Fields … more fields ….. and an Iron Works..... Gorton in 1894

I suppose that if you are going to locate a new iron works, placing it amongst a heap of fields has a sort of logic.

Gorebrook Iron Works, 2021

And twenty years after the Gorebrook Iron Works set up shop there was still plenty of open land pretty much in all directions.

In 1894 to the north was a dyeworks and chemical works which utilized the  Gore Brook, a water course “whose foul condition” according to Graces’s Guide to British Industrial History “occupied many newspaper column-inches in the early 1900s”.*

Added to which just beyond the dyeworks was a “Rope, Twine, & Tarpulin Works” and a little to the east was a clay pit and brick works.

Knutsford Vale, 1894

But while the rural character of the area was muted, this bit of Gorton by Pink Bank Lane, could still boast the Crowcroft Farm and Mount Farm, and a little further south close to Matthew Lane and the Nico Ditch were Yew Tree Farm, the Print Works Farm and Green Bank Farm.

The iron works, 2021

As yet the story of the iron works is shadowy, but I know that during the 1870s and 80s it was occupied by Weild and Co., and in 1891 by Shepherd and Ayrton, and William Ayrton and Co.

In time I will interrogate the directories which will offer up more names, but for now that is it ……. a little bit of iron making in the fields of Gorton.

Except to say that the immediate area around the iron works was known as Nutsford Vale, while just a short walk would bring you to the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens.

Location; Gorton

Pictures; the Gorebrook Iron Walks, 2021, from the collection of Andy Roberts, and Knutsford Vale in 1894, from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Graces’s Guide to British Industrial History , https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Gorebrook_Ironworks