The Clyde Iron Works was a Scottish-based ironworking plant which operated from 1786 to 1978. [1]
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain, with a border with England to the southeast, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast, the Irish Sea to the south, and more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.
Clyde Iron occupied a large site near the Carmyle and Tollcross areas of Glasgow. The plant was built by William Cadell (1737–1819) and Thomas Edington (1742–1811) who were associated with the Carron Iron Works in Falkirk as well as other ventures. The inventor David Mushet worked there for a period. Carronades were produced at the works during the Napoleonic Wars period. [2]
Carmyle is a suburb in the east end of Glasgow, north of the River Clyde.
Tollcross is an area north of the River Clyde in Glasgow and has a popular park opened in 1897 which is famed for its international rose trials. It lies approximately a mile east of the neighbouring suburb of Parkhead, and just north of Braidfauld and south of Shettleston.
The Carron Company was an ironworks established in 1759 on the banks of the River Carron near Falkirk, in Stirlingshire, Scotland. After initial problems, the company was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom. The company prospered through its development and production of a new short-range and short-barrelled naval cannon, the carronade. The company was one of the largest iron works in Europe through the 19th century. After 223 years, the company became insolvent in 1982 and was later acquired by the Franke Corporation, being rebranded Carron Phoenix.
Clyde Iron was the location of a key development in the Industrial Revolution in Scotland when James Beaumont Neilson successfully introduced the hot blast furnace in 1828, reducing the volume and carbon content of coal needed in the furnaces to produce the iron, which in turn meant that Scottish metal became cheaper to produce using local coal.
The Industrial Revolution, now also known as the First Industrial Revolution, was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States, in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. The Industrial Revolution also led to an unprecedented rise in the rate of population growth.
James Beaumont Neilson was a Scottish inventor whose hot-blast process greatly increased the efficiency of smelting iron.
Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace or other metallurgical process. As this considerably reduced the fuel consumed, hot blast was one of the most important technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution. Hot blast also allowed higher furnace temperatures, which increased the capacity of furnaces.
From the 1860s the works was served by a major railway after the Whifflet Line between Glasgow and Coatbridge was constructed directly to the south of the site. Ironstone was obtained from Monklands and coal from local pits across Lanarkshire such as in Carmyle and Cambuslang [3] via connecting industrial railway lines, until the supply from those sources was eventually exhausted. LocalMiners Row cottages were also built for workers near to the iron works and the pits.
The Whifflet Line is one of the lines within the Strathclyde suburban rail network in Scotland.
Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron compound from which iron can be smelted commercially. This term is customarily restricted to hard coarsely banded, nonbanded, and noncherty sedimentary rocks of post-Precambrian age. The Precambrian deposits, which have a different origin, are generally known as banded iron formations. The iron minerals comprising ironstones can consist either of oxides, i.e. limonite, hematite, and magnetite; carbonates, i.e. siderite; silicates, i.e. chamosite; or some combination of these minerals.
Monklands was, between 1975 and 1996, one of nineteen local government districts in the Strathclyde region of Scotland.
In 1931 Clyde Iron was overtaken by Colvilles and extensively modernised; shortly afterwards in 1939 the works was integrated with the nearby Clydebridge Steelworks (producing both the hot metal and the finished steel). New furnaces were installed in 1948. [4]
David Colville & Sons, a Scottish iron and steel company, was founded in 1871 and it opened its Dalzell Steel and Iron Works at Motherwell in 1872. By the first World War, it was the largest steel works in Scotland and it continued to expanded afterwards taking over a number of other steel works in Cambuslang and Glengarnock.
The Clydebridge Steelworks, also known as Clydebridge Works, is a steel works in South Lanarkshire, Scotland.
By the late 20th century the facility included a research laboratory, a small power station to meet energy needs, and an on-site gas holder for the town gas produced in the coking processes – the excess electricity was able to be supplied to the national grid and the gas to the Scottish Gas Board. [5]
A gas holder, or gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressure coming from the weight of a movable cap. Typical volumes for large gas holders are about 50,000 cubic metres (1,800,000 cu ft), with 60 metres (200 ft) diameter structures.
In the electricity sector in the United Kingdom the National Grid is the high-voltage electric power transmission network serving Great Britain, connecting power stations and major substations and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere on it can be used to satisfy demand elsewhere. The network covers the great majority of Great Britain and several of the surrounding islands. It does not cover Ireland; Northern Ireland is part of a single electricity market with the Republic of Ireland.
The Scottish Gas Board was a state-owned utility providing gas for light and heat to industries and homes in Scotland. The Board was established on 1 May 1949, and dissolved in 1973 when it became a region of the British Gas Corporation.
During the period when Clydebridge and the Clyde Iron Works were economically linked between the 1940s and 1970s, a gas pipeline and railway bridge were constructed over the River Clyde which separated the two plants. [6] [7] Both plants were operated by British Steel Corporation from 1967 until 1977 when the Iron Works closed down after 191 years of operation – most of Clydebridge's operations also ceased at that time.
During the 1980s the site was cleared (other than a few remaining small buildings close to Junction 2A of the M74 motorway) by the Glasgow Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise [8] and is now an industrial estate (Glasgow East Investment Park, sometimes referred to as Cambuslang Investment Park although it is not in Cambuslang) that includes the local Royal Mail distribution centre, and the printing facility of newspapers including The Herald and Evening Times, opened in 2002. [9]
Tollcross was also home to another steelworks (a tube plant that was part of the Stewarts & Lloyds empire) which too has closed and been cleared, with housing now on that site. [10]
Clyde Iron Works in Glasgow has no direct link to the factory of the same name in Duluth, Minnesota which is now redeveloped as a restaurant, nor any link to the 19th century firms of that name associated with Samuel Osborn & Company of Sheffield.
