Hidden Teesside takes a look at Dorman Long Illustrated 1949
The cover of Dorman Long Illustrated 1949
As part of a link up between Heritage Unlocked and Hidden Teesside, here Chris Twigg takes a look at Dorman Long Illustrated 1949. Produced by Dorman Long from the 1940s until the 1960s, the company magazine promoted the work of the company and provides an insight into life working for the famous bridge building and steel manufacturing firm.
By 1949 Dorman Long had grown to be the largest iron and steel making company in Teesside, having absorbed most of competition such as Bolckow & Vaughan and Bell Brothers. The introduction to Dorman Long Illustrated is given by Sir Ellis Hunter who was Managing Director of Dorman Long from 1939 and became Chairman in this year 1949.
Dorman Long Chairman and Managing Director Ellis Hunter outlines the company's role in post-war recovery (DL Illustrated 1949)
It speaks of difficult times in this period immediately following the Second World War. Huge changes were on the horizon, the Iron and Steel Act 1949 was passed in this year and Dorman Long was to become one of the 80 companies nationalised as the 'Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain' in 1951.
Dorman Long Illustrated’s 1949 edition captures the company at a time of great transition. One of the features reports record levels of over 128,000 tons of steel being produced every 4 weeks by the Acklam, Britannia, Cleveland and Redcar works.
Record outputs are detailed in the company magazine (DL Ilustrated 1949)
However, 1949 also marked the closure of the Eston Ironstone Mine after 99 unbroken years of production. Dorman Long's remaining deep mines struggled on for a few more years but ironstone mining in Cleveland was in a terminal decline with the final mine at North Skelton closing in 1964.
The closure of the Eston Ironstone Mine after almost a century of use is featured in the 1949 edition (DL Illustrated 1949)
Elsewhere in the magazine there is a feature on long service awards for a cross-section of the Dorman Long workforce, all of who have served between 40 and 50 years with the company. These include William D. Buckton, a rail straightener at the Cleveland Works, who started with the firm in the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign, and T. Spenceley who joined Dorman Long in 1902 as an apprentice and in 1949 worked as a constructional plater at the firm’s Bridge and Constructional Works in Middlesbrough.
The company magazine often profiled individual workers and profiled long service within the firm (DL Illustrated 1949)
As part of Heritage Unlocked’s work with the Tees Advanced Manufacturing Park (TeesAMP) regeneration project on the site of the former Newport Ironworks site, copies of Dorman Long Illustrated from the collections of Teesside Archives have been digitised and will be available online via the TeesAMP website.
The Hidden Teesside website aims to record places of interest in the Teesside / Cleveland / North Yorkshire area that generally never make it to the pages of the normal tourist guides. Features locations include wartime relics, ironstone mining sites and abandoned railways.
For more information on Hidden Teesside visit www.hidden-teesside.co.uk.
