Ebbw Vale Steelworks
The Ebbw Vale Steel Works was a steel mill , the - first as ferrous and end up as a work with a focus on tinplate from 1789 to 2002 in the - and steel coatings , South Wales town of Ebbw Vale existed. Originating on the northern edge of the South Welsh coal fields, the company was owned by the Harford family between 1796 and 1842, who significantly expanded the plant. From 1844 the factory was called Ebbw Vale Companyorganized, which expanded regionally and even to Spain. In the middle of the 19th century, the plant was considered a technological pioneer, for example, a steel mill was built in at an early stage that produced according to the new Bessemer process . By expanding the company to include the coal industry, it survived the collapse of the iron industry, but was then run down, which is why it was temporarily on the verge of bankruptcy.
From 1892, however, the company was modernized so that at the beginning of the 20th century it employed a good 34,000 workers. This heyday ended in the mid-1920s when a severe recession caused the plant to close in 1929. In the 1930s, the company, now known as Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Company , changed hands and was modernized and reopened before it was nationalized in 1967 and became part of British Steel . In the 1970s, iron and steel production ended and the company specialized in the production of tinplate and steel coatings, which, however, led to many job cuts. British Steel , which has now been re-privatized, had to merge in 1999 before Ebbw Vale Steelworks had to close for competitive reasons in 2002 . The plant was largely dismantled; only the former company headquarters are still standing.
story
Ebbw Vale is located in South Wales in a valley in which there were natural deposits of various raw materials such as coal, iron ore and wood, but also limestone and water. It was part of a series of similar works, which was due to its location on the northern edge of the South Wales Valleys and the existing coal area. In 1789 the later Ebbw Vale Steelworks opened in the village , initially producing iron. Depending on the source, 1790 is also mentioned as the opening year. According to the 1790 source, a group of people around Jeremiah Homfray founded the plant and sold it to the Harford family in 1796. Harford expanded the plant with three more blast furnaces , including those for the puddling process , as well as rolling machines for producing rails. In the 1830s, residential buildings for the factory workers, the so-called Lethbridge Terrace , were built on the factory premises and existed until the 1950s. After the bankruptcy of the Harfords in 1842, the plant was initially managed by trustees and from 1844 by Abraham Darby IV , who founded the so-called Ebbw Vale Company . This expanded beyond Ebbw Vale in the following years and bought mines in Somerset and Spain as well as various other plants such as in Pontypool . After experiments in the manufacture of steel had already been carried out in 1854 and 1855, in 1857 Robert Forester Mushet commissioned the manufacture of the first steel railroad tracks . Nevertheless, the factory was only considered a steelworks from 1868, when the mechanical requirements for steel production had been met by the then new Bessemer process . It was advantageous that phosphorus-free iron ore made the most sense for this , as it occurred in the vicinity of Ebbw Vale. It is therefore considered to be one of the most progressive works of the time.
In 1868, the Ebbw Vale Company was also converted into the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Company . It survived the collapse of the iron market in the 1870s due to the early conversion to steel, but after the company was bought by bankers from Manchester it was mismanaged for years , which is why many of the acquired plants had to close and the company was almost insolvent in 1892. Previously, the thriving coal industry was the main focus and had become one of the most important coal producers in the region. In 1892 the company was transferred to people working in the industry, who modernized and expanded it. This expansion took place until 1912, whereby the focus was still on the coal industry and the iron and steel works had temporarily closed. During this time the Ebbw Vale Steelworks had their heyday; In the age of Edward VII , over 34,000 people worked in the plant. Although a fire destroyed the company's own power station in Victoria south of Ebbw Vale in 1915, a new company headquarters was built between 1915 and the premature construction stop due to the First World War in 1916. A side effect of the fire was the clogging of the blast furnaces with iron, which cooled and solidified because of the electricity failure. During the First World War, when numerous workers went to war, the plant served as a production facility for cannon ammunition. The modernization of the company then continued. However, after a new high in generated capital had been reached in 1922, the Welsh basic industries, including the coal industry, fell into recession, in part because the overseas market for the Welsh coal industry collapsed. Due to the global economic crisis , the company had to be closed in 1929, which made large parts of the population of Ebbw Vale unemployed.
1930 was the work of Richard Baldwin & Co was acquired before the company in 1935 liquidated was and the Partridge Jones and John Paton Ltd. passed. From 1936 to 1938 the old plant was demolished and replaced by a new one for the production of iron, steel and tinplate . In the following decades the company was progressively modernized, but nationalized in 1967. In the course of a change in the steel industry towards more mass throughput, the production of iron and steel in the plant was cut back and some time later the company was privatized again so that it became part of British Steel . In the 1970s, the production of iron and steel in the three-kilometer-long plant ended, which is why the production process was changed and the workforce retrained to produce tinplate. It became the largest tinplate producer in the UK. In addition, they specialized in the production of steel coatings. However, the restructuring of the company resulted in considerable job cuts. In particular, the blast furnaces and the hot rolling mill were no longer used. After exporting around the world, the company ran into economic difficulties as a result of the steel crisis in the late 1990s . In 1999 British Steel merged with the Dutch Koninklijke Hoogovens to form the new company Corus . Corus continued to invest in Ebbw Vale, but production became less and less competitive due to cheaper offers from Asia. On February 1, 2001, Corus announced the closure of Ebbw Vale Steelworks . 780 jobs were lost as a result; large parts of the plant were dismantled and moved to other plants in the company. The plant officially closed in July 2002, but until December of the same year a clearly decimated staff took care of the final processing of the plant. It was the last existing plant in the region.
Aftermath
The valley in which Ebbw Vale is located has benefited from the closure as the environment has emerged and it is now significantly greener than in the past, according to a former factory worker. However, he complained about the departure of many former colleagues. In addition, the unemployment rate in the area was still around 12% in 2016, even if a hospital and a university, among other things, could be relocated in view of regional structural change . Another idea is to sow wildflowers on the former site of the plant and thereby promote wildlife.
For the 15th anniversary of the closure of Ebbw Vale Steelworks, photographer Joseph Murphy created a photo series with portraits of former employees. This resulted in an exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea ; The BBC also published parts of the images on its website. The Ebbw Vale Works Museum opened in the former corporate headquarters building, which was expanded in 2011. It shows various exhibits on the history of the iron and steel industry in Ebbw Vale. The Gwent Archives are also located in the extension of the building . The adjacent street is called Steelworks Road . The Ebbw Vale Archival Trust is also located in the same building and is dedicated to running the museum and collecting and preserving memorabilia. For example, there are pictures by the painter Norman Hepple related to the Ebbw Vale Steelworks . In addition, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Ebbw Vale in July 2002 in memory of the factory workers who died in the two world wars.
literature
- John Hodge: Railways and Industry in the Western Valley . Aberbeeg To Brynmawr & Ebbw Vale. Pen & Sword Books Ltd, Barnsley 2017, ISBN 978-1-4738-3808-6 , pp. 157-167 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Priyanka Shankar: The Ebbw Vale Steelworks - A lost legacy. In: jomec.co.uk. Cardiff News Plus, May 23, 2016, accessed September 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k The Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Company. In: museum.wales. National Museum Wales, July 23, 2010, accessed September 28, 2020 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Former steelworks offices, Ebbw Vale. historypoints.org, accessed on September 28, 2020 .
- ↑ 19th century workers' housing beside Ebbw Vale steelworks, demolished late 1950s. People's Collection Wales, February 18, 2011, accessed September 26, 2020 .
- ↑ a b The last shift at Ebbw Vale. In: www.bbc.com. BBC , February 3, 2017, accessed September 26, 2020 .
- ^ Katie Sands: How the former site of the steelworks in Ebbw Vale could become a flourishing hotspot for wildlife in Blaenau Gwent. Wales Online, October 20, 2015, accessed September 28, 2020 .
- ^ Ebbw Vale Works Museum. In: www.blaenau-gwent.gov.uk. Blaenau Gwent County Borough Concil, accessed September 26, 2020 .
- ^ The Ebbw Vale Works Museum Accredited Museum. Ebbw Vale Works Archival Trust, accessed September 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Ebbw Vale Works Archival Trust. artuk.org, accessed on September 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Ebbw Vale Steelworks WW1 And WW2. In: www.iwm.org. Imperial War Museums, accessed September 26, 2020 .
Coordinates: 51 ° 46 ′ 12.7 ″ N , 3 ° 12 ′ 3.2 ″ W.