East Cleveland Image Archive

I know this must be getting rather monotonous, but archives do sometimes!  This photograph is about 30 degrees right of the previous post and shows us 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 the same hearth diameter of 27 feet 6 inches and produced 1500 tons/day. These three all ran under high top pressure-if you look closely at 1 and 5 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. (from comments provided by Robert Proctor – rodders)

That big silo-type unit looks so familiar – it should do – it stood behind the left-most furnace of the three at Clay Lane (thanks to Mik G for his images on Flickr).  Thanks again to Eric Johnson for making me doubt my original conclusions.

Clay Lane furnaces, looking towards South Bank. On the left is where the scale cars ran and on the right you can see the incline for the skip to no 1 furnace.
The scale car ran under a series of bunkers which in turn emptied a weighed amount into the scale car, hence the name, this was emptied into the skip which hauled either coke, ironstone ,sinter or limestone to the top of the furnace. This burden emptied into a small bell which when full emptied into the large bell thence into the furnace throat , this was a double seal at the top of the furnace.