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Springvale Steel Works


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I'm hoping BCN experts might be able to help me out again...

 

I've heard various conflicting accounts of how boats accessed the Springvale Steelworks site. In the first couple of decades of the 20th century, would anyone know definitively where their wharf/wharves might have been located?

 

Also, given that Hickmans are known to have had a large fleet of mainly pretty battered open day boats, would anyone know what the fleet was actually used for? Was it internal transfer work, bringing in raw materials or taking away finished products...

 

Cheers

 

Nick

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A visit to the site and a walk along the towpath would answer many of your queries. Also in Mount Pleasant Bilston is a library and part museum. Getting out to the real places can still pay dividends, it what research is really about, getting as near as possible to the remains and experiencing and seeing. I took 4 senior CRT officers past the site on Thursday and explained what was what, even with so little left it comes to life.

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Laurence, you're absolutely right of course, nothing should replace the immediacy of direct and first hand experience, however I'm currently pretty much tied to London, and battling with the huge demands of a young family, it's therefore difficult to do the field trips I'd like.

 

They will get done one day.

 

Until then I'm trying to learn as much as possible, so that the knowledge helps inform what I see 'on the ground' when I am able to visit and can help bring to life what I see on the ground so much more vividly.

 

Best wishes

 

Nick

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We saw an exhibition of paintings by Edwin Butler Bayliss at Wolverhampton Art Galley earlier this year. There were many scenes of the steel works. Apparently his father and Hickman were friends.

 

Regards

Pete

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We saw an exhibition of paintings by Edwin Butler Bayliss at Wolverhampton Art Galley earlier this year. There were many scenes of the steel works. Apparently his father and Hickman were friends.

 

Thanks Pearly for this lead, I've just had a look at the catalogue to the show, gorgeously evocative and atmospheric Black Country images....

  • Greenie 1
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Also in Mount Pleasant Bilston is a library and part museum.

I visited this archive a few years ago when looking for information on Stewarts & Lloyds Ltd. narrow boat fleet. Their contact details are:-

 

Dudley Archives and Local History Service,

Mount Pleasant Street,

Coseley.

WV14 9JR

 

01384 812770.

 

There is limited on site car parking (was free when I was there) and it is fairly close to Spring Vale.

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The Springvale Steelworks came to occupy a long stretch of canal frontage that extended north from the junction at Coseley (with old main line/ Bradley Branch)to Millfields. The original furnace was located close to a private branch (Bickleys)- the most northern branch- which extended towards various mines and came to serve both the furnace(s) (originally with the Bickleys but later with the Jones family and then Alfred Hickman. There was an ironworks at the end at one time associated with the Sparrow family. I do detail much of this history in South Staffordshire Ironmasters-by the way.

 

There were two more basins south of Bickleys Arm. The first came to serve two later smelting furnaces. The steel works came about in the 1880's with a new process that made Basic steel. This steel making produced a basic slag that was broken down and used as manure. The southernmost basin that once served Ladymoor Colliery also came to be used to load this slag.

 

The steelworks site was enlarged by Stewarts & Lloyds with mills extending across to the Ladymoor Colliery Site. In their days and that of British Steel there was a scrap recycling plant on this southern part of the estate.

 

Ray Shill

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Picking up on the basic steel bit, what's the chances that the 'Hickman' boats are rivetted steel, as when we were welding the hull on BCN1645, there was no real difference between that and the sections which had been replaced???

 

Dan

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I am sure there are many boat experts out there, but wrought iron boats were often as good as steel. Grazebrooks of Netherton were quite certain in their publicity material, that wrought iron was very suitable.

 

Ray Shill

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