the British Tar Industry
Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald (1748-1831) Father of the British Tar Industry
Not a lot of information on Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald can be found online. The oldcopper.org website has an article by Paul Luter (2005) which I quote here.
There is some good "stuff" on the oldcopper website much of it nothing to do with the history of Belchamp Walter. It is included here as a background for Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald and his wife Isabella, who is interred in the Church of St.Mary's along with others from her and Archie's family.
oldcopper.org
A website by Vin Callcut 2002-2021.
The website is written in PHP and I like the expanding drop-downs on some of the menus. The animation is different but maybe too gimicky.
While I share some of Vin's views on Social Media, that is not the reason that I don't spend time there!
Father of the British Tar Industry by Paul Luter 2005
Archibald Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald and the father of the British tar industry, was deeply concerned with "Promoting ideas which were useful to his country and to mankind in general". He was a man with a very acute mind able to research and implement his ideas in a very wide field of interests. He was an aristocrat during the Age of Enlightenment who put his education and capital to very good use. Besides being the father of the British tar industry he had a deep interest and understanding of many associated chemical developments and markets. After service in the navy and army he developed extensively the resources of his home estate at Culross which included coal, ironstone, fireclay and salt pans. For many good reasons he also established himself and his industries in the the Shropshire home of the Industrial Revolution. He worked with many of the great chemists, metallurgists and industrialists of the time including Joseph Black, Matthew Boulton, Richard Crawshay, John Loudon Macadam, William Murdoch, William Reynolds, John Wilkinson and others. He was granted nine patents covering inventions in the fields of coal tar, industrial chemicals and agro-chemicals and wrote many books and pamphlets explaining his discoveries.
