Publication Account
Date 1986
Event ID 1017655
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017655
The Craleckan Ironworks, situated at Furnace, on the shore of Loch Fyne, was established two years after Bonawe by the Duddon Furnace Company, another concern stemming from the Furness district of Lancashire. It appears to have been organised on similar lines to Bonawe, but the complex as a whole is no longer so well defined, having ceased production about 1813. Of the manufactory buildings, which occupy the customary bankside position, there are substantial remains of a former charcoal-shed evidently capable of holding about 600 dozen bags of charcoal, and the furnace itself, which together with its associated buildings is remarkably complete. One of the cast-iron lintels over the tuyere-opening bears an indistinct inscription, C (?G) F 1755, and the hearth area is potentially of unique technological interest in that the lining has remained undisturbed since the furnace was finally damped down. Ancillary buildings include the usual casting-house and a blowing-house, the latter, unlike the layout of its English parent furnace at Duddon Bridge and of that at Bonawe, being located beneath the charging-house. The Craleckan furnace also appears to have incorporated a forge, situated between the casting-and blowing-houses, which probably operated on a sufficient scale to be equipped with finery hearths and forging-hammers, necessary for fashioning the pig-iron into wrought iron.
Information from ‘Monuments of Industry: An Illustrated Historical Record’, (1986).
