The Teesside Steelworks was a large steelworks that formed a continuous stretch along the south bank of the River Tees from the towns of Middlesbrough to Redcar in North Yorkshire, England. At its height there were 91 blast furnaces within a 10-mile radius of the area. By the end of the 1970s there was only one left on Teesside. Opened in 1979 and located near the mouth of the River Tees, the Redcar blast furnace was the second largest in Europe.
The majority of the steelworks, including the Redcar blast furnace, Redcar and South Bank coke ovens and the BOS plant at Lackenby closed in 2015. The Teesside Beam Mill and some support services still operate at the Lackenby part of the site.
On 1 October 2022, the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) Plant at Lackenby was demolished in one of the largest single explosive demolition operations in the country in 75 years.
History
19th century Origins
Bolckow, Vaughan & Co
In 1850s, iron ore was discovered in near Eston in the Cleveland Hills of Yorkshire, by John Vaughan and his mining geologist John Marley. Vaughan and his partner Henry Bolckow, over the next decades, would build an iron and steel works, which extended, by 1864, over along the banks of the River Tees.
In 1875, Edward Windsor Richards became the General Manager of the Middlesbrough Ironworks. Richards was in charge of the design and construction of the new plant at Eston, the Cleveland Steel Works. It had three coke fired haematite blast furnaces. Richards' work helped to improve the Bessemer process for making steel, in the case when the ore is rich in phosphorus, and an alkaline rock (dolomite, limestone or magnesite) is used. This variant is called the Gilchrist–Thomas process after its inventor Sidney Gilchrist Thomas who persuaded Richards to adopt it.
The firm later acquired the Southbank Steelworks and adopted the Gilchrist–Thomas process at the suggestion of one of its developer Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. This allowed the use of local ironstone which had a high phosphorus content. Bolckow, Vaughan & Co Ltd were already well established producers of Iron owning many Ironworks and furnaces and were seen as the driving force behind the rapid expansion of Middlesbrough or "Ironopolis" and Great Britain's leading producer of pig iron. After the comanies acquisition of the Clay Lane works at the end of the century and a shift in production from Iron to steel they became the largest producers of steel in Great Britain and possibly the world, owning 21 of the 91 blast furnaces in the Cleveland are.
Dorman Long
In 1876, Arthur Dorman entered into a partnership with Albert de Lande Long to form Dorman Long, taking over the West Marsh Ironworks in Middlesbrough. Over next 10 years Dorman Long would expand further, acquiring the Brittania works in Middlesbrough, and building a new steel works at the Clarence works in a joint venture with Bell Brothers.
20th century expansion
In 1902, Dorman Long would build the first integrated steelworks at Cargo Fleet. In the following year, Lowthian Bell, then aged 87, sold a majority holding of the Bell companies to the rivals Dorman Long It was not a comfortable merger.
During the First World War Dorman Long was one of the first non-munitions company in Britain to dedicate it self to shell production. By 1917, they had completed a new blast furnace at Redcar with a cost of £5.4 million. Some of the steel produced here, along with steel from the Brittania and Cargo Fleet steelworks, would be used to build notable structures including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Tyne Bridge, in the 20s, and later, the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Interwar period
In 1923, Bolckow, Vaughan & Co acquired Redpath, Brown & Co, manufacturers of structural steel.
As the 1920s went on Bolckow Vaughan found its self in an increasingly diffcult financial situation. The works were reorganised, and consultation with the workforce introduced. The causes of these problems included: poor decision-making in the period from 1900–1910 which delayed the introduction of improved steelmaking technology; optimistic belief in promises of funding made by the British government during the war, leading to reliance on costly bank loans in 1918; and failure to invest in its own coal mines to provide enough for steel production, and for cash. By 1929, the financial pressures, forced the company into a takeover by Dorman Long who by this point is also struggling financially.
In 1946, The Lackenby development was built by Dorman Long between the Redcar and Cleveland Works.