Charles Wood (1702–74), a member of a family long connected with the iron industry of the West Midlands and later Cumberland, spent the last decade of his life at Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorgan, first supervising the construction of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and then acting as manager on behalf of owners who lived elsewhere. For about twelve months in 1766–7, while the furnace, forge and other plant were being built, Wood kept a daily record of the progress of the work, which provides a unique insight into the difficulties of such an undertaking in a remote part of the country. The book in which he wrote the diary was used in the 1750s to note Wood's experiments at Low Mill in Cumberland when he was attempting to perfect what became known as the 'potting' or 'potting and stamping' process of refining pig iron into bar iron, and also to record a tour he made of ironworks in various parts of England in 1754.

Tracing the rise and decline of a leading coal-owning family from their origins as Worcester timber merchants who moved to the new docks at Cardiff, through their acquisition of collieries in the Rhondda and involvement with the Taff Vale and other railways. Commercial success enabled the family to buy the Insole Court estate at Llandaff and another in Somerset. After the First World War, the family's fortunes stumbled with those of the South Wales coal industry generally, their businesses became part of the Powell Duffryn Combine, and their estates were sold.