Could someone suggest what this odd looking building on the south side of the Malleable Works, Portrack, was used for? The number of chimneys suggest a set of small furnaces, but the building is probably too small to be used for the manufacture of wrought iron (the main business for the Malleable in the 19th Century). My best guess is that it is some kind of blacksmiths shop…
The second photograph shows the end of a loading gantry, part of which can be seen in the first. It also shows some wrecked railway trucks.
Photographs and details courtesy of Fred Starr.
There is an aerial picture of the Malleable Works dating from 1932 in the “Britain from Above” series, in which this building can just be made out. The number of the picture is EPW038886, but I think that the building must have been built much earlier.
As a professional metallurgist I can confirm that the building would not make a good metallurgy lab, where it is necessary to polish sections of metal to a mirror like finish and then inspect them with top quality microscopes. But the place could have been used for assessing the quality of wrought iron and steel plates and welds, using macro etching, sulphur printing, bend and impact testing.
None of these would have needed furnaces, of which from the number of chimneys there were at least four. So my guess is that it was originally some kind of blacksmiths shop, possibly doing small jobs for the nearby ship constructors. As this work died away it would be natural to turn this into a welding shop which would contain a few lathes and drills.
Image eaw043775 shows this building very well.
http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw043775
It’s not on the 1899 OS map (there is a different complex of buildings at this location), but it does appear on the 1915/18 and looks to of always been isolated from everything else.
I believe it was the metallurgist’s test house
I suspect that you may be awry John. By 1969, the Malleable were well and truly out of wrought iron and malleable iron and well into steel and large pipes if I recall. The odd building looks of use for only very basic metallurgical testing such as bending heated strips. It wouldn’t be clean enough for the polishing and test equipment associated with steel testing. As to what it may otherwise have been, it doesn’t appear to have been much more than about 16×16 ft. – it’s got me beat!
My mother was a welder here during the war. And I broke my leg outside the gates on bike and was taken in gate house until doctor arrived about 1953.