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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland Highlands and Islands
Date 2007
Event ID 617677
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/617677
Bonawe is said to be the most complete site of a charcoal fuelled ironworks in Britain with extensive remains of an 18th/19th century ironworks employing at its peak 600 people. It was the second last and largest in the West Highlands, selected for its extensive forests of oak and birch which provided the charcoal for the smelting. Limestone obtained locally was used as a flux.
The furnace was built for Cumbrian ironmaster Richard Ford, who founded the Newland Company of Furness. The iron lintels over the tap holes are dated 1753 and 1757.The iron ore was imported both from Lanarkshire and Cumbria and shipped to nearby piers on Loch Etive, including Kelly’s Pier. The pig-iron produced was shipped back to forges in the south for making into finished products, and cannon balls produced at Bonawe were used in the Napoleonic Wars. The works were in almost continuous production for 120 years until they closed in 1876.
The blast for the furnace was obtained by large bellows, originally powered by a waterwheel fed by a lade, now dry, almost a mile long from the Awe to the wheel pit. The low breast-shot wheel existed up to the time of the second world war when it was removed for scrap. Materials were conveyed around the site by barrows along early tramways made from slate tracks.
The site, which included cottages for workers and Bonawe House, the furnace manager’s residence, is now
under the care of Historic Scotland.
R Paxton and Jim Shipway 2007b
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Highlands and Islands' with kind permission from Thomas Telford Publishers.
