The Archive believed this was the building of No. 5 blast furnace and since confirmed by Eric Johnson; it looks strange without it’s clothes on! Arthur Ormrod tells us: ”The tall cylinders then would be the ”Cowper stoves, in which cleaned blast furnace gas is burned and used to heat the incoming cold blast, which then leaves as hot blast. These regenerative heat exchangers were invented by Edward Cowper in 1857 and are still used in blast furnace plants today.” Half-way along this bank of units was a long pipe ending in a thin rubber pipe and daily a sampling of the blast-furnace gas to test it for calorific value (among other things) was undertaken.
Many thanks to Eric Johnson and Arthur Ormerod for the updates.
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