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Heavy metal |
With the development of its metal-using industries, Warrington needed supplies of iron on a large scale. All of it had to be brought from elsewhere as the town had never produced iron. The opening of the canal and railway networks meant that iron and steel could readily be brought from further afield. By 1860 Warrington companies were using steel from Barrow in Furness, Teeside and the Sheffield-Rotherham area. Warrington did not have the raw materials for making iron, but local companies could use the imported raw iron to make bars, sheets, rods and hoops which could then be used in the town's industries. |
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British Aluminium workers sheet rolling aluminium in the 1950s |
| The first ironworks, the Dallam Forge, opened in 1845. In the 1860s two new firms, the Dallam Forge Company and the Warrington Wire Iron Company, formed. In 1874 these two companies amalgamated with a major Wigan colliery to become Pearson & Knowles Coal and Iron Company. Also in 1874 Frederick Monks, the wire drawer, opened Warrington's second major ironworks on the north bank of the river at Atherton's Quay. Monks went into partnership with his brother-in-law, William Hall, and Monks Hall & Co. went on to become one of the world's greatest producers of finished iron and steel. From pins and tiny watch springs, through cookers and mattress coils, to steel girders and railway engine parts, the enormously wide range of Warrington's metal-working trades reflected late Victorian and Edwardian industrial society in all its many aspects. |
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White-hot metal bars at Monks Hall iron and steel works 1970s (image ref: GTT010) click here to order this image |
Life in the ironworks was famously hard and was heavy industry in the true sense with fearsomely difficult manual labour, massive (and to modern perceptions acutely dangerous) machinery on a grand scale. The nature of the work meant that the work environment was incredibly hot with white hot metal being poured from giant ladles. Huge sheets and girders had to be transported around the works and loaded and unloaded from ships and wagons. |
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