At the dawn of the 19th century, Philip de Loutherbourg evoked a more dramatic vision of beautiful dale in his painting of Coalbrookdale at Night, in which he contrasts a terrifying inferno at the ironworks with images of traditional rural activity.

The Crawshay family were, arguably, the most important ironmasters in South Wales. Richard Crawshay took ownersip of Cyfarthfa works in 1791. It was his grandson William, however, who commissioned Penry Williams, a well-known landscape painter of the time, to do some paintings of the work. This one is apparently of the view from the Crawshay family mansion. It provides a broad view of the industrial landscape which displays the great extent of the patron’s ironworks but, with the rising steam and smoke, manages to draw some attention to the potential damage from the industry to the local environment. The Cyfarthfa works closed in 1910, re-opened during World War 1 to help with the war effort, and closed permanently in 1919.

The Dowlais works, was established in 1759 alongside the River Taff near Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. By 1815 it was the largest iron producer in the world, and by the mid 19th century employed more than seven thousand people at its eighteen furnaces, including my great-grandfathers Charles McCarthy and William Hartnett who arrived in South Wales seeking a better life than they had in a famine ravished Ireland. The company continued prosperity due to its early engagement in steel production. Its first output of Bessemer steel was rolled at the works in 1865. The plant ultimately closed in the 1930s.

The Nantyglo Ironworks were built between 1792 and 1794 by Thomas Hill of Blaenavon. The works had period of success, especially during high demand for its wrought iron rails during the railway expansion of 1830s and 1840s The works closed in 1871, though, which means it never engaged in steelmaking.

Iron production arrived in Middlesbrough in the 1850s following discovery of large deposits of iron ore in the nearby Eston Hills. Middlesbrough was in a perfect situation: there was iron ore close by, plentiful coal in the nearby Durham coalfield, and access to harbour facilities on the River Tees. By 1867 there were 47 blast furnaces lining the river bank, and Middlesbrough itself had changed from a hamlet to a considerable town. During the last half of the 19th century its population grew from 7,431 people to 91,302. It was very much an immigrant town with residents drawn from all parts of the British Isles, especially from Ireland: including my great-grandparents who made the trek up from South Wales in the 1870s.

Ayresome Iron Works was established in 1870 on the south bank of the River Tees, and closed in the 1960s.

The painting commemorates an 1862 visit to the burgeoning industrial metropolis alongside the River Tees by William Gladstone – sometimes Prime Minister but Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. During this visit he referred to Middlesbrough as, "This remarkable place, the youngest child of England's enterprise. It is an infant, gentlemen, but it is an Infant Hercules."

As the iron and steel industry grew, the housing of the workforce became a major concern. In most places, the ironmasters had little choice but to provide it themselves, as there were rarely settlements of any consequence nearby. Eventually, sizeable townships grew around the furnaces, mills, and factories. Initially the ironmasters themselves tended to live near the works, but their descendants generally moved away and spent their family fortunes on land, building mansions and enjoying the trappings of country life. For the workers and their families, however, housing conditions were generally grim.

Looks like morning, with men heading to the steelworks for the morning shift. In one sense it was handy being so close to the works. However, such proximity to the pollution was not healthy for the workers and their families.

This painting depicts the streets of Grangetown, near Middlesbrough, in which I grew up. I was living there at the time that the painting was done: I was ten at the time. The houses are the original eight streets of Grangetown, built in the 1880s to house workers employed at the Bolckow and Vaughan steelworks. The eight streets were demolished in the late sixties; to make way for the A66 from Middlesbrough to Redcar and the Bolckow industrial estate. When painting this picture, the artist would have been looking down from the Lyric Cinema, where I spent every Saturday afternoon.

Coke was the fuel for the furnaces in which ironstone was smelted. It is made by baking coal in ovens. The process for mass production of it was developed by Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale. Before that, iron furnaces had used charcoal which was made by burning wood and its use in iron-making had led to considerable deforestation. Without Darby's invention mass production of iron would have not have been possible. The beehive shaped ovens were common in the late 19th century,

A more modern steel-made versions of a battery of coke ovens at Cargo Fleet Works in Middlesbrough. Cargo Fleet, opened in 1905, was the first fully-integrated purpose-built steelworks in the North of England. I served an apprenticeship there as a Fitter and Turner (1959-64).

Coke is currently made in batches of ovens with doors at the front and back. Coal is loaded from one end; and both doors are closed while the coal is alight, thus depriving the coal of air so that it baked rather than burned. When the coke is ready, the front doors are opened and the the red-hot coke is pushed out into a truck by a ram, and quenched under cooling towers. This painting shows the coke being pushed out, and quenched; while a coke-oven worker stands by.

Modern blast furnaces are tall metal structures lined with refractory brick. They have grown significantly in size and have become much more efficient, but the principles of iron production have changed little. Coke, limestone, flux, and iron ore are charged into the top of the furnace and a hot blast of air is blown into the lower section so that chemical reactions take place throughout the furnace as the material moves downward. The resulting molten metal is tapped from the bottom of the furnace, as is the slag that has been separated from it, while flue gases are drawn from the top.

Blast-furnace workers standing by. Looking at the glow and waiting for the tapping.

When furnaces were tapped, a waste product known as slag was drawn off separately. It was tapped into ladles and dumped some distance away while still molten. One of the results of this was the appearance of large slag heaps close to where the workers and their families live. They were not a pretty sight, and in some cases dangerous. Over time, however, dumping of slag was greatly reduced by using slag in road building and ballast as well as ingredients of cement and fertilisers.

Pig iron produced by smelting iron ore in furnaces was initially used to produce cast iron products in foundries. This involved reheating the iron until molten again and then pouring it into moulds. The main products from this process were originally items such as pots, pans, and cannon balls. Eventually. it began to be used for structural purposes. Abraham Darby constructed the first cast-iron bridge at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, in the 1770s, It is still standing.

Constructed in the 1770s

After 1784, wrought iron tended to be produced in puddling furnaces, which were developed by Henry Cort. In the puddling furnace molten iron was stirred by a puddler until semi-solid bits of iron appeared in the liquid mass. The puddler would then gather these into a single mass, remove them from the furnace and work them under a forge hammer. Only men of remarkable strength and endurance could stand up to the heat for hours, turn and stir the thick porridge of liquescent metal, and draw off the blobs of pasty wrought iron. Thus, the puddlers were the aristocracy of the industry but few of them lived past forty, and many of them went blind well before that.

Although wrought iron was more useful than cast iron it was eventually replaced by steel, which is harder than wrought iron and not as brittle as cast iron. Steel had been difficult and expensive to manufacture until Henry Bessemer invented his converter in the mid-18th century. The Bessemer converter was a large, pear-shaped receptacle with holes at the bottom that allowed the injection of compressed air. Steel was produced in the converter by blowing compressed air through molten pig iron, thus reducing its carbon and silicon content.

The original converter was not effective in removing the phosphorus present in most British and European iron ore. When Bolckow and Vaughan, in Middlesbrough, turned to steel production, they were dependent on imported iron ore with a low phosphorous content. However, Sidney Gilchrist Thomas discovered that lining a converter with a basic material such as burned limestone overcame this problem, which meant that Bolckow and Vaughan could take advantage of the abundant supply of high-phosphorous ore in the nearby Eston Hills. The company grew rapidly from this point to become the largest steel producer in Britain, and possibly the world. In 1905, the firm produced 820,000 tons of pig iron – 8.5% of Great Britain's output, and twice as much as

Bessemer furnaces were eventually replaced by a process which converted iron into steel in a broad, shallow, gas-fired, open-hearth furnaces. fuelled by adding wrought iron, or iron oxide, to molten pig iron until reducing the carbon content through dilution and oxidation. Unlike the Bessemer converter, which makes steel in one volcanic rush, the open-hearth process takes hours and allows for periodic laboratory testing of the molten steel so that steel can be made to precise specifications.

The Bessemer process facilitated large-scale steel production and virtually changed the world. Steel production became the most important industry on the planet, as steel became used in the creation of everything from bridges to railways to skyscrapers to engines to ships to motor cars and to armaments. Such was its importance that many historians described the introduction of the Bessemer process as the launch of the second industrial revolution.

The electric arc furnace is loaded with cold scrap steel, which is melted by an electric current. The basic oxygen process uses a vessel charged with scrap and molten iron and high purity oxygen is blown into the furnace through a water-cooled lance. The oxygen combines with the carbon in the iron to remove impurities.

The open-hearth process also allows for production of larger batches of steel than the Bessemer process does, and for the recycling of scrap metal. Consequently, the open-hearth process virtually replaced the Bessemer furnaces until the 1960s, when electric-arc furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces replaced it.

Blast furnaces produce iron and the Bessemer, open-hearth and BOS furnaces turn it into steel. Both products take on use-value when shaped into products – plates, rods, beams, rails etc. – via hammering or rolling. The demand for increasingly bigger products necessitated more technological innovation. Hammering machines with heavy heads at the end of a pivotal lever – such as the one shown below – came into use in the mid-18th century. These machines (tilt hammers) were initially water driven.

After learning, in 1838, that the Great Western Steam Company was experiencing problems forging the paddle shaft of the SS Great Britain, James Nasmyth invented a steam-driven hammer, it seems that even when the largest tilt hammer was tilted to its full height its range was so small that if a large piece of work was placed on the anvil, the hammer had no room to fall. Nasmyth solved this problem and prompted someone to compose this little ditty about him.

Scotsman Nasmyth was said,
To have hammers inside of his head,
While others laughed,
He forged a great shaft,
By pounding it while it was red.

This painting of a steam hammer is of particular interest in that it is credited to James Nasmyth. its inventor. James' father was Alexander Nasmyth, a renowned landscape and portrait painter. When a a young man, James planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and studied at the Edinburgh School of Art. After inventing the steam hammer, he retired from business and spent the final thirty years of his life painting and studying astronomy; which was apparently his major passion.

Rolling mills consist of banks of rolling machines that turn ingots of steel into products such as beams, rods, sheets, and rails. Leonardo de Vinci is often credited with the concept of rolling metal, but it is generally thought that Henry Cort pioneered its industrial practice, in 1783. With his design, mills were able to produce fifteen times more output per day than could be achieved by working steel under a hammer. Subsequent technological advancement has enabled the size of the mills to grow rapidly over time, and to increase the size and range of products being rolled.

During the two world wars of the 20th century steelworks and munitions production were kept going by women workers. Most of whom lost their jobs when the war was over.

This is one of sixteen portraits of workers commissioned in the late 1830s by Francis Crawshay, the grandson of William Crawshay the founder of the Crawshay ironmaster dynasty. At the time, Francis was in charge of the family's Hirwaun ironworks and a tinplate works in Treforest. The portraits, which were apparently painted by a travelling portrait artist named William Jones Chapman, are unique for the time. Previously, ironmasters had only been interested in commissioning portraits of themselves or of their possessions.

A more modern image of steelworkers.