Elswick Lead Works Shot Tower

As the site of the former Elswick Lead Works just below the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle continues to get cleaned up, presumably  for eventual development, we remember one of the city's former famous landmarks that stood here from 1796 until 1969, The Shot Tower.

Site of Elswick Lead Works. Photo by A Curtis (2011).

Metro Radio Arena west of Redheugh Bridge. Photo by A Curtis (2011).

The only reminder now of the presence of this building is in the street name, Shot Factory Lane, that descends steeply from the junction of Pottery Lane, just east of the Arena, almost below the approaches to the new Redheugh Bridge, to Skinnerburn Road that runs parallel to the River Tyne. There are many remains of Tyneside's old industries in this now largely derelict area, on the steep bank above the river. Change in this area may be just round the corner, although dependent on the planning authorities, clean up of many difficult sites and the current economic climate.

Former Elswick Lead Works. Photo A Curtis (2011).

Shot Factory Lane. Photo A Curtis (2011).

Of course though, Newcastle's Shot Tower was here a long time, and is remembered in other ways. It features in a number of illustrations and paintings, many more modern photographs, and also in the written memories of those who worked there.

Newcastle upon Tyne by J.M.W. Turner (c1823)

One of the most famous paintings which features the shot tower (in the background above the Tyne Bridge) is that by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) in London's Tate Gallery.

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Turner's painting of Newcastle upon Tyne was engraved by F. Lupton as Plate 7 of the Rivers of England series, published on 2 June 1813 by W.B. Cooke. It is reproduced in the Newcastle Libraries Collection.

The landmarks of the city visible in this painting from Newcastle's Quayside, are discussed in a fine article by Timmonet called Turner Town, which was an inspiration for my personal discoveries in this area of Newcastle.

Plan of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead by Thomas Oliver (1849)

Elswick Lead Works Shot Tower on OS 1:500 (1862)

The early maps above show the Elswick Lead Works and the Shot Tower. The 1:500 plan shows remarkable detail of the internal spiral stairway.

The Newcastle Libraries Photograph Collections has the two old photographs shown below including one from 1968, just before the tower was demolished (click the photos for the links).

Elswick Lead Works. Unknown 1900. Newcastle Libraries Collection.

Shot Tower (1968). Newcastle Libraries Collection.

Elswick Lead Works opened in 1778  under the name Walkers, Fishwick & Co. After a few changes of ownership, ending with Calder Industrial Materials, it finally closed in 2002.

There is a good summary of the history of the lead industry here on the Newcastle University website, Structural Images of the North East (SINE).

By 1779, their Elswick works was producing white lead, and by the mid-1780s the concern was generating some £3,000 annual profit and a 30 per cent increase in turnover, while diversifying into red lead, lead rolling and, from 1797, into lead shot. The Elswick shot tower was one of the earliest to be built, being in operation by 1797. At 174 feet high and with a drop of 150 feet it was a notable feature of the area. In 1825 Mackenzie described it as a:

… most striking and remarkable object…It is a circular brick building, with a stone cupola, terminated by a chimney, and is ascended by a winding staircase in the interior. This singular edifice presents itself to travellers about two miles north of Chester le Street and never fails to exite their curiosity.

Mackenzie also repeated a story to the effect that shortly after its completion the tower was found to be ‘alarmingly out of perpendicular' but that this was corrected by the simple expedient of digging away the earth from its more elevated side until it recovered its perpendicularity. Thus Tyneside lost its ‘Leaning Tower of Elswick'. Shot production ceased in 1951 and although the tower was soon after listed as an Historic Building, it appeared to go back to its old habit of leaning and had to be demolished in 1968/69

Newcastle. Drawn by J.W. Carmichael. Engraved by T. E. Nicholson (1838).

The Shot Tower is almost in the centre of the above engraving published in Views on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, from drawings by J.W. Carmichael ; text by John Blackmore (Newcastle, 1838). As the drawings were done to illustrate the newly completed Newcastle & Carlisle Railway, the view is eastward, opposite to that of Turner, from the vicinity of Redheugh Station on the Gateshead shore. There is a zoomable image on Durham University's Pictures in Print.

The same source has this rather more romanticised view  published in the Beauties of England and Wales in 1806.

Gateshead on the banks of the River Tyne Durham. Engraved by J.Greig from a drawing by J.Hornsey (1806).

The shot tower was a British invention by a plumber from Bristol called William Watts in 1782. He realised that raindrops falling far enough through the air are actually spherical, pulled into shape by surface tension. Molten lead has a much higher surface tension than water, and forms very precise spheres. The size of rounded shot that can be produced depends on the length of the fall and large shot needs high towers (or deep pits). There is a British Pathé news reel clip of the process filmed in 1950 here.

Droplets are formed by forcing a molten alloy of lead, antimony and arsenic  through holes in a sieve at the top of the tower. After the fall, the shot is caught and cooled by falling into a deep basin of cold water at the base. After Watt's patent, which was a huge improvement on shot previously made by casting, there was little further change apart from adding an updraught of air, and  ways to sort out deformed shot.

Watts's old house in Bristol - his original shot tower - kept producing shot until 1968. The full story can be read here.

Lead works can't have been pleasant or healthy places to work in their early days.  There is a very interesting account relating to the Elswick Works on Family Tree Forum written in 2009 and another, by Alan Edgar, on the Port of Tyne Writer in Residence site.

In an interesting connection with Heddon, the latter author reports that slag from the blast furnace at Elswick Lead Works was eventually recycled – to reinforce the Tyne riverbank on the north side between Newburn and the Hedwin streams.

He wrote:

To me, there’s a certain sadness that the place is no more. It was a Newcastle institution in its heyday, and a great many very fine people worked there.

Lead Shot Tower and offices, Cheese Lane, Bristol. Photo by Pierre Terre (2006).

The Shot Tower, Crane Park, Hounslow. Photo by Des Blenkinsopp (2011).

Royal Festival Hall and Shot Tower c1959. Photo by David Wright.

Chester - the shot tower beside the Shropshire Union Canal. Photo by Mike Harris (2008).

Photos taken from Geograph website and remain © Copyright of their photographers although licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence (click the photos for link)

Several shot towers still exist in Britain and around the world as historic artefacts. Some have even been modified into parts of modern buildings such as the Sheldon Bush Shot Tower in Bristol (above left) which replaced Watt's original tower in 1968 and is now part of an office ‘boardroom in the sky’ of a building called Vertigo.

Coop's Tower in Melbourne has been preserved under a 84m high conical glass roof of a shopping centre.

Many more, like those at Elswick, and at Lambeth on London's South Bank (above right), were demolished when their productive use was no longer necessary.

Francis Frith - Memories of Cookson's Lead Works - Part 1 - Part 2