Blaenavon Ironworks - Where better steel was born!

Not our usual fare, because you can in no way look at this and say it is a castle, but it is none the less very interesting from a historical viewpoint. Especially if you have an interest in Industrial history, specifically the innovation that allowed the production of cheaper, better quality steel.
The "basic steel process" or the "Gilchrist-Thomas process", named for the industrial chemist Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and his cousin Percy Gilchrist (who was a chemist at the Blaenavon Ironworks) came about when Sidney discovered a solution to the problem of phosphorus in iron, which resulted in the production of low-grade steel.
By using dolomite, or sometimes limestone, as a lining for the Bessemer converter rather than the usual clay they were able to remove the phosphorus and produce a better quality of steel at a fraction of the price. It also produced a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer.

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