2012

SJ6903 : Blists Hill Victorian Town - rolling wrought iron

taken 12 years ago, near to Coalport, Telford And Wrekin, England

Blists Hill Victorian Town - rolling wrought iron
Blists Hill Victorian Town - rolling wrought iron
This view shows two operatives working the larger of the site's two high, non-reversing rolling mill stands. The man on the left is feeding the bar between the rollers on the 'live' pass that will reduce its section and make it longer. The man on the right will catch it with the tongs suspended on a chain and lift it over the top roll back to the left so that it can be fed into the next smaller section (and so on).

Sorry about the intrusive bracket but we were shoulder to shoulder along the viewing gallery and once you were in you stayed put.
Hot Iron - Morton's Ironworks at Blists Hill

Generally twice a year for 2 or 3 days, the Blists Hill Museum operates its historic rolling mill, demonstrating how wrought iron was traditionally forged and rolled.
An original furnace is used to heat wrought iron billets, usually obtained from suitable wrought iron scrap. This is then hammered using the steam hammer into an ingot of a size that will run through the rolling mill (driven by a steam engine).
A hot bar will be run through the rolling mill several times to reduce the cross section to a desired size, either in the form of roughly square bar or flat strip. Traditionally, these bars or strips would be further rolled in the finishing mill which reduced the cross section even further, producing small rectangular bar or circular rod.
Today, the output is made available for historic restorations for which genuine wrought iron is the essential material.
Despite the cost of the operation - around 8000 litres of fuel oil alone is necessary to fire the boiler for the steam engine and hammer, as well as the furnace - no extra charge is made on the days when the event is held.

Blists Hill Victorian Town

Blists Hill Victorian Town, originally called Blists Hill Open Air Museum, was opened in 1973, and has been slowly growing ever since. Built on a former industrial complex in the Madeley area of Telford, it is one of ten museums operated by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust (LinkExternal link ).

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Blists Hill was an industrial region consisting of a brick and tile works, blast furnaces and coal, iron and fire clay mines. A short section of the Shropshire Canal runs across the site to the Hay Inclined Plane, which transported boats up and down the hill from Blists Hill to Coalport.

Many of the museum's buildings are recreations of buildings which stood in the area, replicas of those still standing elsewhere or original buildings that have been relocated to the museum. There are also features that were already part of the industrial site (eg the brick and tile works, the blast furnaces, Hay Inclined Plane, the canal etc).

More information can be found on the Ironbridge Museums’ website LinkExternal link
and this LinkExternal link Wikipedia article


Creative Commons Licence [Some Rights Reserved]   © Copyright Chris Allen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Geographical Context: Historic sites and artefacts Place: Blists Hill other tags: Rolling Mill Wrought Iron Ironworks Click a tag, to view other nearby images.
This photo is linked from: Automatic Clusters: · Rolling Mill [20] ·
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SJ6903, 488 images   (more nearby 🔍)
Photographer
Chris Allen   (more nearby)
Date Taken
Saturday, 4 August, 2012   (more nearby)
Submitted
Monday, 6 August, 2012
Subject Location
OSGB36: geotagged! SJ 6939 0339 [10m precision]
WGS84: 52:37.6439N 2:27.2192W
Camera Location
OSGB36: geotagged! SJ 6939 0339
View Direction
EAST (about 90 degrees)
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Image classification(about): Supplemental image
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