Building Steam

From a modest eighteenth-century blacksmith’s forge in the historic Norfolk market town of Thetford emerged one of Britain’s greatest engineering dynasties. This book traces the remarkable story of the Burrell family from the arrival of Benjamin Burrell in the early eighteenth century through successive generations of craftsmen, inventors, civic leaders, and industrial pioneers. Drawing upon parish records, wills, apprenticeship indentures, business archives, newspapers, and contemporary accounts, it follows the family’s transformation from village blacksmiths into internationally respected manufacturers of agricultural machinery, portable steam engines, traction engines, and showman’s engines.

Alongside the development of the Burrell company, Matthew Evans also explores the wider social and economic forces that shaped its success: the Agricultural Revolution, Victorian industrialisation, war, technological innovation, and Britain's emergence as the ‘workshop of the world’. Part family history, part industrial archaeology, and part social history, this richly illustrated volume reveals how a small Thetford forge became Charles Burrell & Sons, a name synonymous with engineering excellence and one of the most influential steam-engine builders of the Victorian age. Through the story of one remarkable family, it offers a window into the transformation of Britain from a rural society into the world’s first industrial nation.