![]() ![]() Products like the cast-iron ploughshare made some blacksmiths poorer. The industrial revolution punished businesses that did not understand or welcome its new technologies and rewarded those that did. The addition of a small foundry to his own forge shows that such lessons struck home. But he must have seen that, for example, ploughshares made in a foundry lasted longer than any made by an ordinary blacksmith. The technology of ironfounding was still being developed when Robert Tasker came to Abbotts Ann. Yet it must always have been clear that the village was too inaccessible for what Robert Tasker had in mind, and the site too small to satisfy his ambitions. To achieve that the forge expanded to become, for a time, the Abbotts Ann Ironworks. If he was to succeed he had to take advantage of the situation. He knew that an ordinary blacksmith's shop could not supply what the industrial revolution, then nearing its height, could offer to customers of a major ironworks. Second only to his religion were his ambitions for the forge. The earliest known photograph of the Taskers Waterloo Foundry, taken between 18 For a while Robert had to rely on his inner courage and resourcefulness, finding customers in places like Newbury and Southampton in order to stay in business. Landowners in the area, members of the established church, saw any kind of dissent as a threat to their authority. His neighbours may have found him tiresome. It seems his nonconformist faith made him some enemies. But feeling he needed to do more, he opened his cottage for prayer meetings on Sunday evenings. As a nonconformist he attended Andover Congregational Church. The young Robert Tasker was a keen businessman, but more important to him was his strong Christian faith. In Abbotts Ann, near Andover, there was a forge owned by a smith called Thomas Maslen. The cottage in Abbotts Ann where Robert Tasker lived, and in which he hosted prayer meetings. But he was ambitious, and left Wiltshire in February 1806. As the eldest son, Robert Tasker would have been brought up to be a blacksmith. The story began near Andover, in the early years of the 19th century, when Robert Tasker and his brother, William, began what was to become the Waterloo Ironworks.Īt the heart of those ironworks was a forge, which must have reminded them of the blacksmith's shop run by their father in Stanton-St-Bernard in Wiltshire. For 170 years, Taskers were a leading manufacturer of a wide range of agricultural implements and machinery, steam and stationary engines and road vehicles. ![]()
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