Steel, Peech and Tozer was a large steel maker with works situated at Ickles and Templeborough, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England.
Steel, Peech and Tozer was a large steel maker with works situated at Ickles and Templeborough, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England.
An area of land, almost a crescent shape through Masbrough and Ickles, on the edge of Rotherham town centre, became well known in the late 18th / early 19th centuries through its involvement in iron and steel making and there could be found the works of many of the towns iron masters. Situated between the main turnpike road linking Rotherham and Sheffield and the River Don was built the Phoenix Works, a leading manufacturer of large iron forgings, made using water powered tilt hammers. The works made forgings for marine engines, shafts for use in paddle steamers and crank axles etc. In a change to their product base, and to reflect this a change of name, 1871 saw the founding of the Phoenix Bessemer Steel Works, making steel through the use of the Bessemer process.
Unfortunately, after just 4 years the company failed and the assets were purchased by Henry Steel. The new company became known as Steel, Peech and Hampton, taking its name from those of the directors. Mr. Hampton left in 1875 and was replaced by a Mr. Edward Tozer, the company changing its name to Steel, Peech and Tozer, a giant in South Yorkshire steelmaking had arrived.
The steel making plant was changed in 1897 when the Bessemer converters were replaced by three open hearth furnaces and the processing plant increased with the addition of cogging mills, rail mills and specialist plant for the manufacture of steel springs and railway axles. In 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War many iron and steel companies began producing munitions. In this case the work was added to the normal production, which included many component orders for the military. The Ickles site was proving too small to handle the production, and with steel in such demand, the company extended their works towards the Sheffield boundary, to occupy a site between the main Sheffield to Rotherham road and the Great Central Railway line. The new Melting Shop and Rolling Mills were built over the site of the old Roman fort at Templeborough. The Templeborough Melting Shop, when opened, was the largest melting shop of its type in Europe and contained 14 open hearth furnaces where steel scrap was melted down.
At the end of the Second World War there was an increase in demand for steel products such as sheet, plate and strip due to improved living standards. As products became relatively cheap the demand grew for such items as refrigerators, canned foods and cars. SPT had a Strip Mill, which could satisfy some of this demand. It had been producing strip to a maximum width of 230mm since 1921, however the limitation in the maximum width and site restrictions prevented extension, enlargement or modernisation of the plant. A new mill was required which would cater for the increased demand, and to this end market research was carried out to determine the size and potential of the market. When the technical and commercial research was concluded, it was decided to build a continuous Hot Strip Mill rolling mild, carbon and special steels up to 457mm. This new mill filled the gap between the narrow and wide strip mills operating at that time. So in July 1955 it was announced that Brinsworth Hot Strip Mill would be built on Sheffield Road opposite Templeborough Melting Shop at a cost of £3.6 m. In less than two years it was built and the first slabs rolled on 10 June 1957, quite an achievement. Full capacity was expected to be 8000 tonnes per week and in 1956 there were new orders for two to three years. These orders were mainly for the motorcar, bicycle, tube and stamping industries and nearly all of them for the home market.
When building a new plant such as Brinsworth it was necessary to ensure that there would be a good supply of raw material. The ingots produced were rolled to blooms and then slabs in the Templeborough Cogging Mill. The slabs were then delivered to Brinsworth by train on one of the six rail tracks laid. The majority of these tracks have been lifted although there is still evidence on the plant of the old railway system.
Outputs steadily increased and a second shift was added by the middle of December 1957. By September 1959 143,258 tonnes of coils had been produced. Soon records were set and in 1973 the Hot Mill achieved its highest throughput of 425,000 in one year. This reflected the boom in industry in the early 1970s. During this period other records were set. Tommy Walker produced 1,099 tonnes on a shift on 25 January 1974, which also gave a daily record of 2,815 tonnes produced. November 1972 saw the highest production for one week at 11,486 tonnes.
Following the end of hostilities in 1918 Steel, Peech and Tozer joined with Samuel Fox and Company of Stocksbridge and the Appleby-Frodingham Steel Company of Scunthorpe to form United Steel Companies.
During World War II, again, many iron and steel works produced munitions for the war effort, not only munitions but sections for the construction of Bailey bridges, an important assistance to the Allied troops in Italy and following the D-Day landings. Because of its size and known war effort involvement the Templeborough was a prime target for the Luftwaffe.
Since the end of the Second World War many industrial companies in South Yorkshire faced problems due to the decline in the need for their products. The large steel producers within the United Kingdom were nationalised in 1951 under the Labour Government, but, just two years later Steel, Peech & Tozer was de-nationalised. By the 1950s Templeborough's open hearth furnaces were in need of replacement and the United Steel Companies set about the task of updating its melting facilities. Plans, under the name “Operation SPEAR” (Steel Peech Electric Arc Reorganization), brought the most modern electric arc furnaces to the company, six of these replacing the 14 open hearth furnaces. When completed Templeborough Melting Shop became the world's largest electric arc steel making plant with a capability of producing 1.8 million tons per year.
Nationalised again in 1967, the works became part of British Steel Corporation. It was yo-yo time within the industry, the works was privatized and became known as Rotherham Engineering Steels, returning to become part of British Steel again and, in due course part of a take-over by the Anglo-Dutch company Corus.
With the installation of a continuous casting machine in the early 1980s there was something of a revival in the fortunes of the works, however, this was only to last for 10 years, the giant works melting its last in 1993.
The company had its own football team, which was prominent in the pre-Second World War era.
The melting shop was not demolished but, after a period of "sleep", was to become the Magna Science Adventure Centre, one of the more successful of the Millennium projects. The surrounding site is being redeveloped as a Business park.
Part of the site previously owned by Alcoa (formerly Firth Rixson), to the west of Riverside Nature Park, is now being redeveloped as a 40 MW biomass power station fuelled by waste wood.
Stocksbridge is a town and civil parish, in the City of Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies just to the east of the Peak District. The town is located in the steep-sided valley of the Little Don River, below the Underbank Reservoir. It blends into the areas of Deepcar, Bolsterstone and the eastern end of Ewden valley around Ewden village, which are also within the civil parish. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census was 13,455.
A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-finished casting products are made from molten pig iron or from scrap.
An open-hearth furnace or open hearth furnace is any of several kinds of industrial furnace in which excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce steel. Because steel is difficult to manufacture owing to its high melting point, normal fuels and furnaces were insufficient for mass production of steel, and the open-hearth type of furnace was one of several technologies developed in the nineteenth century to overcome this difficulty. Compared with the Bessemer process, which it displaced, its main advantages were that it did not expose the steel to excessive nitrogen, was easier to control, and permitted the melting and refining of large amounts of scrap iron and steel.
An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc.
Templeborough is a suburb of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. The suburb falls within the Brinsworth and Catcliffe ward of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. The area takes its name from the remains of the Roman fort found there which were mistakenly believed to be that of a Roman Temple.
An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ironworks is ironworks.
Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel was a steel manufacturer based in Wheeling, West Virginia.
IISCO Steel Plant of Steel Authority of India Limited is an integrated steel plant located at Burnpur, a neighbourhood in Asansol city, in the Asansol subdivision of Paschim Bardhaman district, West Bengal, India.
Samuel Fox and Company was a company operating a major steel complex built in the Upper Don Valley at Stocksbridge, near Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England.
The Park Gate Iron and Steel Company was a British company that smelted iron ore and turned it into rolled steel and semi-finished casting products. Its works was at Parkgate, South Yorkshire on a triangular site bounded on two sides by the main road between Rotherham and Barnsley (A633) and the North Midland Railway main line between Rotherham Masborough and Cudworth. It also operated ironstone quarries in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.
Rotherham Main Colliery was situated in Canklow, about 0.5 miles south of Rotherham town centre in the Rother Valley. The area was the site of an ancient crossing of the river set below the crag on which were Canklow Woods, an ancient woodland area.
The United Steel Companies was a steelmaking, engineering, coal mining and coal by-product group based in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England.
Stewarts & Lloyds was a steel tube manufacturer with its headquarters in Glasgow at 41 Oswald Street. The company was created in 1903 by the amalgamation of two of the largest iron and steel makers in Britain: A. & J. Stewart & Menzies, Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland; and Lloyd & Lloyd, Birmingham, England.
The Round Oak Steelworks was a steel production plant in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, England. It was founded in 1857 by Lord Ward, who later became, in 1860, The 1st Earl of Dudley, as an outlet for pig iron made in the nearby blast furnaces. During the Industrial Revolution, the majority of iron-making in the world was carried out within 32 kilometres of Round Oak. For the first decades of operation, the works produced wrought iron. However, in the 1890s, steelmaking was introduced. At its peak, thousands of people were employed at the works. The steelworks was the first in the United Kingdom to be converted to natural gas, which was supplied from the North Sea. The works were nationalized in 1951, privatized in 1953 and nationalized again in 1967 although the private firm Tube Investments continued to part manage the operations at the site. The steelworks closed in December 1982.
Brown Bayley Steels was a steel-making company established in Sheffield, England in 1871, as Brown, Bayley & Dixon. They occupied a site on Leeds Road which was later occupied by the Don Valley sports stadium. The firm was founded by George Brown, Nephew of "John Brown" of the firm John Brown & Company. The firm manufactured Bessemer steel and railway tracks.
Rawmarsh is a large village in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham, in South Yorkshire, England. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is 2 miles (3 km) north-northeast from Rotherham town centre and 3 miles (5 km) south-southwest of Swinton. The village also forms part of the Sheffield Urban Area. The Rawmarsh ward of Rotherham MBC had a population of 13,389 at the 2011 Census. Rawmarsh also contains other output areas from neighbouring wards giving it a population of 18,498 in 2011 and 18,535 in 2014.
The Ravenscraig steelworks, operated by Colvilles and from 1967 by British Steel Corporation, consisted of an integrated iron and steel works and a hot strip steel mill. They were located in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Tinsley is a suburb of north-eastern Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England; it falls within the Darnall ward of the city.
The Panteg Steel Works was situated in the village of Panteg, adjacent to Sebastopol, and Griffithstown, in the district of Torfaen, South Wales. The steel works was founded in 1873, and operated for over 130 years until its closure in 2004. A number of 'firsts' occurred at Panteg Steel Works during its long life, including the first full production of stainless steel in the UK outside Sheffield in 1944, the installation of the first production vertical caster in the UK in 1960 and the commissioning of British Steel's first Argon Oxygen Decarburizer in 1972. Planning permission was given to turn the works into residential housing in 2010, when the site became the Parc Panteg housing estate.
In 2022, the United States was the world’s third-largest producer of raw steel, and the sixth-largest producer of pig iron. The industry produced 29 million metric tons of pig iron and 88 million tons of steel. Most iron and steel in the United States is now made from iron and steel scrap, rather than iron ore. The United States is also a major importer of iron and steel, as well as iron and steel products.