Wortley Top Forge

The Top Forge was always closely tied to Wortley Low Forge, a short distance downstream. One of them was probably built around 1639 — possibly both — and the forges certainly existed by 1641, when the ironmasters at Wortley were Thomas Cotton and his son William Cotton (1627–1674). The site was originally created under the guidance of Sir Francis Wortley, a devout Royalist, and cannonballs are said to have been made here during the English Civil War. Afterwards the finery forges generally belonged to a network of ironmasters led by members of the Spencer family of Cannon Hall at Cawthorne, save for the years between 1676 and 1690 when they were rented out to others. Both forges were leased together with Nether Bank Furnace until that blast furnace closed, probably around 1780, all of them rented from the Wortley family.

In 1744 the forge was let to John Cockshutt, who ran it with a partner and also kept a tinmill. He was followed by his son, another John, and then by his brother James about 1800. James had worked at Merthyr Tydfil as a partner of William Crawshay at the Cyfarthfa Ironworks, and on returning to Wortley in 1791 he introduced puddling to the site; the tinmill was probably altered to roll blooms into bars of iron. After James died in 1820 the works passed to relatives and through various hands before coming to Thomas Andrews in 1849, and on his death in 1871 to his son, another Thomas Andrews, who died in 1907.

The building's present layout dates from the 1850s, when the forge turned to producing shafts and axles chiefly for railway wagons — axles of the highest quality, exported all over the world — while the engineer and metallurgist Thomas Andrews conducted some of the earliest metallurgical experiments in the world on this very site. Production ceased around 1912, though parts of the works remained in use until 1929, and one of the hammers was run as a demonstration in 1933 or 1934. In 1955 the dream of C. R. Andrews was fulfilled when the forge reopened as an industrial museum under the Sheffield Trades Historical Society, now the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society. From the mid-1960s, Ken Hawley served as Honorary Curator for over forty years, leading the volunteers whose restoration work earned him an MBE in 1998. The whole site is a Scheduled Monument and the main forge is Grade I listed.

Wortley Top Forge sits in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, on a loop of the River Don near Thurgoland and Wortley. It has been an industrial museum since 1955, cared for by the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society, and the draw by daylight is the machinery itself: the Walloon-type furnace, the Marshall twin-cylinder steam engine, and three restored waterwheels including the great twenty-four-foot overshot wheel. Look out, too, for the 1713 date stone on one of the buildings.

If you would rather see the place after the light has gone, organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue — a chance to spend a long night in a Grade I listed forge with the river running past outside. Either way, remember that this is a Scheduled Monument restored over decades by volunteers: tread carefully, touch nothing without being asked, and give the building the respect it has earned.