Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

This is the story of a remarkable Black Country family. As far as I can see, no member ever wrote a book, admired a painting or professed enjoyment of music. Their love was for land, which they bought up in large measure, and for what lay beneath it – iron, coal and limestone. From humble sixteenth-century origins as ‘nailers’, they quickly understood the processes (pig-iron, smelt, slitting-mill) that lay behind the production of nails, those ubiquitous items ever-necessary in building, industry and armaments.

The family’s business interests flourished throughout the seventeenth century. They were extended through Staffordshire to Cheshire, to the banks of the River Severn and right down to the distant Weald of Kent. But it was in the Black Country where they did their deals, made advantageous marriages and developed new manufacturing processes. In keeping with the local community in Dudley they supported the King in the first Civil War, but when the castle garrison fell to parliamentary troops from Birmingham they quickly faced new reality and about-faced, to find themselves part of Parliament’s new administration in the area. As a wider family network they had consistency; the always acted with energy and judgement. In this case as in many others, they took the lead.

Despite their accumulation of wealth they appear to have lived relatively modestly, while owning large houses as part of estates they bought up. The true locus of the family, following its Dudley days, was Stourbridge. What is now the Talbot Hotel, much-altered of course, was their residence-in-chief throughout the century. The building has no grandeur. My impression from this book is that their true interests, other than business, lay in education, and in its spiritual counterpart, the church.

As to the latter, they were active lay participants. Regarding the former, schools and colleges continue to benefit from their endowments. Despite the ‘academic’ present-day leaning of these establishments, Thomas Foley, the best-known of the tribe, would have thought in terms of skills, and a quick passage to the world of work – so to benefit economically the region that he did so much to build up.

The narration is stylish, with flow and ease of expression. For the reader, the problem is that, in narrating the fortunes of each of the major Foleys, material is inevitably revisited. The involved reader can forgive Peacock on this point – the detail is all so interesting. For the industrial archaeologist the book is a goldmine of data on method and location. The non-specialist meanwhile is offered myriad glimpses into the life of the Black Country at the inception of its mighty growth, a period when England was riven by divisions of ideology.