Cast iron pots were one of the exports from the industrial towns of the midlands via the River Severn and Bristol, but they also had a closer link with Bristol through Abraham Darby. He established the Baptist Mills Brass Works in 1702.

Abraham Darby was a pioneer of the Industrial Revolution. He found brass making too labour-intensive and experimented with casting brass and iron to make pots quickly and cheaply. He patented the process of using sand moulds. He then sold the brass works to Nehemiah Champion in the 1720s and moved back to the midlands to concentrate on the Coalbrookdale ironworks.

He leased the Coalbrookdale furnace, near Shrewsbury, and made iron pots there. Thomas Goldney II, a Bristol merchant and fellow Quaker with family connections to the brass industry, provided the financial backing for the Coalbrookdale ironworks to expand and prosper, and the Goldney family remained the major shareholders until the 1780s.