Shelton Bar

Shelton Bar was a 400-acre major steelworks in the city of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. In its heyday, Shelton Bar employed 10,000 in the steelworks, had five coal mines, a complete railway system, and a by-products processing factory.

The main site began around 1830, was rapidly developed in the 1840s by the 4th Earl Granville and his managing partner William Roden MP. In 1873 there were 93 puddling furnaces, 7 mills and 8 blast furnaces with extensive iron mines and collieries. Many coal mines were sunk on the site, and railways built into the site which stretched from the western reaches of Hanley into Etruria as far as Middleport. In 1920 the company was acquired by John Summers & Sons, who developed the site into an efficient modern steelworks. During World War II it was a frequent target for German bombers as it was impossible to fully blackout the light from the huge blast furnaces. Shelton Bar came under nationalised ownership in 1951, only to be denationalised by the Conservative government in 1953. The works was re-nationalised again in 1967 by the Labour Party and the main works was closed in 1978, after which the eastern 200 acres of the site was reclaimed for the 1986 National Garden Festival site, the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival.

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