At approximately 17.04 on 30th September 2024, a large plume of steam began venting from the top of blast furnace No.4, the last functioning furnace at Port Talbot Steelworks in south Wales. The sight of steam venting from the steelworks may not seem unusual. However, this occasion was different. As the last usable molten iron was tapped or removed, this steam plume signified the permanent cessation of ironmaking – a momentous moment in Wales's industrial story.
30th September, Blast Furnace No. 4, Port Talbot
2024, photograph by James Milne (b.1980), collection of the artist 
If mining headgear symbolised the coal industry, blast furnaces are emblems of the iron and steel industry. In integrated plants, the entire process is carried out from ironmaking to steelmaking and then further to downstream processing.
While significant historical examples of blast furnaces have been preserved in the UK, such as Coalbrookdale in Shropshire (where a Museum of Iron was established near Abraham Derby's historic blast furnace) or Blaenavon in south Wales, efforts to develop their modern- or present-day counterparts as heritage assets – particularly in the UK – have failed to materialise. The broader issues surrounding the heritage legacy of the remaining blast furnaces have become increasingly complex due to climate change and the ongoing discussions surrounding it.
In contrast, artists continue to draw inspiration from the landscapes and last remaining architectures of iron and steel production, where the engineering principle of 'form follows function' created complex forms that attracted prominent artists such as Graham Sutherland.
As an official war artist (from 1941), Sutherland made a significant body of work at the East Moors Iron & Steel works, Cardiff. Like other artists, he was drawn to the sublime drama and intensity of the iron-making process. His painting Tapping a Blast Furnace, where blackened swirls of smoke collide with the orange and yellow glow of the molten iron as it pours out from a furnace taphole, is a fine example.
While countless blast furnaces in the UK have already been demolished, the most recent example being the gigantic Redcar blast furnace, Teesside (2022), artists have underlined their cultural and architectural relevance. The most notable proponents of this were Bernd and Hilla Becher, who from 1959 systematically photographed blast furnaces (among other forms of industrial architecture) for over forty years across Europe and the United States.
Redcar Blast Furnace
2022, photograph by James Milne (b.1980), collection of the artist 
A black and white photograph the Bechers made of Ebbw Vale's three blast furnaces in 1966, which appears in their publication Blast Furnaces (1990), underlines their mastery of large-format photography which drew out not only the unique characteristics and forms of each blast furnace, but also obscure details such as pipe networks, cables, structural supports, and incline elevators for the loading of raw materials.
At a recent survey of the Bechers' work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2022, a large typology set of blast furnaces formed a centrepiece of the exhibition, again underlining their importance within their oeuvre.
Conversely, Nan Youngman's painting Steelworks, Ebbw Vale also shows an acute sensibility towards her subject: a vista of chimneys, wooden cooling towers, mills, and steelworkers' houses set within a steep-sided valley.
The restricted and earthy palette of the painting unifies the dynamic composition. The blast furnace (flanked by two diagonal crane arms and a square chimney) appears vulnerable and oversimplified, unlike Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of the same forms.
While people in Nan Youngman's painting appear to be leaving the steelworks or relaxing in the street, Gwyn Davies's 1950s painting Night Shift, Port Talbot shows steelworkers walking or cycling towards a rusty bridge and the Margam ironworks behind it.
Night Shift, Port Talbot
1950s
Gwyn Davies (active c.1950–c.1960) 
The three blast furnaces, located to the left, tower above, waiting in line for the night shift to arrive. Davies has also emphasised the furnace's scale and perspective. While accurately rendered, the blast furnaces remain silhouetted and anonymous in contrast to a dramatic sky, the workers' yellow clothing, not to mention the beautiful browns and rust colours of the iron bridge. The whole scene represents a landscape altered entirely by heavy industry.
The three Margam blast furnaces painted by Gwyn Davies were superseded in the 1950s by examples with much larger iron outputs – known as furnaces No.4 and No.5. Photographic artist Gawain Barnard captured the distinctive form of the last remaining No.3 blast furnace at Margam in his photograph Passing Port Talbot Steelworks (1998), taken from a fast-moving train.
Passing Port Talbot Steelworks
1998, photograph by Gawain Barnard (b.1976), collection of the artist 
Barnard's poignant photograph represents a fleeting and blurry view that most people have – either from a passing train or the adjacent M4 motorway – as they travel through Port Talbot. Blast furnace No.3, the last of Margam's original blast furnaces was demolished in 2008.
Commissioned by the then Steel Company of Wales, Charles Ernest Cundall's painting No.5 Blast Furnace, Abbey Works, Margam (1959) optimistically portrays the new blast furnace, which was representative of a wider investment in Britain's steel industry at this time, as typified by new integrated plants at Llanwern (1962) in Newport, Wales, and Ravenscraig (1957) near Motherwell in Scotland.
No. 5 Blast Furnace, Abbey Works, Margam
1959
Charles Ernest Cundall (1890–1971) 
Cundall's painting shows the No.5 blast furnace standing proudly, its vast scale brought into focus by steelworkers in the foreground.
Catherine Yass's work, Steel: Blast Furnace (1996), unlike Cundall's, offers little sense of scale or proportion. Alongside evidence of structural modifications, especially to the lower sections of the structure, Yass's work is an abstract view. The unorthodox photographic processes she utilises not only draw out the idiosyncratic architecture of the blast furnace but also the elemental forces of heat and pressure contained within it that transform raw materials into molten iron.
In Steel: Blast Furnace (1996), those elemental forces are brought to the surface, as the lower portion of the furnace glows and the upper section, partially obscured by plumes of steam, reaches towards a lilac and deep-blue sky. In this sense, interior and exterior are forged together in a way that echoes a statement made by Bernd and Hilla Becher who said that 'the blast furnace is like a body without a skin. Its insides are visible from the outside; organs, arteries, and skeleton create its form.' (Blast Furnaces, p.15)
While the colour in Catherine Yass's artwork represents the internal and external, in The Cast House 2024, by architectural photographer Kenton Simons, colour represents an alternative.
The Cast House
2024, photograph by Kenton Simons (b.1973), collection of the artist 
The photograph compares with Graham Sutherland's painting, but unlike Sutherland's work, workers are conversing near an open taphole as molten iron pours from the furnace. Alongside the complex interior space, light from the glow of molten iron is diminished by bluish-cold (artificial) lighting behind the steelworkers. The bluish-cold is prophetic. Less than a year later, this blast furnace would run cold, never to be restarted.
As Wales embraces alternative methods of steel production, and whatever the future holds for the UK's remaining blast furnaces of modern design, it's clear they have acted as important sources of inspiration for artists to challenge and expand their creativity while underlining their unique position in architecture and art. The artworks created offer glimpses into an endlessly complex form of architecture seldom seen – as in the photograph by Gawain Barnard – from a passing train window.
James Milne, artist and researcher
This content was supported by Welsh Government funding
Further reading
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Blast Furnaces, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990
