Shelton Bar (Shelton Iron, Steel & Coal Company) was a major

steelworks A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-fini ...

in the city of

Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England. It has an estimated population of 259,965 as of 2022, making it the largest settlement in Staffordshire ...

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. In its heyday, Shelton Bar employed 10,000 in the steelworks, had five coal mines, a complete railway system, and a by-products processing factory.

The main site

The main site began around 1830, was rapidly developed in the 1840s by the 4th Earl Granville and his managing partner William Roden MP. In 1873 there were 93 puddling furnaces, 7 mills and 8 blast furnaces with extensive iron mines and collieries. Many coal mines were sunk on the site, and railways built into the site which stretched from the western reaches of Hanley into Etruria as far as Middleport. In 1920 the company was acquired by

John Summers & Sons John Summers & Sons Ltd was a major United Kingdom iron and steel producer, latterly based on the Dee Estuary at Shotton, Flintshire. The company was absorbed into British Steel Corporation in 1967; British Steel became Corus in 1999 and this ...

, who developed the site into an efficient modern steelworks. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

it was a frequent target for

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

bombers as it was impossible to fully blackout the light from the huge

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being supplied above atmospheric pressure. In a ...

s. Shelton Bar came under

nationalised Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with ...

ownership in 1951, only to be denationalised by the

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

government in 1953. The works was re-nationalised again in 1967 by the Labour Party and the main works was closed in 1978, after which the eastern of the site was reclaimed for the 1986 National Garden Festival site, the

Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival The Stoke-on-Trent National Garden Festival was the second of Britain's national garden festivals. It was held in the city from 1 May to 26 October 1986, and was opened by the Queen. Preparation of the site involved the reclamation of land f ...

The rolling mill site

Shelton Works steel rolling mill was opened in 1964 as the world's first continuous cast production mill, and it remained fully operational during and after the Garden Festival, being on the western side of the

Trent and Mersey Canal The Trent and Mersey Canal is a canal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire in north-central England. It is a "narrow canal" for the vast majority of its length, but at the extremities to the east of Burton upon Trent and north of Middl ...

a few hundred yards from Middleport. It was closed by Corus in June 2000. The half-mile long building was torn down in early 2005, then used as a major supplies depot in the £8-billion upgrade of the

West Coast Main Line The West Coast Main Line (WCML) is one of the most important railway corridors in the United Kingdom, connecting the major cities of London and Glasgow with branches to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh. It is one of the busiest ...

railway that runs alongside the site. The rolling mill site is now being rectified ahead of a major £120m regeneration by St. Modwen. A pre-

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

British cemetery probably lies under the site, since funeral urns were found when the foundations were dug. As of 2005, there are now no steelworks or mines left in the city. When Shelton (new works) was constructed in 1964 it used a Swedish design

Kaldo converter A Kaldo converter (using the ''Kaldo process'' or ''Stora-Kaldo process'') is a rotary vessel oxygen based metal refining method. Originally applied to the refining of iron into steel, with most installations in the 1960s, the process is (2014) us ...

process which was very quick but the high cost of the refractories that had to be used and the life of them made it very expensive to operate. The main rolling mill was made by the German Company "Demag" introducing a quick order change system, where the Rolling machines (that weighed around 200 tonnes) were lifted out of the ground put in a dummy pit and the next machine for the next order was dropped in. This method reduced the time to change from one order to another down from around 8 hours to about 30 minutes. Shelton was a pioneer in the research of "spray steel" where iron was blown through a nozzle and oxygen added the result was steel. However the idea was scrapped due to the high amounts of slag that was produced. Shelton also experimented with

linear motor A linear motor is an electric motor that has had its stator and rotor (electric), rotor "unrolled", thus, instead of producing a torque (rotation), it produces a linear force along its length. However, linear motors are not necessarily straight. ...

s to move the steel through the mill and constructed a magnetic stacking machine. Shelton produced the first "Guide Rail" (a "T" section) in the form of a "H" in a Universal beam housing and were able to snap them in half to make the "T". In this way they doubled production and the product cooled evenly preventing warping. They also perfected a very high quality flat section again in the Universal Housing and became known as "Shelton Flats".

In art

The industrial landscapes of Shelton Bar were depicted in art by Arthur Berry, in poetry by

Charles Tomlinson Alfred Charles Tomlinson, CBE (8 January 1927 – 22 August 2015) was an English poet, translator, academic, and illustrator. He was born in Penkhull, and grew up in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Life After attending Longton High S ...

and in fiction by

Arnold Bennett Enoch Arnold Bennett (27 May 1867 – 27 March 1931) was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaborati ...

. The human side of steelmaking was depicted on the stage and

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

TV as "The Fight for Shelton Bar" (1973). In fiction, the landscape of Shelton Bar was the setting of the short story "

The Cone "The Cone" is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895 in ''Unicorn''. It was intended to be "the opening chapter of a sensational novel set in the Five Towns", later abandoned. The story is set at an ironworks in Stoke-on-Trent, in S ...

" by

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

, who had lived nearby. It's believed that Wells also found inspiration for

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in '' Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was ...

there: he wrote in a letter to a friend from the area that "the district made an immense impression on me." The inspiration for some of his descriptions in it is thought to have come from his short time spent there, seeing the iron foundry furnaces burn over the city, shooting huge red light into the skies. The sculptor Colin Melbourne created "The Steel Man" in 1974, in support of the campaign to save Shelton Bar."Broad Street, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent"
thepotteries.org. Retrieved 30 October 2023.

Notes and references

{{Steel plants in the United Kingdom Buildings and structures in Stoke-on-Trent Ironworks and steelworks in England Steel companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Stoke-on-Trent Buildings and structures demolished in 2005