Sir Ambrose Crowley and the South Sea Scheme of 1711

Sir Ambrose Crowley is well known as one of the greatest of early English industrialists. His claim to distinction rests on the immense scale of his operations and on his imaginative approach to the problems of industrial organization. The group of factories he established in County Durham, near Gateshead, constituted what was believed to be the largest ironworks in Europe and was probably the largest industrial unit in the England of his day outside the naval dockyards. Sir Ambrose, whose manufacturing career began in 1682, was an iron manufacturer, converting bar iron into the end products of the iron industry—steel, steelware, nails, and a wide range of iron components and implements. He had entered this branch of the industry as a nailmaker, and nailmaking remained the mainstay of his business.