Welsh Journals

significant landmark in the history of the British iron industry, but it was also to serve as a powerful engine of urban growth. Charles Wood was born in 1702, the son of an ironmaster from the Midlands. After spending time in Jamaica, he returned to Keswick, where he conducted experiments on platinum with his neighbour medical practitioner and amateur scientist William Brownrigg. Brownrigg (later Wood's brother-in-law), and fellow Cumbrian, Anthony Bacon, became founding partners in the Cyfarthfa ironworks. Wood was taken on by the two men to supervise the building of the works and stayed in Merthyr from April 1766 through to May 1767. The bulk of this book is taken up with a diary he kept during that time, although there is also a record of a tour of that Wood made of various ironworks in the west Midlands and the north of England in 1754. A detailed introduction by Philip Riden provides a wealth of biographical information and usefully contextualises Wood's writings. Without doubt, the book will be of most value to those with a specialist interest in the eighteenth-century iron industry. For unlike many diaries of the time, this is a journal that reveals little about the inner thoughts and emotions of its author. Rather it seems to have been penned with the intention of serving as a basis for the regular reports Wood had to make back to Brownrigg and Bacon. As such, it is a remarkable document that provides insights into a range of subjects concerning the technology and work processes involved in the construction of a state-of-the-art eighteenth-century blast furnace. Notwithstanding the focussed nature of the journal, there are occasional glimpses of the wider world within which Wood moved. He mentions the Waun fair, dinners at the Anchor and Crown and social visits although, as Philip Riden points out, Merthyr's 'polite society' was never an overly-populated group during these frontier years. The weather is also a constant feature of his daily entries. Well produced, with six plates and a full index of persons and places, this is an important edition of a source that is of much interest to those students of early Welsh industrialism. Andy Croll University of Glamorgan