From the Romans to Ravenscraig: a history and decline of Scotland's iron and steel industries

The first great name in Scotland's iron industry was the Carron Iron Works in Stirlingshire. Planned on what was an industrial scale for the times, the works produced armaments, grates, stoves, pots and pans, saw the introduction of steam-driven technology by James Watt, a partner at the Carron works, and was where cast-iron blowing cylinders were first introduced.

The Dalzell Iron and Steel Works, above, opened in 1972 but will now be mothballed.

Flourishing from the demands for munitions for the French and American wars, it effectively expanded to the Clyde Iron Works a few miles south east of Glasgow, with the two works reputed to be the best in their day for the production of weapons.

The manager of Clyde Iron was James Outram, whose son George came to be founder, editor and proprietor of the Glasgow Herald.

The discovery Black Band ironstone in North Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Stirlingshire and the invention of the hot blast process at Clyde Iron Works, which operated until 1978, propelled the rise of the Scottish steel industry and the expansion of production around places like Monklands and Coatbridge.

Between 1830 and 1847 Scottish iron production increased from 37,500 tons a year to 540,000 tons a year, providing the leading 27 per cent of British iron production.

Gartsherrie in Coatbridge became the largest ironworks in Scotland and the second largest in Britain, followed by Summerlee Ironworks, also in the Lanarkshire town.

Other works opened in Bellshill, the Wishaw and Motherwell area and St Rollox in Glasgow. The industry peaked around 1871, employing nearly 40 per cent of the Scottish workforce, with Coatbridge arguably the most polluted town in the world, while its ground vibrated from the pounding of steam hammers.

Shipbuilding on the Clyde and the use of iron for ships also saw demand rise, with Scottish foundry irons becoming known the world over. In 1876 more iron ships were built on the Clyde than in the whole of the rest of the world, with almost all the raw materials locally produced.

Clydebridge Steelworks opened in 1887. It was one of the giants of industrial Scotland, and its steel plates were formed into many of the most famous ships built on the River Clyde including the Lusitania, Mauretania, Queen Mary, HMS Hood, Queen Elizabeth, QE2.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 saw a sudden demand for steel and an increased demand from shipbuilding but the anticipated post-war boom did not materialise, leading to a slump in production and closure of many plants.

Production again gathered pace in the run-up to the Second World War but after that the landscape had changed.

Changes in the British steel industry brought 90 percent of UK steelmaking together into a single business, the British Steel Corporation (BSC). Established under the Iron and Steel Act of 1967, nationalisation tried to rationalise steel production.

Ravenscraig Steelworks in North Lanarkshire became the heart of the nationalised industry’s Scottish operations, covering a vast area close to Motherwell and Wishaw. It produced its own iron in blast furnaces fuelled by Scottish coal.

Ravenscraig was Western Europe’s largest producer of hot-strip steel, processed at Gartcosh. It also produced slab steel for the Dalziel Works, a plate mill supplying shipbuilding and off-shore oil-platform construction.

British Steel was privatised in 1988 by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, while high manufacturing costs, a downturn in shipbuilding, free-market and overseas competition contributed to the closure of Ravenscraig in 1991. It became the largest brownfield site in Europe, and a social and economic disaster for west-central Scotland from which the physical locale is only now recovering.

Now, after around 150 years in operation, the fate of the Dalzell Steel and Iron Works and Clydebridge shuts the door on an industry synonymous with Scotland.