Ketley Ironworks was an

ironworks An ironworks or iron works is an industrial plant where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e. the singular of ''ironworks'' is ''ironworks''. Ironworks succeeded bloomeri ...

Ketley Ketley is a large village and part of Telford in the borough of Telford and Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. It is a civil parish. Immediately to the north of Ketley is Hadley. Residential development East Ketley is currentl ...

, in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

, England. Established in 1756, it was one of the largest ironworks in Britain during its ownership by William Reynolds and his brother Joseph. The site's location is Shropshire's Ironmaking Sites
Shropshire History. Retrieved 18 September 2018. ().

History

Abraham Darby II Abraham Darby, in his lifetime called Abraham Darby the Younger, referred to for convenience as Abraham Darby II (12 May 1711 – 31 March 1763) was the second man of that name in an English Quaker family that played an important role in the early ...

and

Thomas Goldney III The Goldney family were a wealthy English merchant trading family, most associated with Wiltshire and latterly Bristol. Later branches of the family became the Goldney baronets. Wiltshire The Goldney family made their monies as weavers and clot ...

leased land from Lord Gower in 1756; by 1758 there were two

blast furnaces 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 ...

in operation on the site. In 1775 Richard Reynolds, a partner since 1757, bought Goldney's shares. In 1776 there were three furnaces, and in 1785 a

forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to th ...

began operation.A P Baggs, D C Cox, Jessie McFall, P A Stamper and A J L Winchester, 'Ketley: Economic history', in ''A History of the County of Shropshire: Volume 11, Telford'', ed. G C Baugh and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 269-273.
British History Online. Retrieved 3 September 2018. In 1788 the

Ketley Canal The Ketley Canal was a tub boat canal that ran for about from Oakengates to Ketley works in Shropshire, England. The canal was built about 1788 and featured the first inclined plane in Britain. The main cargo of the canal was coal and ironstone ...

was completed; it brought coal and ironstone from

Oakengates Oakengates is a constituent town and civil parish in Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire, England. The towns parish population was recorded as 8,517 in the 2001 census. Etymology The name is not derived from "oak" or "gates" but is derived from the ...

to the works.A P Baggs, D C Cox, Jessie McFall, P A Stamper and A J L Winchester, 'Ketley', in ''A History of the County of Shropshire: Volume 11, Telford'', ed. G C Baugh and C R Elrington (London, 1985), pp. 266-269.
British History Online. Retrieved 3 September 2018. In 1789 Richard Reynolds passed his share in the works to his sons

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

and Joseph, and in 1796 they became sole partners. There were six blast furnaces by 1804, and in 1806 about 7,500 tons of

pig iron Pig iron, also known as crude iron, is an intermediate product of the iron industry in the production of steel which is obtained by smelting iron ore in a blast furnace. Pig iron has a high carbon content, typically 3.8–4.7%, along with silic ...

were produced, the ironworks being the fifth largest in Britain. The

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

made large

castings In metalworking and jewelry making, casting is a process in which a liquid metal is delivered into a Mold (manufacturing), mold (usually by a crucible) that contains a negative impression (i.e., a three-dimensional negative image) of the intende ...

for civil and mechanical engineers, the forge made plates and rods. The castings for

Longdon-on-Tern Aqueduct The Longdon-on-Tern Aqueduct, near Longdon-on-Tern in Shropshire, was one of the first two canal aqueducts to be built from cast iron. History The cast iron canal aqueduct was re-engineered by Thomas Telford after the first construction desig ...

, designed by

Thomas Telford Thomas Telford FRS, FRSE, (9 August 1757 – 2 September 1834) was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotla ...

and built in 1795, were made at the works. When William Reynolds died in 1803, Ketley Ironworks were valued at £110,000. His interests in the works were passed to Joseph. By 1816 demand had fallen, and he closed the works. The site was revived in 1818 by the newly created Ketley Company: the forge and three blast furnaces were again in use, and in 1830 about 5,750 tons of pig iron were produced. The Ketley Company was dissolved about 1874, and the works closed. The site was sold to

Nettlefolds Limited Joseph Henry Nettlefold (19 September 1827 – 22 November 1881) was a British industrialist, the Nettlefold in Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds. He was born in London to John Sutton Nettlefold who, in 1854, dispatched him to manage the business ...

in 1879, but ironworking did not resume.

Later use of the site

The site was first used again in 1903, when the Sinclair Iron Co. Ltd. was established, making light castings. In 1929 it became a subsidiary of Allied Ironfounders Ltd. In 1960 Aga Heat, another subsidiary of Allied Ironfounders, moved to the site, and in 1969 the company became part of Glynwed Foundries Ltd.

References

{{Reflist Telford Ironworks and steelworks in England History of Shropshire Industrial history of England