The Park Gate Iron and Steel Company was a British company that smelted iron ore and turned it into
rolled steel and
semi-finished casting products
Semi-finished casting products are intermediate castings produced in a steel mill that need further processing before being finished goods. There are four types: ''ingots'', ''blooms'', ''billets'', and ''slabs''.
Ingot
Ingots are large rough ...
. Its works was at
Parkgate, South Yorkshire
Parkgate is a suburb of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England. It has since been consumed by its neighbour, Rawmarsh and is in the ward of Rawmarsh from which it has been indistinguishable since the early 20th century.
Toponymy
Its name ...
on a triangular site bounded on two sides by the main road between
Rotherham
Rotherham () is a large minster and market town in South Yorkshire, England. The town takes its name from the River Rother which then merges with the River Don. The River Don then flows through the town centre. It is the main settlement of ...
and
Barnsley (
A633) and the
North Midland Railway
The North Midland Railway was a British railway company, which opened its line from Derby to Rotherham (Masbrough) and Leeds in 1840.
At Derby, it connected with the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway and the Midland Counties Railway at wh ...
main line between and . It also operated
ironstone
Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical replacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron ore compound from which iron (Fe) can be smelted commercially. Not to be con ...
quarries in
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
and
Leicestershire.
Early history
Records from 1823 show the establishment of a Parkgate Ironworks by Samuel Sanderson and a Mr Watson. This was at the junction of Rotherham Road and Taylors Lane with part of the works facing the
Greasbrough Canal. The company was sold in 1832 and became the Birmingham Tin Plate Company. Over the years, along with the business changing hands several times, the works expanded across Rotherham Road to the Park Gate site, which continued until the 1970s. The first
blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric p ...
was installed in 1839 and, after another change in ownership, a mill for the rolling of railway rails was installed in 1845.
In 1854 Samuel Beale and Company made the cast iron armour plating for
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "one ...
's ocean liner . Samuel Beale retired in 1864 and his son incorporated the company under the name Parkgate Iron Company Limited.
Two more blast furnaces were brought into operation in 1871. Further new plant was added over the next decade, including a
slab mill, a large plate mill, a
billet
A billet is a living-quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, a billet was a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier.
Soldiers are generally billeted in barracks or garrisons when not on combat duty, alt ...
mill and three
open hearth furnace
An open-hearth furnace or open hearth furnace is any of several kinds of industrial furnace in which excess carbon and other impurities are burnt out of pig iron to produce steel. Because steel is difficult to manufacture owing to its high me ...
s. In 1888 the company was renamed the Parkgate Iron & Steel Company Limited to reflect its increase in steelmaking.
By 1908 the works had converted entirely to steel production and until 1946 its main products were steel
ingots
An ingot is a piece of relatively pure material, usually metal, that is cast into a shape suitable for further processing. In steelmaking, it is the first step among semi-finished casting products. Ingots usually require a second procedure of sha ...
for further processing, in particular
steel plate and armour plate for shipbuilding and solid bar products ranging from to . The company also made sectional shapes and in particular arches and props for mining.
In 1914 the company opened new head offices on Broad Street, Rotherham by
James Knight.
Iron and steel making plant
After
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
the company bought land at nearby Roundwood, and by 1920 a tenth open hearth furnace was added and new rolling capacity on , and rolling mills began production.
In 1946 steel plate rolling ended. In 1953 the continuous bar mill was completed, which was to roll both straight and coiled bar. In 1963 the new site covered some and the Roundwood site, beside the
Midland Main Line
The Midland Main Line is a major Rail transport in Great Britain, railway line in England from London to Nottingham and Sheffield in the Midlands. It comprises the lines from London's St Pancras railway station, St Pancras station via Leicest ...
north of the main works, and covering another was starting production. The plant then included two mechanically-charged blast furnaces feeding 10 open hearth steel making furnaces which, in turn, fed two primary mills for rolling
blooms and billets and six finishing mills rolling a wide range of blooms, billets, slabs, sections, bars and strip. The Roundwood site had an 11" continuous bar mill and a narrow hot strip mill. Capacity at the time was about 425,000 tons of carbon, low alloy, and
free-cutting steel Free machining steel is steel that forms small chips when machined. This increases the machinability of the material by breaking the chips into small pieces, thus avoiding entanglement in the machinery. This enables automatic equipment to run witho ...
and ingots.
In 1951 the
1945–51 Labour Government nationalised most large British iron and steel companies under the Iron & Steel Act 1949. The Parkgate company became part of the resulting
Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain. After the 1951 General Elections the
1951–57 Conservative Government privatised most of the corporation, and in 1956 Parkgate was sold to
Tube Investments. Major development work was planned for a site at
Aldwarke, to begin production in the 1960s. This included
Kaldo process basic oxygen steelmaking plant which was fed from the blast furnaces at Parkgate,
ladles being moved by rail between the sites. This development also included hot rolling facilities. By the 1970s demand had changed and part of the old plant was demolished, the remainder of the Parkgate site was closed in 1985 with the closure of the heat treatment department. In 1976 rolling capacity was increased with the coming on stream of the
Thrybergh Bar Mill.
Rail links
All the sites had rail links. The original site also had access to the Greasborough canal. The
Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) was formed in 1847 when the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway joined with authorised but unbuilt railway companies, forming a proposed network from Manchester to Grimsb ...
(MS&LR) opened its Park Gate branch to serve the works in August 1873. The branch left the main line about south of and passed below the Midland line. Iron ore arrived here from the company's quarries south of
Hellidon
Hellidon is a village and civil parish about south-west of Daventry in Northamptonshire, England. The parish area is about . It lies – above sea level on the north face of an ironstone ridge, its highest point, at Windmill Hill, being sou ...
,
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
and east of
Sproxton, Leicestershire. The company also held shares in iron ore mines at Appleby near Scunthorpe. The
Midland Railway
The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It ama ...
had links next to station that served sidings next to the blast furnace plant, ore arriving here from the quarry in Northamptonshire.
When Parkgate opened its quarry at Hellidon in 1917 it had a
mineral railway
An industrial railway is a type of railway (usually private) that is not available for public transportation and is used exclusively to serve a particular industrial, logistics, or military site. In regions of the world influenced by British ...
built to link it with the
Great Central Main Line
The Great Central Main Line (GCML), also known as the London Extension of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), is a former railway line in the United Kingdom. The line was opened in 1899 and built by the Great Central Railw ...
at . Parkgate's Sproxton quarry had a mineral railway to link it with the
East Coast Main Line
The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain runni ...
south of .
A 1917
Manning Wardle
Manning Wardle was a steam locomotive manufacturer based in Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Precursor companies
The city of Leeds was one of the earliest centres of locomotive building; Matthew Murray built the first commercially ...
steam locomotive that worked first the Hellidon line and later the Sproxton line is preserved on the
Kent and East Sussex Railway.
Links to the present site are maintained either through the New Yard, adjacent to the MS&LR line near Parkgate and Aldwarke station, or directly into the 11" mill from the Midland line at
Aldwarke Junction. The works has had an internal rail system from its early days and this now takes traffic from the New Yard throughout the site. In the late 1950s the system was dieselised with 10 four-coupled locomotives built by
Brush Engineering of
Loughborough
Loughborough ( ) is a market town in the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England, the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and Loughborough University. At the 2011 census the town's built-up area had a population of 59,932 , the second lar ...
. In the mid-1960s these were joined by six Brush six-coupled locomotives. The network has been cut back over the years but there is enough work to warrant its retention. The Parkgate fleet was joined by some locomotives from the Rotherham Works of
Steel, Peech and Tozer
Steel, Peech and Tozer was a large steel maker with works situated at Ickles and Templeborough, in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, England.
History
An area of land, almost a crescent shape through Masbrough and Ickles, on the edge of Rotherham to ...
when the latter was closed, including examples built by the
Yorkshire Engine Company of Sheffield.
References
*
External links
*
Men of Steel' (1948)
*
Progress Parkgate' (1961–1965)
Park Gate Iron and Steel Coon ''Grace's Guide''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Park Gate Iron And Steel Company
Companies based in Rotherham
Ironworks and steelworks in England
Steel companies of the United Kingdom