Along the Moors - Granville Nature Reserve

The Lilleshall Company

The presence of a rapidly expanding local iron industry hungry for raw materials meant there was little danger of Earl Gower’s venture not reaping major dividends and a period of unprecedented investment in mining followed. By the end of the 18th Century, the Donnington Wood coalfield comprised over 100 collieries, extracting ever-deeper seams of coal and iron ore for the needs of east Shropshire’s thriving industrial base. The scale of operations took another huge leap forward in 1802, when the elderly Lord Gower (then aged 81) relinquished his holdings to youngest son Granville Leveson-Gower, who dissolved the original partnership (as the Gilbert brothers were both dead) and formed a new company with the lessees of several ironworks and ironstone mines on his estate.

The Lilleshall Company, named after the family’s mansion near to the village itself, rapidly developed into the principal concern in the north of the coalfield, gradually taking over responsibility for the extraction of all coal, ironstone and limestone in the district; a position it enjoyed until nationalisation in 1947. The formalisation of the new partnership also established a blueprint for the company to develop into a fully integrated business responsible for all aspects of production, from the extraction of raw materials to the manufacturing of a wide array of finished goods, and it was through this strategy that it eventually found fame on a world stage. The vast amount of coal required to fuel these activities led to the sinking of even deeper mines in the Donnington Wood coalfield throughout the 19th Century, leaving a lasting impression on the modern day landscape…