740 REPORT—1863. 
Ridsdale, and two more at Hareshaw. There is no doubt that the iron 
produced from this bed of ironstone was of a very excellent description. 
Both works, however, were nearly twenty miles from a railway, and twenty 
more from a market ; so that their iron cost, according to Mr. T. J. Taylor, 
12s. per ton for carriage to the consumer. After some years of fruitless 
struggle to meet the competition offered by Glasgow, both of these establish- 
ments were closed and finally dismantled. 
About 1840, Messrs. Bigge, Cargill, Johnson, and others, who had 
purchased from the projectors of the Ridsdale Works that concern, had their 
attention directed to the beds of ironstone described as lying in the coal- 
measures near Shotley Bridge. A pair of furnaces were speedily erected and 
set in blast. A larger company was formed, and an immense establishment 
was constructed. Twelve blast-furnaces were built, large rolling-mills and 
all the necessary mines, mining villages, &c., followed in rapid succession. 
Until 1850 the furnaces went on devouring the minerals found in the 
neighbourhood at an alarming pace, having in the meantime made extensive 
trials of those from the lead-veins of Weardale. In 1850, the recent dis- 
coveries in Cleveland promised relief from the impending famine; and in a 
very short time, in spite of a distance of about fifty miles, the ironstone 
from that district, with some hematite for a mixture, entirely superseded the 
stone lying adjacent to the furnaces. 
In 1842, Messrs. Losh, Wilson, and Bell, who for fifteen years had been 
making bar iron, built a blast-furnace at Walker for producing forge pig by 
smelting their mill-furnace cinders with Whitby stone, and this was followed 
by a second one in 1844; so that these were the first furnaces ever built 
expressly for smelting the recently discovered ironstone at Whitby. 
About this period, Mr. Charles Attwood, in concert with Messrs. Baring 
and Co. of London, purchased a small furnace then recently erected at 
Stanhope by Mr. Cuthbert Rippon, and built five others at Tow Law for 
smelting the “ rider ore” (carbonate and oxide) of the lead veins. There is 
no doubt that, owing to the extreme irregularity of this kind of material, 
immense labour and expense were at first incurred, and, as regards the 
quality of the produce, frequently with very unsatisfactory results. Better 
acquaintance, however, with the veins and their contents has enabled that 
firm now to produce iron of a very high class—so good, indeed, as closely to 
resemble in composition and quality the celebrated German “ Spiegel Eisen.” 
For bar-iron purposes it bears a high name, and has, like its prototype in 
Germany, been found well adapted for the manufacture of the finer kinds of 
steel—an application, as is well known, confined exclusively to the purest 
descriptions of metal. 
In 1846 Messrs. Bolckow and Vaughan erected the furnaces at Witton 
Park, in the Auckland district, for smelting ironstone expected to be obtained 
in that vicinity. We have already heard how these hopes were disappointed 
and Whitby resorted to, as it had been by almost every furnace-owner in the 
North. 
Although only remotely connected with our subject, it may as well be 
mentioned that a company of gentlemen had erected at Cleator Moor, near 
Whitehaven, a couple of blast-furnaces for smelting the hematite iron-ore of 
that district, an example which has been somewhat extensively followed 
since. The iron made is of good quality, and, the ore being rich, an im- 
mense quantity, as much as 500 tons weekly, or more, is said to have been 
run from one furnace. 
To avoid interrupting the remainder of our subject, which will hereafter 
