Who/What is a BF? - Sepia Saturday

In these days of social media and texting you have to be careful interpreting abbreviations.

This week's image from Australia quickly reminded me of what BF once meant to me.

My first job in industry was at the Redbourn works of Richard Thomas & Baldwins integrated iron and steel plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. 

As a graduate trainee I was expected to spend time on projects in each of the different departments. The first of these, in the Blast Furnace Departmet was to prepare trial mixes for the sinter plant that was being constructed. Sinter was to be used as input to the company's blast furnaces to improve their performance.

Iron ore,coke and limestone batches were mixed by hand (shovel) and subjected to heat using a gas-fired box. The resulting sinter was then subjected to a shatter test to determine which mix would stand up best to loads encountered in the blast furnaces themselves.

You could say that my small group often thought they were BFs while carrying out this work for the BF Department. 

The prompt photo of the Newcastle Blast Furnace Department doesn't actually show a furnace. It's difficult to make them out in this also.

Two blast furnaces at Newcastle

(NSW State Records)

The tops of the furnaces may be seen in the top left centre of the image to the right of what looks like three cylindrical vessels.

Redbourn blast furnaces - 1979

A hundred years of ironmaking at Redbourn ended in October 1979 when  the No 2 blast furnace made its last batch of 194.8 tonnes, watched by former production men, engineers and managers from other areas of the Scunthorpe works complex, chiefly Appleby- Frodingham and Normanby Park.

The furnace was built in 1951/2 to replace two hand-charged ones which had stood on the site since 1875.

Two sister furnaces had already closed. No 4, built in 1919, made its last iron in 1977; while No 3, dating from 1909, finished in September 1979.

The British Steel closure of Redbourn blast furnaces  was part of a rationalisation plan which included capital investment in the much larger Queen Victoria and Queen Anne furnaces, blown in by the Appleby-Frodingham company in 1954.

Scunthorpe blast furnaces
The four Queens - Mary, Victoria, Bess and Anne
(6 March 2009 ex geograph.co.uk, by Richard Croft - CC BY-SA 2.0)

These days if I wish to see a blast furnace I don't have far to go to see the one at Redcar near our North-East home.

Teesside's blast furnace at Redcar
(6 August 2005, ex geograph.co.uk by George Ford - CC BY-SA 2.0)

I left Redbourn in 1969 so never saw the demise of the works.

Finally I have dug out a video on Scunthorpe's Iron and Steel Heritage that shows scenes from the three steel works that existed while I worked there.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Also don't forget to visit other Sepians at Sepia-Saturday-279.

The Day We Went to Redcar - Sepia Saturday

I knew I shouldn't have used this title now I can't get that Fiddler's Dram song out of my head.

Redcar in North Yorkshire is one of the nearest beaches to us. We went there one Sunday last month. I was not expecting to see the place like this - 

Two windmills and not a car in sight

In the 1920s there were a lot of people about.

Beside the sea at Redcar

You can see Redcar's pier stretching out to sea.

The pier did not have a very happy life. In the 1880s and 1890s a series of ships broke through it. It was deliberately breached in 1940 to prevent its use by enemy invasion forces. As a result of damage by a mine explosion and subsequent deterioration it was never reconnected. The pier was demolished in 1981.

However Redcar now has a brand new pier.

Redcar Beacon - the town's vertical pier

When I first saw it i thought it was a 'helter skelter' ride like the ones there used to be at Redcar early in the 20th century.

Redcap Promenade 1902

The pier is still there and the beach is a hive of activity, a bit different from the day of our visit.

Redcar beach - 2014

I fairness I should say that it was mid-April when we went, the car park was half empty despite it being free (until the beginning of May at least). We couldn't have really expected the sands to look like this.

Redcar sands

We really must go back in the summer to see whether it's as busy then.

The old photos I've shown were taken inside the Redcar Beacon. 

Redcar Beacon  - 2014

 There is one on the wall on each of its six floors.

And just so they can annoy you too, here is Fiddler's Dram

Now you can get some more sand in your shoes by visiting Sepia-Saturday-228.