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Rapid growth of the village of Carnforth followed a decision to promote a company to smelt haematite at Carnforth. Iron ore was readily accessible by way of the Furness Railway, and the completion of the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway in 1861 to a junction with the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway at Tebay allowed coke to be obtained direct from the Durham Coalfield. A new railway connection from Wennington, making a direct link with the Iron and Steel centres in the West Riding of Yorkshire opened up access to important markets.
The Carnforth Haematite Iron Company was formed in 1864 with a capital of £100,000. The leading promoter was Herbert John Walduck, (1) a Manchester Iron and Copper merchant with a home in Silverdale. Associated with him were John Hall, Silversmith, Thomas Ledward, Merchant, James Pickles, Iron merchant and William Slater, solicitor, all of Manchester and Edward Lord from Todmorden. Shares were also held by Henry Bessemer and his brother-in-law, Robert Lonsdon. Edward Barton, Engineer in the employment of the Company, who had considerable experience of iron-making techniques on Teesside and in West Cumberland, was appointed Managing Director. He arrived in Warton about 1867. He lived in Warton Hall until 1873, when he moved to live in Warton Grange, his new home.
Under his supervision, blast furnaces and ancillary plant were erected, and a rail line was built to connect the works with the London and North Western Railway. The site of the works was in the triangle formed by Warton Road on the West side, the London & North Western Railway on the East, and the Furness and Midland Joint Railway on the North. The river Keer providing a constant supply of water.
Adequate water supply, land, good lines of communication, and plentiful raw materials were all available, but like the railways before them, there was a problem of paramount importance facing the company. Most of the local labour force were unskilled, with no experience of iron-making. During the early construction of the works, however, local labour was employed by the contractors who did the masonry work including the 220 feet high chimney which was to dominate the Carnforth skyline up to the day of its demolition about 1931. Much of the other equipment for the works came from South Lancashire. Three Blast Furnaces were erected in 1865 and the first pig-iron was made in the summer of 1866.
With the completion of the Ulverstone - Lancaster railway it was relatively simple to trasnsport the iron ore. All the haematite ore extracted from the Furness region passed through Carnforth. Coke from Durham was transported via Tebay and local limestone was used as a flux in the furnaces. In 1869 the Company decided to make Steel. At that time, the Bessemer steelmaking process was dependent upon low phosphorus ores, exactly the type of rich, red, haematite iron ore then being mined in West Cumberland and Furness.
In 1866 the works were in need upwards of 200 skilled ironworkers and, coincidentally, there had been a recession in the Earl of Dudley’s iron works in Worcestershire. Many of the men had left to find work elsewhere. The transfer of a number of men took place from Dudley to Carnforth. Although the men arrived first, it was expected that their wives and families would follow. Twenty cottages were built on the site of the works. They were called Bessemer Cottages and were built alongside Warton Road. Later, the Company built stone and brick houses at Dudley, now called Millhead. In due course, about one hundred were built and the streets as they are today are named Albert, William, Mary and Stainton streets. In 1871 Bessemer Terrace was dismantled to make space for the steelmaking plant and offices.
All the new occupiers were employed by the works as furnace men, foundry workers, or smelters. There was usually an iron maker in charge of the blast furnaces who had a forehand to employ labour. The upper part of the blast furnace was in the charge of a bridge stocker who employed a gang of men or boys (fillers) who had to supply the furnaces with the necessary raw materials. The stock taker had charge of the lower furnace and his men prepared the sand and looked after the casting and weighing of the pigs. The number of men employed at each furnace varied according to size and mechanical equipment available and usually there were twelve men per shift on each furnace with between ten and twenty more men carrying materials.
By 1870 there were four blast furnaces in operation. In 1871 with additional capital of £30,000 they erected two Bessemer converters and by 1873 they had installed plate and rail mills and a Cupola furnace for melting pig iron. Steelmaking commenced in 1874.
The original terrace on Warton Road was named after Mr. Henry Bessemer, who was a shareholder of the Company from the start. Although a number of ironworks were established in Lancashire, it was recognised that one of the most important was the Carnforth Haematite Company, where blast furnaces could supply hot metal to the converters at the lowest possible cost. Between 1870 and 1873 a further three blast furnaces were erected, in line with the first three.
Increased steel production elsewhere created a demand for pure haematite pig iron. In a few years , new blast furnaces and steelworks had come in to operation in Lancashire, others were enlarging or expanding their premises.
The Barrow works were established in 1859 at Hindpool and in 1864 Sir James Ramsden founded the Barrow Steel Company on a site opposite the Hindpool furnaces for producing Bessemer steel, which was further manufactured into rails, axles, tyres, etc.
It soon became apparent that the two concerns were so necessarily interconnected that amalgamation was effected in to the title of Barrow Haematite Steel Company Ltd. The haematite ore consumed in the furnaces was obtained from the Company’s own mines at Lindal Moor, Dalton, Park, Stank, and Whittrigg and coke was brought by rail from Durham.
This was a decade of great activity, not only for Carnforth, but for Great Britain, since from the years 1862 to 1872 this country was the World’s principal supplier of rails made from Bessemer steel. By 1880 there were six blast furnaces, though only four were in blast. There was great activity in the works and employment of labour reached its zenith. The railways benefited from the additional transport of both raw and other materials. As the years passed by, there was a gradual reduction in the production of steel at the works and the steelmaking part of the works closed in 1889. (2) This was a substantial blow to the company, the employees and to the town and its population. The trade had taken a sharp decline in the space of twenty years. In 1857 the railways carried 592,000 tons through Carnforth. In 1864 after the Barrow works had become established, absorbing increasing volumes of ore, the tonnage had dropped to 451,000. In 1877 the figure dropped dramatically to 42,756 tons, most of which only went as far as Carnforth.
By 1893 large scale exploration of Furness ore had ended and increasing demand for ore began to outpace local supplies. Ore was imported into Barrow from Spain beginning in 1895 and the decrease in production at the Carnforth works from 1890 could be linked with the exhaustion of a local supply of ore. After 1890 ore came from Hodbarrow at Millom, after 1897 from Egremont and after 1900 ore from Spain and North Africa was imported via the Barrow Docks. From 1904 the Midland Railway, having invested heavily in ore handling facilities at Heysham, and in cooperation with the London and North Western Railway (who owned and operated the main line from Hest bank to Carnforth) took a proportion of the iron ore business.
In 1900 Barton's son visited America where significant technological advances had brought huge productivity gains. As traditional exports to American and other markets dried up and domestic American producers satisfied home demand, and other British iron and steelworks consolidated to ensure their long term survival, the writing was on the wall for Carnforth unless it could become more efficient.
In 1902 began the process of modernising the blast furnace plant. Eventually there were two furnaces rated at 1500 tons per week and one furnace rated at 2500 tons.
This postcard is dated 1904 and features the premises of "C Metcalfe, Coach Builder" in the foreground.
The works were bought by Thomas Ward Ltd. Of Sheffield who largely cleared the site including the huge chimney. They acquired for scrap:
3 blast furnaces
8 hot blast stoves
A complete Gas cleaning plant, Pig Breakers, overhead travelling crane etc.
There was also a blowing plant consisting 30/33,000 cu.ft. per minute. 4 Stirling boilers and 10 Lancashire boilers, a 1,000 kw mixed pressure Westinghouse turbo-generator blowing engine.
6 locomotives, 50 internal wagons and 2 ladles (3) with 8 miles of railway
119 Worker’s houses at Millhead (sold to the tenants).
At its peak, the works had employed around 500. About 200 left when the steelworks closed, with about 300 becoming redundant on closure. Naturally, this had a massive effect on the local population.
The above is a summary of the history of the Carnforth works but for those seeking greater understanding, the book "The Railways of Carnforth" by Philip Grosse ISBN 978-0-9569709-1-6 published in 2014 is compulsory reading.
John Easter Roberts published a delightful picture postcard type book in 1977 "Old Carnforth" now out of print, but copies surface in secondhand book shops and auction sites from time to time. Image quality is poor but it is valuable from a historical perspective.
Below is an undated aerial photograph of the works in its final arrangement. Possibly around the closure period but before any significant demolition.
Looking North. The West Coast main line running diagonally up from the bottom left of the picture.
There are three "modern" blast furnaces, (but only the furthest in blast).
There is a line of railway wagons on the L&NWR exchange siding beside the main line. The high line, the elevated tracks over the blast furnace bunkers has gone, and there is no steam or smoke evident. There is an Eastbound train on the Furness & Midland Joint line running across the top of the image.
That is a summary of the work's history. Now we will look at the equipment used throughout the works. There were a great many changes over time so let's start with the evolution of the ironworks and divide it into several phases and deal with each separately.
We will look at Blast Furnace practice separately and then ancillary processes, working practices, transport of commodities and other aspects. You can navigate using the sidebar to the left or browse the topics from the Contents page.
Page Notes
(1) Herbert Walduck was a fascinating, dynamic, somewhat ruthless entrepreneur with an absorbing life story. There might be a separate page devoted to his activities later on.(2) That is a relatively short timespan for such a process. Compare that with say Barrow or Workington where it lasted about 125 years. Don't confuse ironmaking with steelmaking, they employ different processes.(3) Probably slag ladles.Page Notes
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