Bowling Iron Works

The operation included mining coal and iron ore, smelting, refining, casting and forging to create finished products.The monks of Rievaulx Abbey to the east were working iron on land owned by their monastery in 1150, and forgemen are mentioned in 1358.In 1806 the company purchased additional mineral rights to parts of Sir Francis' Bowling Hall estate.[5] The first foundry was established at Bowling around 1784 by a group of businessmen including John Sturges, an ironmaster with works at Wakefield, and Richard Paley (1746-1808), an iron merchant of Leeds.[3] The smelting plant was established in 1788, producing pig iron that was used in the boiler plates for the first steam engine at the Low Moor works.[9] An 1891 description said the ironworks lay in, a sort of deep horseshoe valley, the banks which surround it consisting chiefly of shale and cinders, the accumulations of a century's workings.At night, when live scoria and ashes glow from the sides of the latter, and the lake is lighted up by vivid and fitful gleams emitted from the blast furnaces, the scene is strange and weird-like ... one might almost fancy himself in immediate proximity to an active volcano.[15] The plant at that time included blast furnaces and refineries used in the first stages of iron manufacture, puddling and ball furnaces with high brick or iron chimneys, a shed housing the steam hammers, steelworks, a large machine shop, boiler works, a large foundry and other workshops and buildings.[16] A network of tramways brought minerals from the pits to the works, with wagons pulled by wire ropes powered by stationary engines.As early as 1803 an act had stated that, "Engine chimneys are to be erected of sufficient height as not to create a nuisance by the emission of smoke.[19] The method of paying the men led them into temptation of intemperance and extravagance:[21] According to H. Hartopp, manager of the Bowling Works, All our colliers and miners are in our direct employ, without the intervention of contractors."Managers, &c., of mines, complain that the work required of boys in seams of coal not more than 18 inches to two feet thick, is done at a disadvantage, unless they are brought to it from their earliest years.