History
Late C18-early C19, retained as charging bank for later detached steel-clad C19 blast furnaces, since removed. An ironworks was established in Ebbw Vale in 1786 by Walter Watkins of Danygraig, who formed a partnership in 1789 with Charles Cracroft and Jeremiah Homfray. First blast furnace built 1790. The partnership was dissolved in 1791, leaving Homfray as main shareholder, who reformed the company as Harford, Partridge & Co. More land was leased, and in 1794-5, a tramroad built to the limestone quarries at Trefil. The Crumlin branch of the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal opened in 1798, allowing the export of 1655 tons (1682 tonnes) of pig iron from Ebbw Vale that year. Second furnace built by 1805, and a third by 1823. By 1830, output rose to 18,133 tons (18, 424 tonnes) of pig and finished iron. The Sirhowy Ironworks, Tredegar, was purchased in 1818. In 1829, rails were being made for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and by 1834, four furnaces were in blast (the fourth built in 1839). The Victoria Ironworks was added in 1848. The works were purchased in 1844 by Abraham Darby of Coalbrookdale, with Thomas Brown as manager. The new company invested heavily, purchasing the Abersychan and New British Ironworks, Pontypool Ironworks, and the tinplate works at Pontymoile. By 1863, the company had 19 blast furnaces, 192 puddling furnaces, 1200 workmen’s cottages, and 7500 acres (3035 hectares). In 1864 the company adopted the limited status of the Ebbw Vale Iron and Coal Company. The Bessemer process was introduced in the 1860s by the chief engineer, Edward Windsor Richards, and Ebbw Vale became a noted producer of steel, the works being extensively modernised. The Boer War brought in profitable orders, and the size of the population of the town doubled between 1901 and 1914, as the works expanded. The decline of the early C20 was arrested when in 1935, Richard Thomas & Co bought the site and built a new steelworks, which by the 1960s, was the most advanced in Britain. The original small site became abandoned. In the later C20, the site was much redeveloped as a tinplate works, the majority of the older buildings demolished in favour of a vast complex of metal-sheeted buildings. Until c. 1980, two engine houses stood at each end of the furnace bank, since demolished.
Despite later alterations, and the accumulation of spoil at the foot of the bank, it may be speculated that up to eight (and at least seven) furnaces existed, records indicating that only four were ever active at one time. This would make the furnace bank second only in size to the world’s largest C19 furnace bank at Merthyr Tydfil, which had six active furnaces.