Metal Industry

Gate at the long established Ballantine iron foundry at Bo'ness. The cast iron sign states 'No admittance to works. All enquiries to office'.

St Gwrhai's church hall at Penstrowed just to the west of Newtown, Powys. The adjacent church gets all the attention in the texts I have been able to locate so far. The Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust website rabbits on about the nineteenth century church building and completely ignores this little gem.

The prisoner of war camp at Cultybraggan was completed in late 1941 and originally used to house Italian prisoners. It was later used as a transit camp for Germans and as a high security establishment for holding ardent nazis. Later it became a MOD training centre until closure in 2004. It is now owned by the local community through the Comrie Development Trust. The camp still contains a large number of nissen huts and these make a spectacular sight.

Coke movement from the storage bunkers at the Port Pirie smelter is by this telpher and grab. Mangrove Rat suggested an early start to catch the light around the harbour and smelter area, and it was certainly worth the effort.

The Rockley blast furnace which stands in the woods near Rockley Abbey Farm, was built between 1698 and 1704 to smelt the local iron ore. It was worked until the 1740s by the Spencer syndicate of ironmasters of Cannon Hall, Cawthorne.

One of three blast furnaces at the ArcelorMittal integrated steelworks at Dunkerque. The plant produces more than 6 million tonnes of steel per year.

Iron torpedoes shunting across an internal level crossing and under the No.4 blast furnace at the Dillingen steelworks. A close look into the building shows slag being teemed into ladles to be taken away for tipping. Dillinger Hütte GTS specialises in the production of heavy plate. The company was founded in Founded in 1685 and is Germany's oldest joint stock corporation.

Corrugated Mission Church / Congregational Hall, Creeting Road, Stowmarket. Old maps suggest that this building was erected c1900 as a Mission Church. It has since fallen on hard times but is still recognisable for what it was, although it may have been shortened at some point.

Ore terminal for Redcar steelworks seen from South Gare.

Corrugated building on Creeting Road, Stowmarket. I can find no information at all about this building and would welcome anything that fellow Flickrites can add. It looks a bit like a chapel but is rather small, unless it was once longer? The porch on this side has certainly been dismantled.

In 1788 three entrepreneurs from Stafforshire leased land around Blaenavon and established a major new ironworks using t he latest industrial methods. Initially there were three blast furnaces, all blown by steam power. It was immediately one of the largest ironworks in the world. The works continued to expand for the next seventy years, with the construction of two additional furnaces, and conversion to hot blast. Today the Blaenavon Ironworks is a world heritage site and the remains have seen considerable conservation work.

Seen on the 1879 built Running Shed at Quorn on the Pichi Richi Railway. In 1879 the Wolverhampton Corrugated Iron Company was operating from its original Shrubbery Ironworks premises where it had been established in 1857. The firm later moved to Ellesmere Port where the ironworks finally ceased production in 1957.

The steelworks at Uckange was last operated by Lorfonte. In 1991 the works was closed and the No.4 blast furnace and Cowper stoves have been preserved.

Walking back to my car after visiting Bullholme Lock, I passed a couple of nice corrugated iron buildings at the local 4x4 spares yard.

Two of the blast furnaces at the Corus Scunthorpe steelworks. The long out of use Queen Mary on the left with Queen Bess centre.

Some of the iron production from the blast furnaces of Dillinger Hütte GTS is sent by rail as hot metal in torpedo wagons. These four torpedoes are heading for the Röchling-Burbach steelworks at Völklingen a few kilometres from Dillingen.

Coke quenching at the Redcar steel plant seen from South Gare.

A grab shot through a train window as we passed the blast furnaces of the Xuanhua Iron and Steel Group Co. Ltd. This was a very busy place with at least six furnaces in blast.