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CHAPTER ONE
1914 - 1920 Beginnings
Contents
Prologue - Geology - Getting Started - Company Officials Visit the Site - the Option to Purchase - First Operations - The Main Mine Tunnel - Surface Structures at Irthlingborough - [ The Electricity Generating Plant - The Calcining Kilns - Other Surface Buildings ]
Prologue
Wednesday, 11 August 1920, proved to be an important milestone in the history of Irthlingborough, with the official opening of the Irthlingborough Iron Ore Mine. A special train from Euston brought numerous dignitaries to join, among others, Mr E. H. Barker, Chairman of Irthlingborough Council, and Dr. W. W. Robb, at the mine entrance. The local newspaper reported that over eighty important gentlemen watched as, at noon, the Chairman of the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron & Coal Co. Ltd., Mr. Fred Mills, invited the Rt. Hon. Lord Ashfield, former President of the Board of Trade, to perform the formal opening ceremony. Pushing open the gate at the tunnel entrance Lord Ashfield pronounced
The party went on to view the calcining plant [fig. 1], and some were taken
underground to see the workings in operation.
Later everyone
gathered in the garden of the works offices, Pine Lodge, where a marquee had been erected on the tennis lawn, and luncheon was served at
two o‘clock.
Speeches followed the Loyal
Toast, and a presentation was made to Lord Ashfield of an ink stand and blotting pad, replicas
of the ones he had used in office, while Mr Mills acknowledged his valuable
encouragement, as President of the Board of Trade, in bringing the project to fruition.
The opening ceremony, he explained, had been
postponed from the time of the actual commencement of mining in 1917, because
of the continuing World War and, later,
of Lord Ashfield’s ill health, but that the deferred event would be all the better
for the delay, for it was much better to have the opening when things were
going nicely than before a commencement had really been made.
The mine, often familiarly referred to by
local people as ‘The Ed-Vale’, was set up by the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron &
Coal Co. Ltd. to provide ore to feed its blast furnaces some 150 miles (240 kms.) away in South
Wales.
By the time of the 1920 opening ceremony it had been in production for almost 3
years, and had already dispatched to Wales some 150,000 tons (152,000 tonnes) of ore.
Northamptonshire Ore - its Geology and Extraction.
The iron ore seam worked at Irthlingborough lies immediately above the Upper Lias Clay, and occurs from Towcester,
in the south of Northamptonshire, through the length of the county and into Lincolnshire as far north as Lincoln itself; it is known as the
Northampton Sand
Ironstone [fig. 2].
Although there is evidence that the stone
was used by the Romans to make iron in various parts of Northamptonshire, its
use as an iron-making material in this area was later quite forgotten.
It was, however, used extensively as a
building material, and can be seen in old buildings throughout the county in
places where the seam outcrops to the surface.
It was not until samples of the ironstone from nearby Woodford were
displayed at the
Great Exhibition
of 1851, that interest was again shown in this
material by the ironmasters of the time.
Shortly after this, small-scale open quarrying of the ore began in Irthlingborough, in an area west of the
town.
Getting Started
In 1916, Irthlingborough was principally known for its
leather-dressing works and for the manufacture of boots and shoes.
It had, nonetheless, also become familiar over the years
through the effects on its landscape of mineral extraction, as a result of the quarrying of
ironstone, limestone, sand and gravel working and the digging of clay for
brick and tile making.
When the underground mine opened in 1916, it began a new, and far more important phase in Irthlingborough’s industrial history, which was to last for
the next 50 years.
That iron ore mining ever came
to Irthlingborough was due to the foresight of two
outstanding figures in the industry.
The first of these was
Prof. Henry Louis,
Milburn Professor of Mining at Armstrong College,
Durham University, and consultant mining engineer to The Ebbw Vale Company.
He had, from the outset, shown great
interest in the potential of working the ore bed around Finedon.
At the same time Mr. Frederick Mills, as Managing Director of the Company in
Wales, and under the pressure of wartime steel production demands, was the man to make
the momentous decision to go ahead with the project, with little evidence that
the Company could make it into a profitable enterprise.
The Ebbw Vale Company was a
relative late-comer to Northamptonshire.
By 1914, much of the iron ore bed in the county had been taken by other steel companies.
It was not until the spring of 1914, only
months before the outbreak of war, that the Company first considered the
benefit of securing its own supply of British ore, rather than importing it
from abroad or buying from rival companies at home.
When, in September of that year, a body of
ore came on offer in the vicinity of Finedon and Denford, in Northamptonshire [fig. 3], the Company
approached Professor Louis for his expert opinion on the extent, and potential
yield, of the mineral deposits.
The ore around Irthlingborough itself was not, at this date, under
consideration.
In a letter, dated 7 September 1914, the
Professor pointed out that "this proposition is of great
interest because it is very rare to find Northamptonshire iron ores offering
[i.e. becoming available]".
However, he wrote, of the probable 4 to 5 million tons in question, the majority of it
situated around Denford, about 1 million tons would
have to be ’got‘ by underground working.
The offer was actively considered by Mr. Mills, who found several
serious problems which must first be addressed.
Firstly, the initial offer fell far short of the 12 million tons of ore needed for the enterprise to be
viable.
It would be imperative to
investigate the possibility of purchasing adjacent areas of land.
These became available soon after, but, prior
to final purchase, an option to buy was agreed with the vendors, with rights to
prospect by sinking trial pits and boreholes, so allowing the assessment of the
potential quantity, quality, and marketability of the ore.
Secondly, despite the knowledge that local firms at Corby, Wellingborough
& Islip were already making steel using similar material, it had to be proved that it would be
possible to make this ore into pig iron in the blast furnaces at Ebbw Vale, and
to convert this iron into steel by the particular Bessemer process in use there.
Finally, there was the stumbling block of transporting the ore, initially to a local railhead and subsequently on
the long haul to Ebbw Vale.
These three main considerations
brought into question the marketability of the ore.
Mr Mills pointed out that, in the option
agreement, the word ‘marketable’ might mean ‘marketable at the point of
extraction’ but that it might not prove to be so, after adding the cost of transporting the ore to Ebbw Vale,
and the vendor should be made to appreciate this.
Transport to a railhead was seen
as the most pressing problem to be solved.
This was, of course, an obligation on the part of the vendor, who had
already suggested that the ore from the Neville’s Lodge Farm area in Finedon, lying just south of the A6 highway, might be
extracted by sinking shafts
into the iron ore seam, then transporting it by
tramway across land already being mined by the Wellingborough Iron Company, to
reach the sidings on the Midland Railway north of
Wellingborough, known as Neilson’s Sidings [fig. 4].
At this stage Professor Louis accepted this suggestion, though he expressed his
preference for an aerial ropeway across this route, rather than a tramway over
undermined land.
This plan was summarily
abandoned when Professor Louis, after a day’s stroll
over fields south of Neville’s Lodge on the 17 December 1914, wrote to Fred Mills a few days later with the unusual suggestion of driving a
tunnel in a north-westerly direction into the side of the valley of the River Nene at Irthlingborough
(within the area later to become Pine Trees residential development) at a
suitable level to gain the ore underlying the land around Finedon.
This could be dispatched to Ebbw Vale initially via the nearby Northampton to Peterborough branch line.
He also established that
there were, in the area which was to become the Pine Trees Estate, just south of Lakeside,
These had been left behind after the closure of the former Metropolitan Brick & Tile Works (they were later demolished in 1919). This installation was for sale, and might be used profitably to experiment in calcining the ore. If the project were to proceed, he proposed that the Company lay down an electricity generating plant, install an endless ropeway and purchase nearby Pine Lodge House for use as offices. It only remained then for the vendor to accept and act upon this new solution, by both buying and leasing the land between the minerals they wished to sell, and the railway at Irthlingborough, and by then transferring these acquisitions to the Ebbw Vale Company.
Company Officials Visit the Site
In November 1914, Professor Louis, shortly before
his new plan emerged, had urged the Ebbw Vale Company
officials to visit the whole site [fig. 4] in view of the complex decisions they must
shortly make.
The iron ore that they
would consider would not, of course, be visible, as it lay some 60 to 80 feet (18 to 24 m.)
beneath them.
There were, however, outcrops
being worked in quarries in the Irthlingborough, Finedon and Burton Latimer areas, which surrounded the
site, though the nature of this very shallow quarried ore, which had oxidized
over millions of years, was quite different, both in colour and chemical composition,
from the deeper blue-grey stone they were considering, known as the ‘carbonate
ore’.
On the 20th November Henry Louis implored Fred Mills to "even pay a flying visit", together with other board members and officials; he considered
that, if nothing else, it would show to the vendor that the Company was
actively interested.
Fred Mills thought that this was perhaps too premature, and that there needed to be some sort of
proposition on the table "even if not signed"
It is quite evident, from the correspondence at the time, that Professor
Louis was very keen for the project to proceed.
On the 10th December 1914, just before the visit, Fred Mills
wrote to Professor Louis
Eventually, four hectic months after the first approach was made by the vendor, a site meeting was arranged, and 8 rooms were booked at the Hind Hotel, Wellingborough, for the night of 15th December, together with a private sitting room where dinner could be served. The Hind Hotel would send its own car to the Station, as usual, to meet the London train, while cars were hired from a local garage (Wallis John Ford of Wellingborough) to transport the group to the Finedon and Burton Latimer areas the following day. Among the party were the Blast Furnace Manager from Ebbw Vale, the Company Solicitor, the vendor’s agent and, of course, Frederick Mills and Professor Louis. What transpired on that day is unrecorded, but on the following day Professor Louis spent his time looking over the local terrain. He wrote to Fred Mills five days later with the new and detailed tunneling solution already described. Much of what he suggested was later carried out.
The Option to Purchase
By April 1915, an option to
purchase had been signed, giving permission for the Company to dig trial holes
on the properties; the first was sunk on Poplar Lodge Farm.
This land had been added to the original
offer, together with several other areas, to enhance the probability that 12
million tons of ore could be proved.
The vendor’s agents were also confident that they could achieve, by further purchases
and leases, a way to get the ore to the Irthlingborough rail-head;
in the case of Denford there was no problem as the Northampton to Peterborough
line adjoined the property.
The ore in Denford was never exploited, however, and was kept by the
Company as a strategic reserve to be opened quickly at any time should the need
arise.
In February 1915, even before
any trial holes had been put down or any furnace trials completed, a crisis
occurred in the Company.
A sufficient supply of Spanish ore was in doubt, and the cost of its transportation to England had become so
prohibitive that Mr. Mills questioned, in a letter to Professor Louis dated 24 February 1915,
Nothing yet had been established as to the quantity or quality of the ore at Irthlingborough, but on 1 May 1915, Fred Mills telegraphed Thomas Falcon, who was to become the first Manager of the mine,
So, on that day in May 1915, the
idea of an Irthlingborough Mine was born.
It is recorded that, after the
end of the First World War, in 1920, Frederick Mills was awarded a Baronetcy to honour his
patriotic attitude and his appreciation of the country’s difficulties during
the First World War.
His decision to proceed with the mine no doubt had a bearing on the award of this honour.
First Operations
On 9th November 1915, The Ebbw Vale Steel,
Iron & Coal Co. Ltd. purchased its first
area of land at Finedon and Irthlingborough,
now increased from the 22 acres (9 Ha.) of the first offer to some 900 acres (364 Ha.).
Finedon and Irthlingborough alone were proved to contain the 12 million
tons of ore required, without the need to consider Denford.
Within a few days men were already being
recruited to work on the initial operations of sinking ventilation shafts and driving
the 3/4 mile (1.2 kms.) tunnel from the Nene Valley to reach the ore.
The first body of men numbered 14 (9 labourers, 1 miner, 1 miner‘s helper, 1
loader, 1 horseboy and 1 smith).
By the end of June 1916, a
further 41 men, mostly labourers, had been added to the workforce, which was
now deployed as follows :-
| 1 | Engineman |
| 2 | Foremen (1 from Wales) |
| 2 | Horse keepers |
| 2 | Horse boys (lads aged 15 yrs) |
| 1 | Mason |
| 3 | Gangers |
| 33 | Labourers |
| 5 | Miners (one of whom was the first Cornishman to come to Irthlingborough) |
| 2 | Miners' helpers |
| 1 | Blacksmith |
| 1 | Blacksmiths' striker |
| 1 | Time keeper |
| 1 | Loader |
It was driven to a rising gradient into the mine of 1 in 210, and a water channel was
formed in its base so that, during the early years, water could drain from the
mine with the minimum of pumping [fig. 6]. The
gradient also assisted the haulage system, as the heavy trains of ore were
brought to the surface down a falling gradient.
By October 1916, the tunnel had advanced 75 feet (23 m.) from the surface
entrance, and the connection from the surface to No. 1 Shaft was completed in
the spring of 1918.
The No. 2 Shaft was
eventually utilised as the Up-Cast Ventilation Shaft, and continued in use until
the final closure in 1965.
This work was evidently done by direct labour
as the men involved were recorded in the Company’s employment register.
lined with refractory bricks, to better manage the process.
Capt. R. A. Lewis, Chief Engineer to E.V.S.I. & C. Co. Ltd., was responsible for the design of the structure and the
apparatus used in the working of the plant.
The kilns were supplied by
