Page 18 - A-Z of BCN 8a

A-Z of the Birmingham Canal Navigations

form, but these were later replaced by conical brick furnaces, held together by iron hoops. As technology improved iron
manufacture, many cost saving devices were employed. Heating the blast and capturing the waste gases added extra plant
that surrounded the basic structure.

The Black Country was fortunately endowed with rich supplies of coal, ironstone and limestone. A number of furnaces was
established to smelt the local ores, and the canal played an integral part in moving these minerals to the furnace site. Blast
furnaces, therefore, were common canal side features, particularly during the nineteenth century when the trade was at its
height.

By the 1850s, the greatest number of working blast furnaces were to be found in this region. Statistics published for this
period record that the total figure of extant furnaces exceeded 180. They were to be found alongside the banks of the
Birmingham, Dudley, Stourbridge, Stourbridge Extension and Wyrley & Essington Canals.

The illustration is believed to be of the Capponfield Furnaces. It is redrawn from a photograph filed among the Springvale
collection in the Wolverhampton Archives. The original Capponfield Furnaces had been established before 1820 on part of
the Capponfield Colliery. The old line of the BCN passed through the colliery, and the furnaces were established near the
northern bank. Since they were placed on the towpath side, a basin provided the connection with the canal.

William Aston, and later John Bagnall & Sons, was included amongst the proprietors of these furnaces, which came to be
three in number. Local deposits of ironstone were used, but these were later supplemented with other ores from further
afield. Bagnalls sold the furnaces to Alfred Hickman, who re-let them to T & I Bradley. There was a complete rebuild in 1901,
when the railway sidings were extended, and two new iron-cased furnaces erected.

The photograph on which the drawing was based almost certainly dates from 1901 or later and appears to be taken from the
first of two roving bridges. The BCN Bradley Loop is behind the cameraman, and the railway bridge that carried the line from
Stourbridge to Wolverhampton is off camera to the right. The two basins, although close together, were originally constructed
for different purposes. The far basin was made to serve the first furnaces, the other to meet a tramway from local mines.

[18]