tarboat's photos with the keyword: smelting

Enthoven lead recycling plant at Darley Bridge. This is an interesting example of a manufacturing plant remaining long after the mine that supplied the raw materials has closed. On this site was Millclose Mine, once one of the largest lead mines in the world. Closed due to flooding in 1940 the site has continued to maintain links with lead production and is now the largest single site producer in Europe of recycled lead.

The Rockley blast furnace which stands in the woods near Rockley Abbey Farm, was built between 1698 and 1704 to smelt the local iron ore. It was worked until the 1740s by the Spencer syndicate of ironmasters of Cannon Hall, Cawthorne.

Cooling towers at Elektrowerk Weisweiler GmbH which smelts Turkish ferrochrome for the alloys market.

I knew nothing about chopwood kilns until I attended a walk around the Kilnsey area of Wharfdale lead by Janis Heward who has made a detailed study of this industrial process. Chopwood kilns produced the dried wood (whitecoal) used as fuel in the ore hearth lead smelting process. The coppiced wood was placed on a grid of large green timbers in the low dry stone-walled structure with a narrow entrance built into a bank. In the pit below a controlled fire was burned to dry the timber above. There are many of these structures to be found in various ruinous states in the northern lead smelting areas. This example is one of the better preserved examples on a hillside between Threshfield and Kilnsey. Janis has produced an interesting web page all about these kilns .