Coffee Pot from the Japanware collection at Pontypool Musuem

The Hanbury Family

The Hanbury family of ironmasters had owned furnaces and forges in the area from around c. 1570 but showed little interest, exercising control from Gloucester. However, when Major John Hanbury took over the family business in 1685 he moved to Pontypool so that he could directly manage the ironworks.

In 1697, it was John Hanbury, at his iron works in Pontypool, who developed a rolling mill for producing a iron sheet that was both smooth and thin. This was a vast improvement on the old hammering process that involved hammering out the metal by hand in order to make the thin iron sheets. It was very laborious process and not always successful. The new method could also be produced at a third of the cost of the old hammering process. The sheets could then be made into a range of kitchenware such as pots, kettles and saucepans.

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