Crosswaites Foundry, Thornaby in the early 1960s. Photograph courtesy of Peter Rowntree. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
Crosswaites Foundry, Thornaby in the early 1960s. Photograph courtesy of Peter Rowntree.
I worked at Crosswaites Foundry for a year after leaving Pickering and then going on to Head Wrightsons.The foundry was made up of a lot of narrow bays where the moulders hand moulded small items with moulding boxes small enough to be lifted without the use of a crane.Crosswaites was an Iron Foudry and produced castings for fire units which burned coal and coke as well as engineering castings for other companys in the area.The foundry closed when smokesless z ones came into practice and then eventually all industry closed down to make way for the new Teasdale site we have now. Iron foundries are a very dirty place to work to work in due to the type of sand used to make the moulds and with the use of small boxes and castings metal was poured with the use of hand ladels a very dodgy occupation.