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John Bradley established his famous foundry and rolling mill beside the
Stourbridge Canal at Wollaston in 1800.
In 1819, John Rastrick joined the firm and designed the "New Foundry"
which was completed in 1820 and includes a magnificent iron roof with cast iron
tie-bars and wrought iron rafters. The works became well-known for the quality
of its cast and rolled iron and supplied a large proportion of the fish-bellied
rail for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. |
Rastrick's locomotives Agenoria and Stourbridge Lion were
built here in 1828. Stourbridge Lion and two other locomotives were exported to
America the following year. |
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When I.A.Recordings started serious recording work in 1982, the rolling mill
at John Bradley's was our first industrial archaeology rescue recording project.
W.K.V.Gale, one of the foremost historians of the British iron and steel
industry asked us to visit the works in May to record as much as possible before
it closed. At one time, there were over 300 hand steel rolling mills in the
Black Country, but this was the last one and it closed just three days after our
visit. |
| The video production Hand Rolling of Steel, scripted
and narrated by W.K.V.Gale, follows the process from the stockpile of steel
billets. The billet is cold sheared and re-heated to 1200 C, then rolled in nine
passes in a mixture of two-high and three-high rolls. The resulting 20 metre
long sections are then cold-straightened, cut to length and bundled to form the
finished product. The mill was driven by a 260 kW G.E.C. electric motor with a
25 tonne flywheel, installed in 1927. NGR: SO 895 848 |
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The images on this
page are taken from the video. |
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