Clydesdale Tube Works
of Coatbridge
1860/1 Andrew Stewart started his own tube-making business, Clydesdale Tube Works, as a maker of butt-welded and lap-welded tubes establishing a small works at St. Enochs, Glasgow.
1867 His brother James Stewart joined the firm which was called Andrew and James Stewart.
1867 The company met with rapid success and moved to a large site at Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, where they built the Clyde Tube Works.
1873 Clyde Tube Works of 37 Oswald Street, Glasgow and Coatbridge[1]
1882 The company acquired Sun Tube Works in Coatbridge and the Clyde Pipe Foundry in Glasgow.
1882 The company was incorporated with limited liability as A. and J. Stewart Ltd., later Stewarts and Lloyds.
c.1903 The tube works became Stewarts and Lloyds' Clydesdale Works
By 1945, the works had specialised with four open-hearth 60 ton capacity furnaces (built during WWII?) supplying the plate rolling mills used to produce lap-weld tubing.
1945 Further specialisation occurred with the decision to build a seamless-tube mill to satisfy the demand for higher quality tubes needed for a new generation of power stations. The building of the first mill, known as No. 1 Rotary Forge Mill, was began in 1945 and was commissioned in April 1948.
1960s A second mill was established subsequently and, despite the later modernisation, the basic principle of generation remained unchanged. However, in 1975, the four open hearth furnaces were superceded by two 70 ton electric arc furnaces, each producing liquid steel for a continuous casting process from which the steel ingots used in the process are derived.
Stewarts and Lloyds used the works to make seamless steel tubes for the oil and other industries, using the rotary forging (Pilger) process
By the mid-1980s, the Clydesdale Works had gone through phases of private and public ownership and emerged as as one of a small group of Scottish works retained by the British Steel Corporation. The plant covered approximately 124 acres, employed 2,500 people and produced seamless steel tubes ranging in diameter from 6 inches to 18 inches in diameter. The plant, which was the only producer of seamless tubes in the United Kingdom, operated in conjunction with Calder Works (closed 1986) in Coatbridge (which specialised in tube end joints and extruded plastic coatings) and the Imperial Works in Airdrie. Most output was destined for use in the oil industry.
1991 Clydesdale Works was closed on the 5th May 1991.
![[1]](https://graces-guide-s3-live.s3.amazonaws.com/gracesguide/thumb/6/67/Im1873Glasgow-655.jpg/360px-Im1873Glasgow-655.jpg){kind=link}