Monklands Memories - Airdrie & Coatbridge areas

Calder Iron Works

The expansion of the Scottish iron trade in the 1800s has been mainly due to:

• The discovery by David Mushet of the Black Band ironstone in 1801,
• The invention of the Hot Blast by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828.

The early history of the Calder is not known but it seemed to have had a short life before it failed in 1800.   

William Dixon (1753-1822), a Northumberland miner purchased the failed Calder Ironworks in Coatbridge for £400 in 1801 and went into partnership with
David Mushet, discoverer of the blackband ironstone, to run the works and exploit the Monkland coalfields.  Mushet developed the Calder Ironworks to exploit his discovery which led to a remarkable expansion in the iron industry in Scotland.

Mushet experimented with new processes in a search for better and cheaper iron. Amongst his numerous innovations he made steel from iron by adding carbon and discovered that manganese oxide improves the quality of both metals. He later showed for the first time how this mineral could be smelted using James Neilson's new blast furnace.

Ironstone is a fine-grained, heavy and compact sedimentary rock. Its main components are the carbonate or oxide of iron, clay and/or sand. It can be thought of as a concretionary form of siderite. Ironstone also contains clay, and sometimes calcite and quartz.   Blackband ironstone is a carbonate of iron, laminated with coal, generally in sufficient quantity for calcination without further admixture of coal

Hot blast refers to the preheating of air blown into a blast furnace or other metallurgical process. This has the result of considerably reducing the fuel consumed in the process. This was invented and patented for iron furnaces by
James Beaumont Neilson in 1828 at Wilsontown Ironworks, near the village of Forth, in Scotland, but was later applied in other contexts, including bloomeries (a type of furnace once widely used for smelting iron from its oxides).

Calder Iron Works were situated in a gorge of the North Ca1der Water. (The main entrance was situated in Calder Street - between Whifflet and Greenend.) The blast furnaces were located on the north bank, with their tops practically level with the top of the gorge.  The blowing engines were located on the south bank. Thus the furnaces could be charged without resorting to use of a hoist or a rump,

• The outstanding attraction of the site was that it was close to a branch canal, along which raw materials could be brought in and iron sent out.

• The first blast furnace in the Coatbridge area was erected here. 

•  Mushet's Blackband ironstone was first used successfully without adding a mixture of other ores. 

• Hot blast was first tried in a full-sized blast furnace here in January 1829

• Raw coal was first substituted for coke in a blast furnace -here in 1831.

The partnership lasted only 2 years after which William Dixon bought the works again for £19,000.

He purchased Palacecraig Estate, Coatbridge, in 1803 and Faskine Estate, Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, in 1819. He founded the Govan Ironworks, Crown Street, Govan, Glasgow, in 1837 for the manufacture of bar iron, the production of iron castings for steam-engines and general engineering products. These works were popularly known thereafter as 'Dixon Blazes'. William Dixon died in 1822 and was succeeded in business by his youngest son, William Dixon (1788-1859). By this time the business was the second largest coal and iron concern in Scotland.

He purchased, in 1824, the estate, collieries, blast furnaces and malleable ironworks of Wilsontown, South Lanarkshire. The ironworks closed in 1842 but the collieries remained in operation until the 1950s. William Dixon, the second, subsequently purchased numerous estates, including, Carfin, Motherwell, South Lanarkshire; Crosshill, Broomelton, Larkhall, South Lanarkshire; Earnockmuir, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire; Mosesfield, Springburn, Glasgow. He spent over £250,000 on litigation and on his death in 1859 was not insolvent but seriously illiquid.

When his son, William Smith Dixon (1824-1880), inherited the business outside involvement was already established in the day to day management of the business, which was firmly in the hands of the Calder Ironworks and Govan Ironworks. The overall financial affairs of the business was in the hands of trustees. The business by then operated 8 collieries and 2 ironworks and was the fourth largest coal and iron concern in Scotland. The business was incorporated as a limited liability company in April 1873 as William Dixon Ltd. with John Mann Thomson, William Smith Dixon's cousin, as chairman. The company's registered offices were at 1 Dixon Street, Glasgow.

In March 1906 the company was liquidated and reconstructed as a new limited company with the same name. The company's works were situated at Glasgow; Govan, Glasgow; Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire; Blantyre, South Lanarkshire; Calder, North Lanarkshire; Fauldhouse, West Lothian; Carfin, North Lanarkshire; Wilsontown, South Lanarkshire; and Garturk, North Lanarkshire.

The Calder Ironworks closed in 1921. In 1922 the company abandoned the use of splint coal and reverted entirely to coke fuel, obtained from their Wilsontown colliery and from other coke makers. In 1934 a modern coke plant was laid down at Govan. By 1936 the company was fast becoming a satellite of the Colville Group of steel companies which had become its major customer. Colvilles Ltd acquired the company from the Iron & Steel Holding & Realisation Agency in 1953, keeping the blast furnaces and coke ovens in operation until the recession of 1958 when the works closed and the company ceased to trade. It went into liquidation in 1960.

below - showing the site of the demolished iron works