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Blaenavon Ironworks

📍 Torfaen, Wales

4.3 ★★★★ 1,500 reviews

About

Blaenavon Ironworks is a former industrial site which is now a museum in Blaenavon, Wales. The ironworks was of crucial importance in the development of the ability to use cheap, low quality, high sulphur iron ores worldwide. It was the site of the experiments by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and his cousin Percy Gilchrist that led to "the basic steel process" or "Gilchrist–Thomas process".

Built 1788-99 by Thomas Hill, Thomas Hopkins, and Benjamin Pratt as the first purpose-built multi-furnace ironworks in Wales. By 1796, it was Wales's second-largest ironworks. Site of the revolutionary Gilchrist-Thomas process (1878) which allowed cheap, high-sulphur iron ores to be used worldwide, transforming global steel production. Closed 1904. Part of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 2000. Managed by Cadw.