150 years of the Shelton Works - page 10
150 years of the Shelton Works - page 10
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| Dramatic increases in
activity took place during the next two years. A further four blast furnaces were built at the Etruria site, to take the total to eight. A fourth had been built alongside the original three in the Shelton site. Ironmaking was to take place on this second site without interruption until 1978. Quality was as important in the Nineteenth Century as it is in the Twentieth Century. Competing against the rest of the world in 1855, the Shelton Bar Iron Company won the Silver Medal for wrought iron quality at the Paris Exhibition. In the same year the partnership decided to appoint a Works Manager, and chose Col William Sargent Roden, who was only 25 years old. He joined the group as a working partner in 1857, and, with his wife Theodora and their family, moved into Etruria Hall, which the company had bought thirteen years earlier. He was later to become Mayor of Hanley, as a Liberal, in 1866, and MP for the district to years later. |
