|
|
| The Blaenavon Company was reorganised as a joint stock company in 1836, when James Ashwell was appointed managing director. He came from Nottinghamshire, had been a pupil of the great engineer, Bryan Donkin, and had directed ironworks in Derbyshire and Scotland. Ashwell was responsible for an extensive programme of improvements to the company's furnaces and forges, to its transport systems and to the houses provided for its workpeople. The most impressive monument to Ashwell's work at Blaenavon Ironworks is the water balance tower at its northern end, which was built in 1839. This form of lift technology using water to counter-balance loads was used in the mine shafts of south east Wales and at several ironworks. This site is the best preserved example. The lift tower was linked to high ground behind by a wooden bridge, which was quickly replaced by the stone bridge which remains. Its winding gear consisted of a cast iron frame with Classical detailing, on which was mounted a pulley wheel over which a chain linked a pair of lift cages, each incorporating a wrought iron water tank. By piping water in or out of the tank, wagons could be lifted or lowered as required. The stonework of the tower is of high quality, and it is topped by the remnants of the cast iron frame, which has the appearance of a ruined Classical temple. | |
|
|
| Adjacent to the Ironworks stands Stack Square and Engine Row, a small group of solidly constructed stone cottages, incorporating patterns of building, notably door and window heads, characteristic of the West Midlands in England alongside more local building practices. The houses were probably erected in 1788 for the first skilled workers who operated the furnaces from the time they were built. Amongst the early inhabitants was Joseph Hampton from the Stourbridge area of Worcestershire, who was superintendent of the Ironworks for nearly 30 years before his death in 1832. The houses form a square into which a 50 metre high chimney stack for a new engine house was placed in 1860, the base of which can still be seen. The central range of the square was originally the Company office, shop and manager's house in 1788, and was converted to dwellings in the 1860s, which were of a much smaller size than the skilled workers' homes which surrounded them. The whole square is a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of the state and has been carefully conserved. | |
 |
|
Blaenavon Ironworks
The main focus of the area is Blaenavon Ironworks, a site in state care, where there are remains of a works with six blast furnaces in which, from 1789 until 1902, ore was smelted to produce pig iron. When the works was established, it was decided confidently to put into practice the latest technology and industrial organisation. Unlike almost all previous ironworks it was built with three blast furnaces from the start, operated with steam power. It was immediately one of the largest ironworks in the world. With its exceptional range of surviving structures, Blaenavon Ironworks is the best preserved blast furnace complex of its period and type in the world.
Blaenavon Ironworks has been in state care since 1975. At the time of coming into guardianship the monument was in a ruinous state. Little or no repair to the masonry structures had been carried out for a century, and stone had been robbed for building elsewhere.Much of the site was buried in rubble and waste.
