The Beaumonts and the Ironworks (3)

Here is a picture of one of the cast iron slabs in Darton Church

(Picture: Tony Warden, with thanks)

It looks to me as though the slabs were commissioned by Thomas Beaumont (c.1675-1731) and his nephew George (1696-1736) quite soon after the four deaths that occurred in 1712 and 1713.

Other evidence suggests that there is a vault beneath the floor into which the coffins were placed. The wording of a memorial on the wall in the same chapel suggests that several more Beaumonts were placed into the vault but that by 1731 (the date of the next burial after 1713) marble was used, and inscriptions were in latin.

Also in Darton church is another cast-iron memorial slab, in the floor near the main altar. This is for William Cotton, who died in 1703. He was involved in various iron-related enterprises. The slab gives the name of his wife but not the date of her death, which was in 1721 when she was also buried at Darton. This suggests that the Cotton slab was made between 1703 and 1721.

William Cotton junior, who had the middle name Westby from his mother, was also much involved in ironworks in the early and mid 18th century. He knew the Beaumonts at least a little later on; this is revealed by a letter from Revd. Thomas Cockshutt of Cawthorne in 1739 stating that the two then parentless Beaumont boys – Thomas and George – were then staying in his house at Haigh (Yorks. Arch.Soc. DD70 93/3).

Matthew Wilson of Wortley Forge and his partner James Oates must also have been known to the Beaumonts, as both men owed substantial sums to George Beaumont's executors in the late 1730s (see list of securities; YAS DD70). Accounts kept for the boys reveal that interest was being paid on several hundred pounds of such borrowings in the early 1740s (Accounts kept for William Wrightson, who took over as executor, now in Doncaster Archives DD/BW/T/3) (Accounts kept for George Beaumont himself, now in this Archive, Box 1/001).

What is not known is how long the Beaumonts had been acting as financiers for the ironworks. My supposition is that the connection went back some years and was to do with land owned by the family, and the demand for firewood for the forges.

That we have some detailed accounts for the period from 1736 is due to the children being in the hands of guardians. I don't think we have any earlier accounts of financial or business transactions.

The two further fine cast iron slabs in the church at Sandal Magna near Wakefield remember some of the children of George Beaumont of Chapelthorpe. These were not cast until after 1712 because of the wording that states that George lies in Darton church. Moreover I don't think that these can have been made before 1723 because the heraldic device they carry is that associated with the Beaumonts of Whitley Hall, with whom the Beaumonts of Darton had no family connection till that year.