This must be getting rather monotonous, but archives are sometimes! This photograph is about 30 degrees right of the previous post and shows that there are three blast furnaces in this set – definitely Clay Lane – taken off wind and closed down after the big one at Redcar was blown in. All three had differing hearth diameters and produced per day varied. These three all ran under high top pressure – if you look closely at one and five you will count the three bleeders at the top – but if you follow the downcomer up you will notice a fourth smaller one. This arrangement allowed a higher gas flow rate without taking too much dust out. Neil Judson advised: “No 2 furnace did not have high top pressure.” Whilst Tony Bell tells us: “Your original facts were incorrect regarding hearth diameters, they were all different. Also production was 2 to 2.4 thousand tonnes a day with no.1 furnace and no. 3 furnace had high top pressure but was rarely used.”
Image courtesy of the Pem Holliday Collection, information courtesy of Robert Proctor, also thanks to Neil Judson and Tony Bell for the updates..
There was a proposal to have 5 Blast Furnaces on this site.
I have a siteplan showing them,but they were never built
I was first helper on furnace, frightened life out of me a couple of times ,spewing huge lumps of slag for hellish distances.Also worked on loco behind furnace filling up.