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Anyone wandering over the slag banks will sooner or later find a variety of broken and eroded bricks. There are common red bricks from local brickworks such as Claughton and there are many cream coloured refractory (fire) bricks in a variety of shapes and sizes. Together they offer more interesting information about the ironworks and where it sourced their materials.
The red bricks embossed Claughton are quite common and were tyically used in construction of walls and buildings in and around the works and are difficult to date. They may also be intruders and not be contemporary with the ironworks. Its possible they were dumped as general waste from a different source and a different time and are not really of any value in studying the refractory finds overall.
Above are four images of the same curved refractory brick. My shoe in the first image helps you to gauge the size. The cream colour which is indicative of a refractory brick (as opposed to a common construction brick). On the inside, concave surface of the brick is a slag which has fused to the surface indicating that the brick came from a hot metal ladle or was originally part of a vessel for hot metal or slag. So that would be a blast furnace, bessemer converter, or cupola. It may have been part of a runner system outside a vessel, such as the sand lined troughs guiding pig iron or slag to the pig beds or to slag boxes/ladles.
A second example of a refractory brick from the GLENBOIG brickworks near Glasgow.
NEWFIELD of Bishop Auckland, County Durham. The brickworks were owned by the Iron and Steel Company: Bolckow Vaughan & Co. Ltd.
WOOLER CHAPMAN & Co. Crook, County Durham.
NORTH BITCHBURN Fireclay Company. Howden-le-Wear, County Durham.
SEATON FIRE BRICK Co. Moor House Guards, Seaton, Cumberland.
Chapman and Morson , Crook Colliery, County Durham.
HAMSTEELS COLLIERY & BRICKWORKS, County Durham. (Several examples were found.)
HAMSTEELS COLLIERY & BRICKWORKS, County Durham.
This broken piece of refractory is generally a flat shape and was made by George King Harrison of Stourbridge. My shoe helps judge it's size.
Firebrick was uniquely formulated to withstand extreme heat without cracking. It dates from a period 1875 to 1920. GKH shipped firebrick to destinations throughout the British Empire.
Tuyere and tapered refractory brick. Note the slag contamination bonded to the small end of the brick.
Several tuyere pieces about 250mm diameter.
The broken tuyeres are a hugely significant find. In many seasons of studying the slag banks it was only in the Spring of 2026 that these were found, exposed by the significant erosion where the Keer estuary meets the bay.
There were two types of tuyere, Those used in the Blast Furnaces and those used in Bessemer Converter vessels. These are the latter. All the more rare because the steelworks had a relatively short lifespan between 1880 and 1890. The finds are small relative to others which can still be found embedded in slag on the shorelione just North of Harrington. I judge them to be of proportions consistent with the 6 ton vessels at Carnforth.
Tuyeres were long tubes of solid refractory shaped like a trumpet with a series of parallel holes running through them for the passage of air into the base of the vessel during steelmaking. They operated in a fiercely volatile and abrasive environment and would wear out in time. It is no surprise then, to find discarded and broken examples in amongst the slag and general waste from the works.
This is the base of one of the 25 ton vessels at Workington. The vesselman is clearing the air passages with a rod to remove any partial blockages. There was a large domed cover bolted to the air box which has been removed to permit access. Clogs were still a popular choice of footwear even in the 1960s/70s
This is a more complete example of a larger one that was found on the shore between Harrington and Workington.
These are tuyeres being manufactured at Micklam brickworks, South of Workington.
In the foreground the two old lads are handling a steel mould while a machine operator controls the machine that punches the air holes through the blank tuyeres.
Horizontal semi finished tuyeres are in the background. They will next be fired.
The Seaton Fire Brick Co. brick is of personal significance. I was born and brought up in Seaton and occasionally would play amongst the fields around Moor House Guards in the 1960s. I recall several grassy banks with a series of random brick walls and old foundations (and a friendly donkey that lived there). Until now (2026) I had no idea that they produced fire bricks and I don't ever recall finding a Seaton brick in any of the places I visited nearby. To find one at Carnforth was a major surprise, and a considerable joy.
This piece of refractory came from Perrens & Harrison of Lye, near Stourbridge, founded in 1850. They were a company specialising in the manufacture of high duty refractory products for use in the iron and steel, glassware, and gas/chemicals industries. They used locally sourced Stourbrige Fireclay which was high in silica and alumina and low in iron impurities. They were globally renowned and exhibited at major industrial fairs, winning medals at the Paris Exhibition (1855), the London Great Exhibition (1875), and the Sydney International Exhibition (1875). The partnership ended in 1875 when William King Perrens retired, making the find reasonably easy to date to between 1850 and 1875.
George King Harrison took sole control of the business in 1875. Their product brnding refelcted the change, and back at the top of the page you'll find such a marked piece. We can deduce, Carnforth continued to purchase from the business. Hand embossed with the name, making them particularly prized by brick collectors.
These odd shaped refractory bricks are all marked with a letter H. Their very slight wedge shape suggests they were employed in one of several possible duties, forming part of a curved lining. It could be the lining or roof of a furnace, firebox, hot blast stove, or ladle, or pipeline containing high temperature gases.
Most likely they were employed in the lining of a blast furnace (or possibly in the hot blast stoves, which were a tall steel tube, lined with refractory brick. The stoves served to heat cold air, passing over the refractory, and then carried by the hot blast main (pipe) to the furnace.
The letter H could have had several purposes, identifying the maker, the customer, the source material, or most likely, the exact position where the bricks were to be installed. The Newlands Furnace near Ulverston records exactly this principle in use when that furnace was being relined. That they were found here is consistent with refractory that has been replaced in the normal practice of regular blast furnace relines, or it could simply be where the refractory was dumped when the furnaces closed down around 1929. It would be useful if Mother Nature could furnish us with some other marked bricks in the future!
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