Visited with Edus1 and his two non exploring friends.

Onto the shamelessly thieved wiki potted history.

The Brymbo Steelworks was a former large steelworks in the village of Brymbo near Wrexham, Wales. For much of its life it was a rather ordinary ironworks and later steelworks, but is significant on account of its founder, and as having one of a modest number of surviving blast furnace stacks.

The works was founded by John 'Iron Mad' Wilkinson who built a blast furnace on the site in 1793, just after he bought Brymbo Hall. The reasons for his move from the nearby Bersham Ironworks are thought to be on account of the nearby westminster colliery in Moss Valley, Wrexham.

A second furnace was built by 1805 and a third about 1869, but from 1892 no more than two were used, and from 1912 only one.

After Wilkinson's death, his estate was contested between his natural children and legitimate heirs.and the works passed through various hands. By 1841, it passed to the Brymbo Iron Co., which was managed from 1846 by William Henry Darby and Charles Edward Darby, grandsons of Abraham Darby III of Coalbrookdale. After their deaths in 1882 and 1884 respectively, the business was incorporated as Brymbo Steel Co. Ltd.
The business changed company name in 1934 and 1948, on the latter occasion becoming Brymbo Steel Works Ltd in 1948, having become part of GKN, being a branch of GKN Steel Co. Ltd in the early 1960s. It was nationalised with the rest of the steel industry in 1967, becoming a division of British Steel Corporation.

The works were served by the Wrexham and Minera Branch of the Great Western Railway, later of British Railways.

The steelworks lasted until 1990, when it was closed. 1,100 jobs were lost and Brymbo village went into a depression and many residents into the negative equity trap.

Row upon row of moulds




Part of one of the carriages from bersham


Crucibles on a grand scale


Ed assaults one of the more modern blastfurnaces


Crane remnants


Ed in the entrance to "old no1"


Now just where the fuck is all that ochre coming from (small tunnel in back of right hand opening, went to water after 30 yards or so)


I think there might be something wrong with the floor!


Coal outcropping on site


A good relaxed explore in pleasant company with all manner of industrial goodness to be seen, furnaces, tubs, trains and bricks galore (oh and some frankly superb technical drawings, over to ed hopefully for those), what more could one want?

[Edus1]

Was an ace day and lots to see

Will just tag my pics on altho most are the same lol

had a little mooch round today.....was lost in my own world and looked up to see a dog running towards me on a lead....big dog...lucky though, just a local guy who told me place shut in early 90's - asked did anything get provided to the workforce to fit them into anything else workwise...sadly no was the answer.....they just built houses on it.

did some shots but using flickr instead of photobucket....trying to work out how to direct link photos!