Along the Moors - Lubstree

The Hammers

The Terminal Wharf Of The Humber Arm

After the dissolution of the monasteries, local landowner and fledgling industrialist Sir Walter Leveson, whose family had purchased the Abbey’s estates, established a forge on the site of the Abbot’s Mill, where a set of water-driven hammers used in the iron-making process were in operation by 1580. Just over a century later in 1678, these hammers had lent their name to the entire neighbourhood, which eventually became known, by derivation, as The Humbers. While local iron-production would eventually become centred on Donnington Wood, The Humbers area went on to acquire important status as a transhipment point for goods and raw materials travelling to and from the east Shropshire coalfield and by the mid-19th Century Lubstree Pool was a hive of activity once more.