Whitehill Iron Works
In partnership with John Button, John Cookson built a blast furnace at Whitehill, near Chester-le-Street, with the intention of coking local coal and making steel.
This was the first blast furnace in the world to use coaling coke rather than charcoal and was known to be in operation in 1745.
1745 John Cookson purchased Whitehill Manor.
1786 Furnaces on the Cong Burn and at Beamish (3 miles west of Chester-le-Street). But Whitehill was the only furnace making cannon. The iron was brought in from Yorkshire.
c1799 Active manufacture of cannon and cannonballs at Whitehill, which were delivered by sea to Woolwich Arsenal for the Napoleonic Wars.
The Whitehill Forge appears to have had only a limited operational life due to problems in obtaining suitable iron ore (which was brought up the River Wear to Chester-le-Street on barges from as far away as Ravenscar on the North Yorkshire coast) and technical difficulties with the operation of the furnace.
See Also
Sources of Information
- [1] Whitehill Hall