Redbourn Hill Iron and Coal Co

of North Lindsey Works, Scunthorpe

1872 established as the Redbourn Hill Iron and Coal Co in 1872 by a group of Birmingham investors.

1874 The works took its name, not from the village of Redbourne but from a group of hillocks of reddish sand which were known locally as the Redbourn Hills. The company was granted a site for its works on the eastern side of the North Lincolnshire Company's furnaces. Here two furnaces were erected, each seventy-five feet high with twenty-foot boshes. They were close-topped, the first such furnaces in the area since the poor experience of Trent and Frodingham in the early years. The furnaces differed from the early ones in that the high boshes, previously used in Lincolnshire, were abandoned. The furnaces were blown-in during the early part of 1875.

Redbourn had a very close relationship with the Lincolnshire Iron Smelting Co from the early 1880's.

1882 In October the Smelting Company was put into voluntary liquidation, and by the middle of February 1883 the Redbourn Hill Company had purchased its furnaces. It was only after this takeover that the works became known officially as the Lindsey, or North Lindsey Works.

1905 The Redbourn plant was acquired by a Warrington firm of bar makers but sold three years later to the Cwmfelin Steel and Tin Plate Co, in which the Thomas family had a large interest.

WWI Further steel works were erected during the latter part of the war, with a production capacity of about 3,500 tons per week of merchant bars and sheet bars.

1917 Became part of Richard Thomas and Co, supplied their South Wales plant with pig until 1919, when it became the third and last of the major works at Scunthorpe to turn to steel production.

1925 the Company was absorbed entirely by Richard Thomas and Co of South Wales, henceforth being known by that name.

1927 Plant consisted of 4 furnaces with a total capacity of 3,500 tons per week.

1927 See Aberconway for information on the company and its history

1937 Woodall-Duckham erected 82 coke ovens at Redbourn for Richard Thomas and Co

See Also

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Sources of Information

• [3] History of Scunthorpe's iron extraction and refining.