 | |
| Dorman Long | |
| Industry | Manufacturing |
| Founded | 1875; 150 years ago (1875) |
| Headquarters | Middlesbrough, UK |
| Products |
|
Dorman Long & Co was aUKsteel producer, later diversifying intobridge building. The company was once listed on theLondon Stock Exchange.
The company was founded byArthur Dorman andAlbert de Lande Long when they acquiredWest Marsh Iron Works in 1875.[1] In the 1920s Dorman Long took over the concerns ofBell Brothers andBolckow and Vaughan and diversified into the construction of bridges.[2] In 1938 Ellis Hunter took over as Managing Director and he continued to lead the business until 1961.[3]
In 1967 Dorman Long wasnationalised, along with 13 other British steel-making firms, becoming subsumed into the government-ownedBritish Steel Corporation. In 1982 Redpath Dorman Long, the engineering part of the business, was acquired byTrafalgar House who in 1990 merged it intoCleveland Bridge & Engineering Company inDarlington.[4]
Iron-making has been known in Cleveland since theRomans found iron slags inNorth Yorkshire, with small-scale iron-making known to have taken place atRievaulx andWhitby Abbeys and atGisborough Priory in the 17th century.[5]
Some of the key events connected with iron-making in Cleveland:
1837: The firstCleveland ironstone mine opens, at Grosmont, for theLosh, Wilson and Bell ironworks.[6]
1841:Bolckow and Vaughan open the first ironworks inMiddlesbrough.[7]
1850: 8 June – The Discovery of the Cleveland Main Seam of Ironstone at Eston by IronmasterJohn Vaughan and mining engineerJohn Marley both of Bolckow & Vaughan. The Cleveland iron rush begins.[8]
1865: 30 blast furnaces operate within six miles (10 km) ofMiddlesbrough and one million tonnes per annum (TPA) of iron are produced to make the area one of the world's major centres of iron production.[9]
1879:Sidney Gilchrist Thomas arrives inCleveland and introduces the first commercialsteel.[10]
1903: Partial amalgamation ofBell companies with Dorman Long.[11]
1917: TheRedcar steel plant is opened, making steel in theopen hearth process.[9]
1928-9: Dorman Long takes over residues of Bell and Bolckow Vaughan.[12][13]
1946: Dorman Long purchases 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land between the Redcar and Cleveland Works to build the Lackenby development.[14]
1955: The Dorman Long tower, a combined coal silo, firefighting water tower, and control room, was built on the Teesside steelworks site.[15]
1967: Dorman Long, South Durham Steel Iron Co, and Stewarts and Lloyds come together to create British Steel and Tube Ltd.[16]
1967: The steel industry is nationalised and theBritish Steel Corporation is born.[17]
1989: Company is privatised becomingBritish Steel plc.[18]
1990: Merged with TheCleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, Darlington.[9]
1999: British Steel plc merges with the Dutch steel and aluminium companyKoninklijke Hoogovens to becomeCorus Group.[19]
2015: Former Dorman Long Steel plant on Teesside ceased production after SSI mothballed the Redcar works following a global downturn in the price of steel and later announced its UK arm had gone into liquidation.[20]
2021: Cleveland Bridge goes into administration.[21]
2021: The Dorman Long tower is demolished,[22] despite its Grade II listed status.[15][23]
The most famous bridge ever constructed by a Teesside company was Dorman Long'sSydney Harbour Bridge of 1932,[24] of similar construction to but, contrary to popular belief, not modelled on the 1928Tyne Bridge, a construction regarded as the symbol of Tyneside's Geordie pride, but also a product of Dorman Long's Teesside workmanship. The greatest example of Dorman Long's work in Teesside itself is the single-spanNewport Lifting Bridge (a Grade II Listed Building). Opened by the Duke of York in February 1934 it was England's firstvertical lift bridge.[25]
The following is a list of some of the bridges built by the Dorman Long: it is not fully comprehensive.
| Bridge | Location | Year | Total length | Notes | Image | Ref | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ft | m | ||||||
| Omdurman Bridge | White Nile, Sudan | 1926 | 2,012 | 613 | 7 fixed spans, one swing span, 3,700 tons |  | [26] |
| Desouk Bridge | Lower Nile, Egypt | 1927 | 2,010 | 610 | 10 spans including 194 feet (59 m) swing span, 3,800 tons |  | [27] |
| Tyne Bridge | Newcastle, England | 1928 | 1,254 | 382 | Approximately 8,000 tons, (Road) |  | [28] |
| Alfred Beit Bridge | South Africa | 1929 | 1,515 | 462 | 1,876 tons |  | [29] |
| Sydney Harbour Bridge | Sydney, Australia | 1932 | 3,770 | 1,150 | Total weight of fabricated steelwork 51,000, weight of steel in the arch 38,000 tons |  | [24] |
| Grafton Bridge | Grafton, NSW, Australia | 1932 | 1,309 | 399 | It is a dual level road and railBascule Bridge, the upper deck carrying a roadway and the lower level carrying the rail line and foot bridge. |  | [30] |
| Lambeth Bridge | London, England | 1932 | 776 | 237 | 5 spans, 4,620 tons, (Road) |  | [31] |
| Memorial Bridge, Bangkok | Thailand | 1932 | 755 | 230 | 1,100 tons, (Road) |  | [32] |
| Khedive Ismail Bridge | Cairo, Egypt | 1933 | 1,250 | 380 | 3,000 tons |  | [33] |
| Newport bridge | Middlesbrough | 1934 | 270 | 82 | The central lifting span 66 feet (20 m) wide, weighing 5,400 long tons (5,500 t); the towers are 182 feet (55 m) high. The total weight is 8,000 tons. |  | [34] |
| Birchenough Bridge | Zimbabwe | 1935 | 1,241 | 378 | 1,242 tons. |  | [35] |
| Storstrøm Bridge | Denmark | 1937 | 10,535 | 3,211 | 21,000 tons, (Railway and Road) | .jpg) | [36] |
| Chien Tang River Bridge | China | 1937 | 3,480 | 1,060 | 16 equal spans, 4,135 tons, (Railway and Road) |  | [37] |
| Adomi Bridge (originally Volta Bridge) | Atimpoku,Ghana | 1957 | 1,096 | 334 | arch bridge with roadway suspended from arch |  | [38] |
| Silver Jubilee Bridge | Runcorn and Widnes, England | 1961 | 1,582 | 482 | Road | .jpg) | [39] |
In 1904 SirArthur Dorman of Dorman Long gave theDorman Museum toMiddlesbrough in honour of his youngest son, George Lockwood Dorman, an avid collector who died in the Boer War. Amongst the museum's exhibits is a collection ofceramics from the localLinthorpe Pottery, which was known for its iridescent glazes which, at the time, were not produced anywhere else inEurope.[40]
The Dorman Long tower was built from 1955 to 1956 as a coking plant for steel production.[15] The tower was an early example ofbrutalist architecture.[41] It was scheduled to be demolished in 2021 due its poor state of repair[23] and granted Grade II listed status, in an emergency listing byHistoric England on 10 September 2021.[15] The emergency listing cited its significance as a "recognised and celebrated example of early Brutalist architecture", a "nationally unique surviving structure from the twentieth-century coal, iron and steel industries" as well as "for its association with, and an advert for, Dorman Long which dominated the steel and heavy engineering industry of Teesside".[15]
In one of her first acts as Culture Secretary,Nadine Dorries revoked the listing – amidst accusations of "cultural vandalism" – enabling demolition of the building to be scheduled.[42] The tower was demolished between 00:00 and 00:20 on 19 September 2021 in a series of controlled explosions.[43]
In 1946, the whole of the land between the Cleveland and Redcar Works, an area of 680 acres, known as the Lackenby site, was purchased by Dorman Long.
