 | |
| Dorman Long | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Founded | 1875 |
| Headquarters | Middlesbrough, UK |
| Products |
|
Dorman Long & Co was a UK steel producer, later diversifying into bridge building. The company was once listed on the London Stock Exchange.
| | |
| Dorman Long | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Founded | 1875 |
| Headquarters | Middlesbrough, UK |
| Products |
|
Dorman Long & Co was a UK steel producer, later diversifying into bridge building. The company was once listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The company was founded by Arthur Dorman and Albert de Lande Long when they acquired West Marsh Iron Works in 1875. [1] In the 1920s Dorman Long took over the concerns of Bell Brothers and Bolckow and Vaughan and diversified into the construction of bridges. [2] In 1938 Ellis Hunter took over as Managing Director and he continued to lead the business until 1961. [3]
In 1967 Dorman Long was nationalised, along with 13 other British steel-making firms, becoming subsumed into the government-owned British Steel Corporation. In 1982 Redpath Dorman Long, the engineering part of the business, was acquired by Trafalgar House who in 1990 merged it into Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company in Darlington. [4]
Iron-making has been known in Cleveland since the Romans found iron slags in North Yorkshire, with small-scale iron-making known to have taken place at Rievaulx and Whitby Abbeys and at Gisborough Priory in the 17th century. [5]
Some of the key events connected with iron-making in Cleveland:
1837: The first Cleveland ironstone mine opens, at Grosmont, for the Losh, Wilson and Bell ironworks. [6]
1841: Bolckow and Vaughan open the first ironworks in Middlesbrough. [7]
1850: 8 June – The Discovery of the Cleveland Main Seam of Ironstone at Eston by Ironmaster John Vaughan and mining engineer John Marley both of Bolckow & Vaughan. The Cleveland iron rush begins. [8]
1865: 30 blast furnaces operate within six miles (10 km) of Middlesbrough and one million tonnes per annum (TPA) of iron are produced to make the area one of the world's major centres of iron production. [9]
1879: Sidney Gilchrist Thomas arrives in Cleveland and introduces the first commercial steel. [10]
1903: Partial amalgamation of Bell companies with Dorman Long. [11]
1917: The Redcar steel plant is opened, making steel in the open hearth process. [9]
1928-9: Dorman Long takes over residues of Bell and Bolckow Vaughan. [12] [13]
1946: Dorman Long purchases 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land between the Redcar and Cleveland Works to build the Lackenby development. [14]
1955: The Dorman Long tower, a combined coal silo, firefighting water tower, and control room, was built on the Teesside steelworks site. [15]
1967: Dorman Long, South Durham Steel Iron Co, and Stewarts and Lloyds come together to create British Steel and Tube Ltd. [16]
1967: The steel industry is nationalised and the British Steel Corporation is born. [17]
1989: Company is privatised becoming British Steel plc. [18]
1990: Merged with The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, Darlington. [9]
1999: British Steel plc merges with the Dutch steel and aluminium company Koninklijke Hoogovens to become Corus Group. [19]
2015: Former Dorman Long Steel plant on Teesside ceased production after SSI mothballed the Redcar works following a global downturn in the price of steel and later announced its UK arm had gone into liquidation. [20]
2021: Cleveland Bridge goes into administration. [21]
2021: The Dorman Long tower is demolished, [22] despite its Grade II listed status. [15] [23]
The most famous bridge ever constructed by a Teesside company was Dorman Long's Sydney Harbour Bridge of 1932, [24] of similar construction to but, contrary to popular belief, not modelled on the 1928 Tyne Bridge, a construction regarded as the symbol of Tyneside's Geordie pride, but also a product of Dorman Long's Teesside workmanship. The greatest example of Dorman Long's work in Teesside itself is the single-span Newport Lifting Bridge (a Grade II Listed Building). Opened by the Duke of York in February 1934 it was England's first vertical lift bridge. [25]
The following is a list of some of the bridges built by the Dorman Long: it is not fully comprehensive.
| Bridge | Location | Year | Total length | Notes | Image | Ref | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ft | m | ||||||
| Omdurman Bridge | White Nile, Sudan | 1926 | 2,012 | 613 | 7 fixed spans, one swing span, 3,700 tons |  | [26] |
| Desouk Bridge | Lower Nile, Egypt | 1927 | 2,010 | 610 | 10 spans including 194 feet (59 m) swing span, 3,800 tons |  | [27] |
| Tyne Bridge | Newcastle, England | 1928 | 1,254 | 382 | Approximately 8,000 tons, (Road) |  | [28] |
| Alfred Beit Bridge | South Africa | 1929 | 1,515 | 462 | 1,876 tons |  | [29] |
| Sydney Harbour Bridge | Sydney, Australia | 1932 | 3,770 | 1,150 | Total weight of fabricated steelwork 51,000, weight of steel in the arch 38,000 tons |  | [24] |
| Grafton Bridge | Grafton, NSW, Australia | 1932 | 1,309 | 399 | It is a dual level road and rail Bascule Bridge, the upper deck carrying a roadway and the lower level carrying the rail line and foot bridge. |  | [30] |
| Lambeth Bridge | London, England | 1932 | 776 | 237 | 5 spans, 4,620 tons, (Road) |  | [31] |
| Memorial Bridge, Bangkok | Thailand | 1932 | 755 | 230 | 1,100 tons, (Road) |  | [32] |
| Khedive Ismail Bridge | Cairo, Egypt | 1933 | 1,250 | 380 | 3,000 tons |  | [33] |
| Newport bridge | Middlesbrough | 1934 | 270 | 82 | The central lifting span 66 feet (20 m) wide, weighing 5,400 long tons (5,500 t); the towers are 182 feet (55 m) high. The total weight is 8,000 tons. |  | [34] |
| Birchenough Bridge | Zimbabwe | 1935 | 1,241 | 378 | 1,242 tons. |  | [35] |
| Storstrøm Bridge | Denmark | 1937 | 10,535 | 3,211 | 21,000 tons, (Railway and Road) |  | [36] |
| Chien Tang River Bridge | China | 1937 | 3,480 | 1,060 | 16 equal spans, 4,135 tons, (Railway and Road) |  | [37] |
| Adomi Bridge (originally Volta Bridge) | Atimpoku, Ghana | 1957 | 1,096 | 334 | arch bridge with roadway suspended from arch |  | [38] |
| Silver Jubilee Bridge | Runcorn and Widnes, England | 1961 | 1,582 | 482 | Road |  | [39] |
In 1904 Sir Arthur Dorman of Dorman Long gave the Dorman Museum to Middlesbrough in honour of his youngest son, George Lockwood Dorman, an avid collector who died in the Boer War. Amongst the museum's exhibits is a collection of ceramics from the local Linthorpe Pottery, which was known for its iridescent glazes which, at the time, were not produced anywhere else in Europe. [40]
The Dorman Long tower was built from 1955 to 1956 as a coking plant for steel production. [15] The tower was an early example of brutalist architecture. [41] It was scheduled to be demolished in 2021 due its poor state of repair [23] and granted Grade II listed status, in an emergency listing by Historic England on 10 September 2021. [15] The emergency listing cited its significance as a "recognised and celebrated example of early Brutalist architecture", a "nationally unique surviving structure from the twentieth-century coal, iron and steel industries" as well as "for its association with, and an advert for, Dorman Long which dominated the steel and heavy engineering industry of Teesside". [15]
In one of her first acts as Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries revoked the listing –amidst accusations of "cultural vandalism" –enabling demolition of the building to be scheduled. [42] The tower was demolished between 00:00 and 00:20 on 19 September 2021 in a series of controlled explosions. [43]
Eston is an area of Redcar and Cleveland in North Yorkshire, England. The local authority ward covering the area had a population of 7,005 at the 2011 census. It is part of Greater Eston, which includes the outlying settlements of Grangetown, Normanby, South Bank, Teesville and part of Ormesby.
Middlesbrough is a town in the Middlesbrough unitary authority borough of North Yorkshire, England. The town lies near the mouth of the River Tees and north of the North York Moors National Park. The built-up area had a population of 148,215 at the 2021 UK census. It is the largest town of the wider Teesside area, which had a population of 376,633 in 2011.
Redcar is a seaside town on the Yorkshire Coast in the Redcar and Cleveland unitary authority in the county of North Yorkshire, England. It is located 7 miles (11 km) east of Middlesbrough.
Teesside is a built-up area around the River Tees in North East England, split between County Durham and North Yorkshire. The area contains the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Billingham, Redcar, Thornaby-on-Tees, and Ingleby Barwick. Teesside's economy was once dominated by heavy manufacturing until deindustrialisation in the latter half of the 20th Century, alongside chemical production which continues to contribute significantly to Teesside's economy.
Edward Thomas Judge (c.1909–1992) was an English engineer and industrialist. For most of his career he worked at steel and bridge company Dorman Long, and later he was President of the British Iron and Steel Federation.
Kilton Thorpe is a village in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. Noted for evidence of early settlement. The outlines of an ancient village are visible in fields adjacent to the present village.
Dormanstown is an area of Redcar in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland and the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England.
Grangetown is an area in the borough of Redcar and Cleveland, North Yorkshire, England. The area is 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Middlesbrough and 4 miles (6.4 km) from south-west of Redcar.
A Century in Stone is a 2004 documentary film by Craig Hornby. It tells the story of how the discovery of ironstone at Eston in 1850 sparked the transformation of Teesside from rural backwater to iron-making capital of the world.
John Vaughan, known as Jacky, was born in Worcester on "St Thomas' Day" in 1799, the son of Welsh parents. He worked his way up the iron industry, becoming an ironmaster and co-founder of the largest of all the Victorian iron and steel companies, Bolckow Vaughan. Where Henry Bolckow provided the investment and business expertise, Vaughan contributed technical knowledge, in a long-lasting and successful partnership that transformed Middlesbrough from a small town to the centre of ironmaking in Britain.
The Teesside Steelworks was a large steelworks that formed a continuous stretch along the south bank of the River Tees from the towns of Middlesbrough to Redcar in North Yorkshire, England. At its height there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10-mile radius of the area. By the end of the 1970s there was only one left on Teesside. Opened in 1979 and located near the mouth of the River Tees, the Redcar blast furnace was the second largest in Europe.
Eston Nab is a rocky outcrop hill in the town of Eston, Redcar and Cleveland, North Yorkshire, England.
Losh, Wilson and Bell, later Bells, Goodman, then Bells, Lightfoot and finally Bell Brothers, was a leading Northeast England manufacturing company, founded in 1809 by the partners William Losh, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Bell.
Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., Ltd was an English ironmaking and mining company founded in 1864, based on the partnership since 1840 of its two founders, Henry Bolckow and John Vaughan. The firm drove the dramatic growth of Middlesbrough and the production of coal and iron in the north-east of England in the 19th century. The two founding partners had an exceptionally close working relationship which lasted until Vaughan's death.
John Marley was an English mining engineer from Darlington who together with ironmaster John Vaughan made the "commercial discovery" of the Cleveland Ironstone Formation, the basis of the wealth of their company Bolckow Vaughan and the industrial growth of Middlesbrough. He was an effective leader of engineering operations at Bolckow Vaughan's mines and collieries. He ended his career as a wealthy independent mine-owner and president of the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (NEIMME).
The Cleveland Institution of Engineers (CIE) is a regional engineering institution in the Teesside region of England. It aims to serve the regional scientific and engineering community through a wide range of technical lectures and visits and by acting as the professional body for materials scientists and engineers. The CIE is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the world and has been in continuous existence since it was founded in 1864. It is affiliated to the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a founder members of the Cleveland Scientific Institution
Middlesbrough started as a Benedictine priory on the south bank of the River Tees, its name possibly derived from it being midway between the holy sites of Durham and Whitby. The earliest recorded form of Middlesbrough's name is "Mydilsburgh", containing the term burgh.
North Skelton Mine was an ironstone mine in the village of North Skelton in North Yorkshire, England. The mine was the deepest of the ironstone mines in Cleveland and was also the last to close, which came in January 1964. Some buildings still exist on the surface as well as spoil heaps.
Ironstone mining in Cleveland and North Yorkshire occurred on a sizeable scale from the 1830s to the 1960s in present day eastern parts of North Yorkshire but has been recorded as far back as Roman times in mostly a small-scale and intended for local use. This Cleveland is not to be confused with a smaller area covered by the county of Cleveland from 1974-96.
In 1946, the whole of the land between the Cleveland and Redcar Works, an area of 680 acres, known as the Lackenby site, was purchased by Dorman Long.
