A view of the Ammonia IV Plant at ICI in Billingham.
Ammonia IV Plant at ICI in Billingham
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
A view of the Ammonia IV Plant at ICI in Billingham.
Picture Stockton Archive 
I was a member of the ICI Instrument team that commissioned then maintained the plant. Many happy memories working in our workshop in the main office block sorting out Fisher control valves.
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The medical centre as you knew it will be gone even if the office block still stands which I doubt but cannot confirm. It was quite a place at one time where they could almost treat you from birth to retirement. We got an X-Ray every year, they had Dentistry an Optician a full funtioning hospital ward, Treatment rooms and were open 24 hours a day. When as a 16 year old I first went into plastics ICI with contractors I discovered a treatment room which was a hut with a First Aider who did a good job on fixing a badly cut arm. The main medical centre was the old Grange Farm house until the new internal offices were built with a full medical centre. ICI was a dangerous place to work even with all the safety effort that was put in as I found when I went back to work at ICI in later years. Some chemical I came into contact with caused a massive allergy reaction which lasted exactly one year. I went into the medical room each day and stripped whilst a nurse rubbed me with a cream to ease the itch. The first thing she did was trace her name on my chest with her finger and it stood up like a rope gradually diminishing until the last day we had no reaction. The medical centre possibly stopped a lot of absence, you were treated and sent back to work. I never go back to most places once I leave but you can see from the road the main workshop area is gone, the heavy fab shop with is six overhead cranes and a dozen wall cranes wiped out, it surprises me how what at the time seemed huge buildings covered such a small area once cleared. They call it progress, but for the families who worked there making a good living and very nice pension in my case at least it was sad to see it all end.
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Is the medical centre still there? I had a medical there in 1990 before starting at Visqueen, but being younger, I didn’t ‘take in’ what the ICI site looked like. Now when going to boro by bus it looks so barren on both sides. Down new road to Haverton Hill road, you never could see beyond the fences because of buildings or high bushes so it always seemed a mystery to me what was beyond, now though you can see, seems a shame all that history gone!
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The Benfield tower was used for removing carbon dioxide from the stream of hydrogen rich gas coming from the reforming plant. It used potassium carbonate and was much more compact than the earlier method, dating from the 1920s of using plain water to absorb carbon dioxide. The Benfield process was also used by all British Gas plants when making gas from naphtha using the steam reforming process
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The tall tower was the “Benfield Tower”. I well remember conducting many “regulation 7” air tests on this plant during its construction – at the time I was working in Central Labs just across Nitrates Avenue. There was a contractors lift attached to the side of the tower, and each morning a lab man was escorted up this lift to the top of the tower to carry out the air test before allowing access to the interior of the tower. I could have done with that lift several years later when the plant had its first shutdown & I had to climb to the top using the ladders whilst carrying my basket of test kit…
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Yep,Ammonia 4 Plant. I worked for Haigh and Ringrose Electrical Contractors during the construction in 1976 with my best mate Sparky Steve Thompson. I have clear memories of dangling over the top of the tallest, slightly right of centre tower. No safety harness or equipment! When finished there I moved to Seal Sands Simchem Site. Philips Oil Refinery
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This is the ammonia plant at ICI Billingham.
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this is the ammonia 4 plant. The Methanol plant just down the road is a far superior piece of engineering.
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Indeed this is my favourite plant Ammonia 4.
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This is still the Ammonia 4 plant as I work on it. It opened in approx 1975-76. Methonol was down the road, it has been shutdown for a number of years now.
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This is a photo of Ammonia 4 taken from the car park between the medical centre and the fire station looking north (towards Hartlepool)
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This is Ammonia 4 now owned By Terra Nitrogen
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I don”t think this is the Methanol plant. It looks like Ammonia IV built in the mid seventies.
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