Wharton Furnaces Gallery

Wharton Furnaces 1908 from a postcard. Courtesy Henry A Jewell

This is before modernisation. The furnaces were charged manually with furnacement dumping wheeled skips in tot he open top furnaces. The barrows were brought up in a lift to the charging floor (the tallest brown building with a pointed roof). Plenty of steam coming from the boiler house and blower house.

Jumping over to the back side after (part) modernisation and clearly both furnaces in blast. No other photograph has revealed there were roofs over sections of the stock bins. There is a long roof section with enclosed sides that has the appearance of a covered bridge at the far end. There is no ore ground, crane gantry or crane visible . . The immediate foreground is dominated by the reservoir. The buildings to the left were the Garage, Chemical Laboratory, Infirmary, and Offices

Overlooking the reservoir this is from broadly the same time period but at this time there are no roofed over sections of the stock bins. The extent of modernisation differs from the final plant arrangement. The incline ramp to the stock bins is on a long trestle. It was rebuilt on an earth fill later. Missing are:

1. Ore ground and ore bridge crane.

2. Dust catchers and gas cleaning plant.

3. High level footbridge linking the two sets of four stoves.

4. The overhead runway beam and supporting structure around the top of the skip hoist.

There is a mystery structure between the reservoir and the stock bins which has the appearance of a small skip hoist.

This picture is a revelation because for the first time it shows an earlier blast furnace and hoist to the far left , and the plume of steam suggests it is still in blast.

This priceless postcard view from a diagonally opposing perspective reveals the older, shorter, open topped furnace with it's adjacent hoist linked by a charging platform. The image is slightly confusing because the skip hoist on the taller furnace behind, appears to be on the furnace in front, but it is not. It is a trick of the camera angle. The colour postcard at the top of the page verifies it.

One other structure of note is the braced, tapered structure to the left of the boiler house (it looks like the support for a water tower without a tank up top). That is the skull cracker which was like a pile driver. It hoisted a heavy weight and dropped it on to solidified iron or slag to break it up. When the surface of molten slag or iron cools and solidifies in contact with cold air, it is said to have skulled over or to have a skull.

This was taken at the South West corner of the works on the South bank of the Morris Canal. Now the small blast furnace and hoist are more easily identified. On the extreme left beneath the trees is the General Office. Behind that is a fill upon which hopper cars were delivered to the ore ground. The blast furnace high line is behind and above that, running through the large covered shed. The Sanborn Fire maps identify this as the ORE HOUSE, but why the ore house was protected from the weather eludes me.

It is remarkable that so many large trees were allowed to grow here. Perhaps Wharton was ahead of its time, trying to preserve at least some of the natural environment.

The full site plan, which helps in trying to pinpoint the location of the photographer. The previous image was taken from the bottom left, and looking due East.

This was photographed from the same general area, but moving a lot closer to the furnaces, with the canal behind us. Now we can see more clearly that there is indeed a smaller skip hoist to the right of the stock bins and nearer to us, a smokestack with fan housings to improve the draughting. I can't explain that chimney, but probably was for additional steam raising capacity and might have been temporary during the final modernisation. The furnace tops have achieved their final arrangement but the ore bridge crane has not arrived. There is a curious pile of material underneath the stock bins. All of which suggests this photograph was taken during the final development and that the small skip hoist was only employed during this construction. It is reasonable to deduce that the ore ground was the final addition, and that is logical, because access to the stock bins, furnaces etc. would have been impossible had it been in place.

One other observation is that the runway beam on the furnace top was actually two parallel beams closely space. It just looks like a single beam in all other images.