Chairman of the Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum at Skinningrove, Peter Tuffs, says there would have been thousands of
puddling furnaces, each with a crew of six to 15 workers, in the 19th Century ironworks, all within a five-mile radius of South Bank.
"By 1860, within five miles of Dudley there were 441 pits, 181 blast furnaces, 118 iron works, 79 rolling mills and 1,500
puddling furnaces, all pouring out smoke.
These, too, were exemplars of the most advanced vanguard of Victorian capitalism - in 1867 there were 1,500 workers in the Granville Ironworks while Robert Heath's firm employed 3,500 men and boys in a complex which included twenty-eight mines, eight blast furnaces, 144
puddling furnaces, and fourteen rolling mills.