in action." And that his remains can

be removed to England without any chance of infection. So, this was

the letter that went to his family? Yes. To tell him that he was dead?

Uh-huh. That's incredible, isn't it? Sent from France. Look at that!

That's interesting, so they're saying then that his remains can be

returned to England without any infection. So it's more or less

saying he's dead, but you can come and... Come and collect his body.

Come and collect him. That was unusual. I was going to say, that

would be unusual. So Maurice's body was repatriated,

brought home and buried here in Shropshire in Little Ness. This is

common practice nowadays, but the soldiers and officers of the First

World War were usually buried where they fell. It must have been so

rare for someone to be killed on the battlefield, you know, Word War

I, and yet the family goes over, you know, across to France, and to

bring him back, to actually find him. They probably didn't know

where he was. They were given permission. They must have been a

family that was well thought of, well respected. Here he is. Maurice

AA Derby, Lieutenant, Grenadier Guards, killed in action March 11,

1915, aged 20. I've traced a distant relative of Maurice's, Mark

Hamilton Russell, and I've arranged to meet him at the family home,

Dudmaston Hall in Quatt, Shropshire. I wonder if he knows just how

unusual it was for the body of a soldier killed in the First World

War to be brought home? Did you know that there were

probably only about four or five people ever to be brought back from

the First World War, who died and had their bodies brought back? Did

you know that? I didn't, but I did know he must be one of very few.

Yes, it was actually his uncle that went and got him back. It says that

it was on a night-time, so while the battle was more or less going

on, or just after the battle was going on rather, his uncle actually

went out to the battlefield, literally sifting through bodies

and actually found him. Wow, no, I didn't know that. That's amazing.

Can you imagine a 20-year-old boy in that position, in a war like

that? It's extraordinary, isn't it, and not just a boy as you say, but

also to have such responsibility looking after... A company

commander at the age of 20, looking after in the region of 100. 100,

some men and some other boys and have to be the person that they all

look up to and has all the answers to all the dangers that they're

facing. Mark, have you found it interesting? Amazing. I've learned

some history about my family which I never knew. I've learned some

very intimate and, at the time, would have been very emotional

aspects of the family. And I thank you very much for bringing it to my

and I will distribute that to my family's attention. It's been eye

opening and somewhat emotional to discover some facts about the

So, that wander up the High Street I grew up on has taken some twists

and turns and each of them's led to another story, another surprise,

another surprise. Ironbridge, a place I thought I knew so well, a

place I'm getting to know all over Discover your own place in history

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