Secret Ironbridge: Bower yard

Note: I have used the modern name Bower Yard, although old maps ofter refer to it as Bowers Yard or even Bowersyard.

Bricks and tiles

Slightly west of the site of Broseley and Iron Bridge Station, and the famous Iron Bridge itself, the Great Western Railway passed under another brick bridge – unusual in that, despite it being a substantial construction, it is very narrow. Analysis of a map from 1883 shows the reason why – it was built solely to carry a small tramway carrying clay from Benthall Edge to the Bower Yard White Brickworks, which lay between the railway line and the river. During its 120 year life, there were several name changes as the site migrated into manufacturing sanitary pipes and stoneware, but it finally closed in 1955.

Ship building

Little is known about the ship building yard, although it must have been a fair size given that there are records of a boat named ‘Sisters’ built at the yard in 1819 which had two masts, weighed 33 tons and was 54 feet (17m) in length, and another named ‘William’, built in 1809, which weighed 70 tons and was 66 feet (20M) in length. Both were subsequently registered at Chepstow, much further down the River Severn, at its estuary with the Bristol Channel.

Lime kilns

The Pattens Rock limestone quarries at nearby Benthall Edge supplied flux for use in the iron smelting industries in the Ironbridge Gorge. This flux was used to remove impurities from the iron stone during the smelting process and required the use of the higher quality limestone. The lower quality limestone was sent to kilns at Bower Yard, which processed it into quicklime, used in construction for mortar, plaster and lime wash, but also in agriculture to reduce the acidity of soil (lime is very alkaline). The kilns purpose was to burn the limestone (calcium carbonate) at about 900 degrees Centigrade to produce calcium oxide (quicklime). This took about 3 days, plus the time to cool the kiln down to extract the lime. The burning of lime gave off particularly noxious fumes which would have made the area a particularly unattractive place.

The kilns were built during the mid 1800s but their use quickly declined and they ceased to be used by about 1880. Strangely, there was a revival in the 1920s as the demand for limestone increased and they sprung back into life, with significant improvements to their structure, until they closed again in the 1940s. The Great Western Railway played a big part in the success of the lime kilns, bringing coal to them for fuel and lime out of them for sale. There are numerous claims that a railway siding was built specifically for the lime kilns but I can find no evidence on any maps that this was the case.

Also still surviving is the access bridge to the kilns under the Great Western Railway. It’s a narrow bridge, presumably just wide enough for a horse-drawn wagon but the northern flanks are impressively wide and high in order to retain the earth supporting the railway.

In 2011 there was conservation work carried out on the decayed ruins of lime kilns on the Benthall Edge side of the railway, although according to the 1882 OS map, a much more substantial set of lime kilns were located between the railway and the river, opposite the Severn Warehouse.