Gibbons Brothers (of Stourbridge)
c.1824 The Gibbons brothers, John, Benjamin and Thomas established the Corbyn's Hall Collieries and Blast Furnaces on their Corbyn's Hall estate near Dudley.
1829 Thomas died
The Gibbons were amongst the earliest of the south Staffordshire iron partnerships to adopt J. B. Neilson's patent hot-blast technology when it became widely available in the mid-1830s. However, there was little they could do to overcome the declining competitiveness of south Staffordshire as a pig iron-producing region, in the face of competition from the Scottish and Cleveland iron industries in the middle of the nineteenth century. The family's problems in the iron trade were for a long time compensated for by the resilience of their coal interests. The long-established Gibbons habit of buying land stood them in good stead, for it furnished them with a good deal of mineral-rich real estate in south Staffordshire. The Corbyns Hall estate proved a consistent source of wealth in this respect.[1]
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ Biography of the Gibbons family, ODNB