This photograph shows the Malleable Works at Portrack in Stockton as it would have looked around 1870-80, although the picture may have been taken later.
Courtesy of Fred Starr.
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This photograph shows the Malleable Works at Portrack in Stockton as it would have looked around 1870-80, although the picture may have been taken later.
Courtesy of Fred Starr.
1889 ‘STOCKTON STEELWORKS. Yesterday the Stockton Malleable Iron Company, Portrack, made a successful start with their new steelworks, which, as we have previously recorded, have been in course of construction for many months, in immediate proximity to the company’s ironworks. The process is the Siemens-Martin, open hearth, and yesterday the first of three furnaces was tapped, the capacity being for about 200 tons of ingots per week, which will be stocked in readiness for the mil, which is expected to be completed in about six weeks, and will roll about 600 tons per week.
This suggests that the open hearth furnaces were fairly small, probably only holding about 15 tons of steel. Although they required fuel to heat up the mixture of scrap steel, pig iron, iron ore and limestone they were more controllable than the Bessemer, producing good quality steel plates for ship building. There was by then a lot of scrap metal coming onto the market, and the open hearth was the only furnace that could melt this down.
I would not be surprised if these furnaces had lasted until about 1951, when steel making at the Malleable stopped, making my granddad redundant, although he was getting quite ill by that time.
This is still the best picture which shows the landscape of a wrought iron company.
The wet puddling process, as at the Malleable, for making wrought iron was vital to the birth of the Basic Bessemer in Middlesbrough. So it was critical that there were so many furnaces making wrought iron in the Stockton/Thornaby area.
The Basic Bessemer process needed a high phosphorous molten pig iron for it to work, and the process was developed in Middlesbrough about 20 years after the invention of the acid Bessemer. But it became apparent that the iron ore from the Cleveland Hills did not have quite enough phosphorous. The oxidation of this element, during air blowing, provides the heat needed to keep the steel molten.
Fortunately the “tap cinder” from wrought iron furnaces, which was just regarded as waste slag, had a very high phosphorous content, and this was added to the molten pig iron at the start of the air blowing. Apparently there were loads of slag heaps of tap cinder on Teesside which were bought up for a nominal price by the Middlesbrough steel makers.
I guess by the end of the 19th century the slag heaps would have been worked through, but by that time the basic open hearth steelmaking process was well developed. Such furnaces seem to have been built at the Malleable around 1900, as by then wrought iron was becoming obsolescent for most purposes
I’d be very interested in any information about Charles Hill, who seems to have managed the Malleable works until his death in 1882. Thank you
My great great grandfather. He is buried Oxbridge Lane Cemetery section B Stockton. Grave stone has anchor on top. My grandfather Tate was Emma Hills son
Only just seen this – do please email me if you like. If you contact Picture Stockton (pictures@stockton.gov.uk) they will forward on my email address.
I have just read this thread for the first time, and I am amazed that no-one responded to Maxine Tyrrell and her family name of Downing being of significance. If you read this Maxine, the Downing family was very much involved with the Clarence Foundry in Railway Street. There are many references to it on this site. If you have already discovered this, my apologies to all.
An article in the Northern Echo for 17 January 1900 refers to Tom Pidd as ‘late Chief Engineer’ at the Malleable Works. So it is possible that the clock was his retirement present?
I have a large Black Marble monster of a clock that bears a plaque that carries the following inscription… PRESENTED TO TOMM PIDD – BY THE OFFICIALS AND WORKMEN OF THE STOCKTON MALLEABLE IRON AND STEEL WORKS- THE DATE IS 31 DECEMBER 1899. There must be some significance in a presentation on the eve of a new millenium. Any ideas?
I think I am right about the original intention to use the Bessemer process at the “Malleable”, although it is a guess. When Henry Bessemer announced his invention to the world, at the British Association Meeting in Cheltenham in 1856, his paper was entitled “The Manufacture of Malleable Iron and Steel without Fuel”. If the owners of the Malleable were always intending to manufacture wrought iron, why did they not call the establishment “The Stockton Wrought Iron Works”, which would have avoided a great deal of confusion? As regards the term “malleable cast iron”, as Frank Bowen probably knows, this is produced by a completely different process to either wrought iron or Bessemer steel.The production of malleable cast iron(either the blackheart or whiteheart type) would have gone on at a small foundry, not at a works the size of the Malleable.
I doubt if the builders of the Malleable Iron Works ever intended to use the Bessemer process. The word Malleable wasn’t coined by Bessemer, it had been applied to annealed cast iron as long ago as 1722 (Reaumur’s decription of “Malleable Cast Iron”). It is more likely that the Malleable Iron Works was built to produce wrought iron, also known as malleable iron, by the original puddling process rather than the new Bessemer process.
Though the Malleable Iron Works has passed into history, the name lives on today in that well known Working Men’s Club on Norton Road – “The Malleable”.
The name of this company, the “Stockton Malleable Iron Works” is strange. “Malleable Iron” is not a standard term in metallurgical literature. But the date, 1862, when the company came into being, gives a clue. It seems likely that the orginal intention was to make use of the new technique by which “mild steel” could be made, using the Bessemer process, invented in 1855. This produced mild steel by blowing air through molten pig iron in a Bessemer convertor. The product was more like “wrought iron” in terms of strength and ductility than “steel”. Most steel, at that time, was of the type used for saw blades, files, cutting tools, and other hard wearing implements, but was too brittle and expensive for girders, ships plates, and other structural purposes. Hence, Bessemer called the material “Malleable Iron”.However, by the time the Malleable works began to be built, it was realised that the high phosphorous pig iron, made from Cleveland Hill ores, could not be used. The presence of even tiny amounts of phosphorous in mild steel (or “malleable iron”)makes steel brittle. Because of this the owners of the Malleable must have decided to build the works as a site for manufacturing wrought iron. Perhaps they thought that a solution to the phosphorous problem would be found quite quickly, so why bother changing the name? But mild steel was not produced on this site until very much later, and then, apparently, using the open hearth process.
It looks like this picture might have been taken in the 1860’s. The “Annals of Stockton” published 1865, which can be read on the internet, via Google, state that the works of the Stockton Malleable Iron Company were close to the Portrack Iron Works. The Ironworks had three blast furnaces and adjoined the footpath to Portrack.Whether this was Portrack Lane or Church Road is not clear. The Malleable Works itself commenced in 1862 and comprise 39 puddling furnaces (for making wrought iron), 19 heating furnaces (to heat up billets for piling, forging, and hot rolling), three 50 hundred weight (2500 kg) steam hammers, 2 plate mills, 2 puddling do (mills for making muck bars?), 1 combined rail and angle mill. The Company produced 250 tonnes a week, which was a lot at the time, and employed 700 hands
I have been researching my family history for about 15 years & most of my ancestors (c1840-1890″s) are from Stockton & surrounding areas. The various certificates I have (marriage/birth etc) state professions as iron moulders/foundryman. My family name is Downing. Any info from people would be greatfully received.
There were about 500 furnaces like this scattered all over Teesside (qv. “Dank”s furnaces at Tees Side Iron Works”), and they led to Teesside becoming a major exporter of wrought iron. The furnaces were of the “wet puddling” type, which as a happy coincidence was invented just about the time that the high phosphorous ironstone in the Cleveland Hills was discovered (c.1840). The Cleveland ores, when smelted in a blast furance produced a pig iron that was high in phosphorus, and was useless for producing wrought iron using the older, and slower, dry puddling process. Wet puddling was faster, but more important, eliminating the phosphorous as a liquid slag, producing wrought iron that was strong and tough.
This picture is historic for a number of reasons, including the fact that that it shows the appearance of the Malleable Works at Portrack, Stockton, as it would have been around 1870-80, although the picture may have been taken later. The picture would also be useful to industrial archaeologists since there seem to be very few drawings or photographs of places where wrought iron was made. Because only a few hundredweights of iron can be made at any one time, each site would have needed a large number of furnaces. Hence the picture shows about 30 stacks. Most of the stacks have got a twin dampers on top for controlling the flow of air to the furnace, suggesting that these stacks serve two furnaces. The stack height can be estimated at about 60 ft from the man who is standing in front of two furnace stacks. He is standing near a bogie, which would be used for manhandling raw materials and slag to-and-from the furnaces. The piles of things that look like sticks are probably blooms of iron that would be rolled down into plates or angles. There is a row of houses in the background which might be used to help locate the position from which the the picture was taken, although it looks like the picture was taken from the high ground near the North Shore Staithes