Dorman Long
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Dorman Long, based in Middlesbrough, England, are a major manufacturer and fabricator of steel components and structures . They have been involved in the manufacture and construction of many major bridges since 1875, including, in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
The firm began as an iron and steel works manufacturing bars and angles for ships. A natural progression from this was to become involved in the construction of bridges, particularly when Dorman Long took over the concerns of Bell Brothers and Bolckow and Vaughan in the late 1920s. In 1990 they were merged with The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, Darlington, and are still involved in the design, manufacture, fabrication and erection of many different types of structures such as bridges, buildings, offshore platforms, airports, etc, with one of the most recent high profile contracts, being the new Wembley Stadium in London, England.
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[edit] History
Iron-making has been known in Cleveland since the Romans found iron slags in North Yorkshire, with small-scale iron-making known to have taken place at Rievaulx, Whitby and Guisborough Abbeys in the 17th Century.
Some of the key events connected with iron-making in Cleveland.
1837: The first Cleveland ironstone mine opens, at Grosmont.
1841: Bolckow and Vaughan open the first ironworks in Middlesbrough.
1855: 30 blast furnaces operate within six miles of Middlesbrough.
1865: One million tonnes per annum (TPA) of iron are produced to make the area one of the world's major centres of iron production.
1875: Number of blast furnaces increases to 100, producing two million TPA.
1879: Sydney Gilchrist arrives in Cleveland and introduces the first commercial steel.
1902: The first integrated steelworks, involving conversion of iron ore to finished rolled steel shapes, is built at Cargo Fleet.
1917: The Redcar steel plant is opened, making steel in the 'open hearth' process.
1918: Cleveland Works opens.
1924: Dorman Long and Co wins the contract to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
1946: Dorman Long and Co purchase 600 acres of land between the Redcar and Cleveland Works to build the Lackenby development.
1967: Dorman Long, South Durham Steel Iron Co, and Stewarts and Lloyds come together to create British Steel and Tube Ltd.
1967: The steel industry is nationalised and the British Steel Corporation is born.
1973: The existing Redcar Ironworks site development begins.
1979: The number of blast furnaces drops to one - producing 3.3 million TPA.
1989: Company is privatised becoming British Steel plc.
1990: Merged with The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, Darlington.
1999: British Steel merges with the Dutch steel and aluminium company Hoogovens to become Corus Group.
[edit] Bridge Building
Associated with the making of steel on Teesside is the construction of bridges, one of the industries for which the area has achieved international recognition. Chief among the bridge building firms was Dorman Long, a firm which began as an iron and steel works in 1875 manufacturing bars and angles for ships. A natural progression from this was to become involved in the construction of bridges particularly when Dorman Long took over the concerns of Bell Brothers and Bolckow and Vaughan in the late 1920s.
The most famous bridge ever constructed on Teesside was Dorman Long's Sydney Harbour Bridge of 1932. This was partly modelled on the 1929 Tyne Bridge, a construction regarded as the symbol of Tyneside's Geordie pride, but also a product of Dorman Long's Teesside workmanship. The greatest example of Dorman Long's work in Teesside itself is the single span Newport Lifting Bridge (a Grade II Listed Building). Opened by the Duke of York in February 1934 it was England's first vertical lifting bridge. With a lifting span of 270 feet long by 66 feet wide, it is constructed from 8000 tons of Teesside steel and 28,000 tons of concrete with towers 182 feet high. The electrically operated lifting mechanism allowed the road to be lifted 100 feet in one and a half minutes by means of ropes passing through sheaves in the four corner towers. Newport Bridge is no longer raised or lowered, it is a permanent road crossing the river Tees.
By 1982 Dorman Long was owned by the same company as it's close neighbour, The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company (founded in 1877 in Darlington, UK), and by 1990 they were merged into one company. The Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company is still in existence today and Dorman Long is a subsidiary of it, manufacturing steel componenets for bridges and other structures.
Bridges of the world built in the Teesside and Darlington area
The following is a list of some of the bridges built by the Dorman Long and Cleveland Bridge and Engineering companies; it is not however fully comprehensive.
- New Lambeth Bridge London, England
- (Road)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 776 ft
- 5 spans
- Engineer to London County Council was Sir George Humphreys and the architects Sir Reginald Blomfield and Mr G Topham Forest
- 4,620 tons
- Tyne Bridge Newcastle, England
- (Road)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 1,254 feet
- Messrs Mott, Hay & Anderson, associated with Messrs. Coode, Wilson, Mitchell & Vaughan-Lee
- 8,000 tons ?
- Bangkok Memorial Bridge Bangkok, Thailand
- (Road)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 755 feet
- 1,100 tons
- Menai Suspension Bridge Menai Strait, Wales
- (Road)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 1,265 feet
- Consulting Engineers to Ministry of Transport Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners
- 100 feet above water replaced Telford's bridge of 1826
- 3,200 tons
- Strostrom Bridge, Denmark
- (Railways)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 10,535 feet
- 21,000 tons
- Chien Tang River Bridge, China
- (Railway and Road)
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 3,840 feet
- 16 equal spans
- 4,135 tons
- Otto Biet Bridge over the Zambesi river, Zimbabwe
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 1,210 feet
- 1,242 tons
- Khedive Ismail Bridge Cairo, Egypt
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 1,250 feet
- 3,000 tons
- Dessouk Bridge, Lower Nile, Egypt
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 2.010 feet
- 10 spans including 194 feet swing span
- 3,800 tons
- Limpopo Bridge, South Africa
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 1,515 feet
- 1,876 tons
- Omdurman Bridge, White Nile, Sudan
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 2,012 feet
- 7 fixed spans, one swing span
- 3,700 tons
- Bosporus Bridge, Turkey
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1973 Total length 1560 metres
- Sydney Harbour Bridge Sydney, Australia
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough Total length 3,770 feet
- Total weight of fabricated steelwork 51,000. Weight of steel in the arch 38,000 tons.
With the central span raised to allow the fire boat through
- Newport bridge, built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough 1934
- The central lifting span is 270 feet (82m) long and 66 feet (20m) wide, weighing 5400 tons (6993 metric tonnes), the towers are **182 feet (55m) high. The total weight being 8,000 tons.
- Birchenough Bridge, Zimbabwe
- Built by Dorman Long, Middlesbrough 1935
- 1,242 tons.
- Victoria Falls Bridge, Zimbabwe
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1905
- King Edward VII Bridge Newcastle, England
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1908
- Nile Bridge, Egypt
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1909
- Transporter bridge, Middlesbrough
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1911.
- Second Nile Bridge, Egypt
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1911
- Verugas Bridge, Peru
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1936
- Howrah Bridge, India
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1942
- Auckland Harbour Bridge Auckland, New Zealand
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1959
- Tamar Bridge, England
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1959
- Forth Road Bridge, Scotland
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington / ACD Consortium 1964
- Severn Bridge, Severn Estuary, Wales/England
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington /ABB Consortium 1966
- Wye Bridge,
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1968
- Humber Bridge, Hull, England.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1961 span 1410m
- Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, M25 Motorway, London.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1991 main span of 450m, overall length 2872 metres.
- Tsing Ma, Hong Kong.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1997 span 1377m
- Jiangyin Suspension Bridge, Jiangsu Province, China.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 1999 span 1385m
- New Carquinez Bridge, San Francisco, USA.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington 2003 span 728
- Rion Antirion, Gulf of Corinth, Greece.
- Built by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering, Darlington Current Project span 3x560m
[edit] Other
In 1904 the industrialist Sir Arthur Dorman of Dorman Long gave the Dorman Museum to Middlesbrough in honour of his youngest son, George Lockwood Dorman, an avid collector who was killed in the Boer War. Amongst the museum’s many exhibits, is a collection of ceramics from the local Linthorpe pottery (1879-1889), which was renowned for its iridescent glazes, that at the time were not produced anywhere else in Europe. The museum has one of the largest collections of these highly distinctive ceramics in the world.
