History of The Redcar Blast Furnace and Teeside Steelworks
Teesside Steelworks was a large abandoned steelworks located along the south bank of the River Tees between Middlesbrough and Redcar in the unitary authority area of Redcar and Cleveland in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. Located near the mouth of the River Tees close to the river’s outfall into the North Sea, the site’s blast furnace was the second largest in Europe (The largest at the time when it first fired up in 1979).
Originally mothballed in 2010 after the loss of a large contract the Blast Furnace was relit in 2012 after new owners stepped in to restart production. However, the new owners fell into liquidation in October 2015 prompting the closure of the site once again. Parts of the site still remain in use but a lot of the production within this area has ceased with the loss of thousands of jobs.
Our Visit
Visited with Pete, we had intended to get there early and climb the furnace in the dark, however, when we arrived we found all the access ladders had been cut away leaving us to have to find a more creative way to get up there… Needless to say, the delay led to a daylight climb as far as I could manage without becoming too exposed to the countless security patrols below 😀 We had fun having a mooch around the blast furnace but after deciding we had pushed our luck enough for the day we made our exit narrowly avoiding a foot patrol meters below us as we were climbing down 🙂 Fun times enjoy the photos:
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Limited Edition prints and Canvases, as well as regular prints, are available for all of the images above on request and visit the store for more prints and products.
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