The Blacketts

The Blacketts is the 2022 winner of the Business Archives Council’s Wadsworth Prize for outstanding contribution to British business history.

The Blacketts have cast long shadows over the region's history as Newcastle merchants, miners, the builders of Wallington Hall and political figures in the 1600s and 1700s. Greg Finch's flowing account of the first three Sir William Blacketts is based on extensive new research.The Blacketts have cast long shadows over the region's history as Newcastle merchants, miners, the builders of Wallington Hall and political figures in the 1600s and 1700s. Yet historians over the years have previously found it hard to get out from those shadows and to see more than the silhouettes of myth. Greg Finch's flowing account of the first three Sir William Blacketts, based on extensive new research, now dispels those myths. He reveals a vivid story of a dramatic rise from modest origins, the opening up of the regional lead industry, the creation and operation of a huge business and the crises that followed during a turbulent century of conflict and progress.