Round Oak Steelworks

The Round Oak Steelworks was an important steel production plant in Brierley Hill, West Midlands (formerly Staffordshire), England. It was founded by Lord Ward, later the Earl of Dudley in 1857 as an outlet for pig iron made in the nearby blast furnaces. During the Industrial Revolution, the majority of iron-making in the world was carried out within 32 kilometres of Round Oak. At its peak, thousands of people were employed at the works. The steelworks was the first in the United Kingdom to be converted to natural gas, which was supplied from the North Sea.

The Ward family, Lords of Dudley Castle, came to own and control a wide range of industrial concerns in the Black Country of the nineteenth century. The family owned land in the region as well as extensive mineral rights. In 1855 the Dudley Estate commenced the construction of the Round Oak Iron Works at Brierley Hill. The site was next to the Dudley Canal and two railway systems: the public railway run by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and the Pensnett Railway a mineral line owned by the Dudley Estate itself. Also nearby were the Level New Furnaces (also known as the New Level Furnaces) where blast furnaces, owned by the Dudley Estate could supply pig iron for the new iron works at Round Oak. The iron works commenced production in 1857. It was a large-scale operation: on its opening it employed 600 men, and the equipment included 28 puddling furnaces and five mills. The works were extended between 1865 and 1868, and were then capable of producing 550 tons of finished iron per week.

Demand for iron began to fall from the 1870s as steel production began to compete with traditional iron products, and it was decided to convert the plant to steel production. In 1890, the Dudley Estate sold the iron works to a new public company, which would aim to convert to steel production. The new company was called the Earl of Dudley's Round Oak Iron and Steel Works. However, this soon ran into financial difficulty; in 1894 the company went into liquidation, resulting in repossession by the Dudley Estate. A new company, The Earl of Dudley's Round Oak Works Ltd, was established in 1897 under the ownership of the Dudley family.

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