Wigan Album

Great post card never seen that view before.

Yes, but the Zepplin Commander thought he was bombing steel works at Sheffield.

The wife must have been directing them...

now we know why the slag dumped on the Rabbit Rocks is circular the must have come from these

brilliant picture

One of the reasons why the slag is round would be due to the buckets used to pour the molten iron would be round. The slag would in all likelyhood be removed into round buckets also and then tipped once a bit cooler. It wouldn't really have much to do with the shape of the furnesses.

When I was a kid my Dad used to take me for a walk down there and I always thought they were parts of a Roman column. Too much imagination, I put it down to comics...

>>One of the reasons why the slag is round would be due to the buckets used to pour the molten iron would be round. The slag would in all likelyhood be removed into round buckets also and then tipped once a bit cooler. It wouldn't really have much to do with the shape of the furnesses.<<

I was led to believe that the furnaces would be capped with concrete (or a similar mix), and it is these caps that are littered across Rabbit Rocks. Mind you, i have been know to be wrong before! :-)

Excellent pic.
Ive seen a few aerial pictures, but none from inside the 'factory?'..

Would love to see more.

P.s
I think the round slag came from the buckets and not the furnaces.

I think piles of slag would have come from the steel plant not the Blast furnace, this would be the overflow from the ladle when the furnace was tapped & ran into it & overflowed into smaller ladles these were allowed to cool before being shunted by loco & then tipped out.

I dont think these structures are possibly coke ovens.they are definitely not blast furnaces.Blast furnaces are much taller and cover a larger area.

"Zeppelin raid" is overstating, only one bomb was dropped, at the end of Vine Street 1.5 miles away. Thanks to net curtains flying glass injuries were minimal, though baby Clarice Wilcox was lucky - blown clean out of her pram, she landed two gardens away in a rosebush, without even a scratch.

Interesting video showing inside of a steelworks. Note the slag dumpind seqence - the slag tip was virtually on the beach!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTgTmdYuZbE&feature=related

Bob you;ll find it was abit more than one bomb....Harper st. Whelley, and New Springs also got hit. Those are the blast furnaces. My grandad was furnace keeper on the one nearest canal. I always belived the ironworking area tipped slag by Hemfield Road and the steel plant on Rabbit Rocks.

Thanks flaggy, I stand corrected. Doesn't sound like the other bombs got much nearer target though. Might add that my uncle did apprenticeship at Top Place, but although a good worker was sacked at its end - they couldn't afford to pay him full wages. Unsurprisingly, a couple of years later the works closed.

Dose anyone know what year the iron works closedown and the year it was demolished.

I LOVE BLAST FURNACES OMG CHEMISRY WOOOOOOOOO I LOVE IT SO MUCH I WISH I WAS A BLAST FURNACE SO I CAN REDUCE IRON ORE SUCH FUN MANY WOW

It closed in 1930 when the Wigan Coal and Iron Co amalgamated with the Pearson and Knowles group. Two new companies were formed out of the merger separating the coal and steel interests. The Coal Company became the Wigan Coal Corporation, and the iron and steel business became the Lancashire Steel Corporation. It was decided to move the iron and steel business to the Irlam which had easy access to the Manchester Ship Canal. Don’t know when the furnaces and steel works at Kirkless were demolished but they had all gone by the 1960’s.