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WWI Armaments Manufacture in England’s ‘Ironopolis’. W Shaw & Co Photograph Archive.
Publisher:
Date of Publication: 1918
Stock Code: 3621
W Shaw & Co Photograph Archive. Collection of fifteen superb mounted and titled early twentieth century silver gelatin prints depicting armament manufacture at the Wellington Cast Steel Foundry in Middlesbrough, owned by William Shaw & Co. The largest five magnum prints are 22 x 28 inches (including mount) and show the manufacture of 'Cast Steel Ariel Bombs for the Great War', four of these images are reproduced as smaller prints of 13 x 17 inches (including mount). Two photographs are approx 21 x 15 1/2 inches and show variously the 'Main Casting of Stern Frame for Admiralty Twin Screw Tank Steamer' and a superb image of 'Southampton Floating Dry Dock, The Largest of its Kind in the World' built by Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd, Newcastle Upon Tyne. Another image is 12 x 9 1/2 inches and shows a cast Steel Blast Box for a Bessemer Convertor and one untitled image of the same size of cast machinery in the Shaw yard. A further image (21 x 17 inches) shows a train of '12 Cast Steel Slag Ladles and Carriages' with the W. Shaw Blast Furnace in the background, lastly a smaller image (20 x 10 1/2 inch) of a train of cast steel ships propellers. Minor soiling to mounts with chips and to extremities, professional archival repair to one mount but overall in very good condition.

The Wellington Foundry was opened in 1881 and was owned by Shaw’s until a 1960 take over by Leys Foundry; Middlesbrough was then the centre for steel manufacture in England (being nicknamed the ‘Infant Hercules’ by William Gladstone) with over 140 foundries situated there in its heyday. £950.00