East Cleveland Image Archive

This looks like a ”Front Side Crew”; with iron furnace in the background and the gentleman in the centre seems to be standing over the sow channel for the molten iron. Far right hand side possibly foreman. Don’t think it’s No. 5 which was an altogether larger affair and tipped into ladles, not pig-beds, so it must be one of the earlier bank of 5 furnaces which have adorned quite a few postcards, but which furnace and why the occasion for a photograph?

It couldn’t be a steel furnace, because Skinningrove furnaces were Siemens-Martin Basic Open Hearth furnaces and they all tilted back to tap (and forwards to tip slag). The problem is that there are the right number of men to crew a steel furnace (and that seems to be the progression from right to left, foreman (The gent on the right is wearing a fob watch which would suggest pre-1918), then 1st hand through to 4th hand – this one is a real enigma – anybody out there who can shed some light on the situation? Ann Robinson tells the Archive: “The man on the far right is my grandad William Atkinson.”

Image courtesy of several sources, thanks to Ann Robinson for the update.

Taken in 1933 this shows the brick wheel and the work force on the steel works. Robert Proctor told the Archive: “The purpose was to make bricks from molten blast furnace slag , many of these bricks can be found in most back alleys, they are grey with siliceous blue bands running through. It consisted of a number of moulds arranged on the outside of a wheel supported from the top by tie rods , which looked like spokes. These moulds had to be filled from a slag ladle and once set were released from the mould by dropping a door , the bricks were then put into an oven to cool down slowly so as to avoid any fractures, a type of heat treatment.” Eric Johnson supplied the following brief description of brickmaking: ”The slag was brought from the furnaces in slag ladles adapted with a tap hole. a chute was placed between this and led down to the wheel moulds. The making of slag bricks was a very labour intensive operation; once started was continuous hard, hot work. The wheel was a steel circular construction, with the steel moulds round the perimeter with a hinged bottom held with a catch. This can be all be seen in the photograph, the wheel was driven by a geared electric motor with hand operated backup. As the slag ran down the chute into the moulds, the wheel rotated, the filled moulds cooled down and at a point near the kilns, the catch was struck the hinged bottom opened the hot brick fell to the ground. It was picked up with the large “gripes”. some of the men can be seen holding in photo, carried to the kilns and stacked inside, when full the kiln was closed. as the kiln was already hot from the previous batch the working conditions for the men can be imagined.”

Second man front right is Harry Dack from Carlin How; does anyone know any more of the men here?

Image courtesy of Derick Pearson and others; thanks to Robert Proctor and Eric Johnson for the updates.

Stripping moulds from 4.75 ton ingots of steel, in a place appropriately called the Stripping Sheds. The numbers on the moulds provided traceability to the cast from which the steel was made (probably the pot too). From here the ingots went to the Soaking Pits to be kept at an even temperature ready for Cogging.

Thanks to Eric Johnson for supplementary information.

Well that was the caption on the back of the photograph together with ’pre war’ and the names of those in the picture: Lenny Calvert, Ernie Johnson, Charlie Vodden and Tot Porrit. George Brown tells us: ”The large metal block on which the men are; sat moved along the screw thread you can see behind them – IN or OUT – and set the length of billet of steel to be cut by the shears which are out of the picture to the right hand side . I have not seen the complete set up till now as it was not used in my time at the steelworks and parts had been removed. If it had just been in use it would have been too hot to sit on! So must be up for repair or when first put in. Hope this helps?”

Image courtesy of Kathleen Hicks and thanks to George Brown for the update.

A picture taken without the benefit of flash and against the internal lighting, it still shows the gas turbine-driven alternator and in the background those beautiful gas motors that used to thud out night and day! This was a most beautiful building inside and although the picture doesn’t show it very well, the whole of the back wall was covered in 1900’s instrumentation. The floor was red earthenware tiles and there was lots of Victorian/Edwardian woodwork. Steven Partlett advises: “I worked in this building many times as an apprentice, and later as an electrician. There was a second turbo alternator below the photographer. I would suspect the photograph has been taken from the overhead crane. You had to make sure your boots were clean before walking on the tiles around the sets, otherwise you were given a mop and told to remove traces of where you had been ! I am reasonably sure the turbo alternators were steam driven, not gas turbines. Only the old generators in the background were run on gas. The lighting in this building never was very good.” Terry Robinson supports with: “There were two steam turbines in the power house, I believe they were made by Parsons of Newcastle. The main unit was a 7500 kw machine, also in the power house there were two English Electric diesel generator sets for use during peak time demand.”

Image courtesy of Reg Dunning, thanks to Steven Partlett and Terry Robinson for the updates.