The Lemington Glassworks and ‘High Cone’
MIKE PEARCE has been ‘digging’
The Lemington Glass Cone
Travelling a few miles west from the centre of Newcastle, keeping fairly close to the river, you will not fail to notice the Lemington glass cone. At one time the glassworks was hemmed in by wagonways, coal staithes, ironworks and, more recently, Stella North power station. Most of these were removed years ago, leaving a single cone, the ‘HighCone’, to dominate the view.
It would appear that the glassworks was originally opened by the Northumberland Glass Company in 1787 on land owned by the Duke of Northumberland. The money was put up by a group of partners including such well-known glass workers as Tyzack and Henzell from Lorraine. The Company produced flat glass. The largest glass cone was built in 1797 and is said to contain 1.75 million bricks. This is the one that remains today. It stands some 35m high and has a diameter of 21m at the base.
The Northumberland Glass Company closed in 1837 and ownership of the glassworks passed to a Joseph Lamb who retained control until 1845. Three cones are shown in a photograph of unknown date that is reproduced in Walton’s Bygone Bell’s Close & Lemington, but a map of 1860 shows only two large cones on the site. At this time the glass industry started to decline on Tyneside. Nevertheless, Sowerby took over in 1898 and continued operations until 1906 when the General Electric Company purchased the site.
GEC expanded the works and equipped it for the manufacture of light bulbs and tubes. Demolition of the old glasshouses continued. One of the old cones was demolished in 1918 to make way for new plant. By 1940 a bulb blowing machine was in production and is said to have achieved an output of one million bulbs in one week. The Glass Bulbs Company (GB) was formed by GEC and AEI in 1952 and a new gas-fired process was installed.
Round about the middle of the 20th century the remaining cone was capped with concrete. It was listed in June 1976 as Grade II*, number 10/24.
About 1960 the amount of work at Lemington increased and the labour force approached 700. Production included good quality Scandinavian style domestic glassware, though it consisted in the main of street lighting equipment. Later GEC and AEI combined to form a new company, Glass Tubes and Components Ltd. Commercial clear and translucent quartz tubes were produced at Lemington. Eventually production fell away and machine manufacture came to an end in 1996.
In 1992 English Heritage offered GB a grant of nearly £48,000 towards the repair of the cone, which was to be opened as a museum or heritage centre (English Heritage, Conservation Bulletin, July 1993). In 1993 English Heritage and Newcastle City Council collaborated to have the cone cleaned and repointed. 1997 saw the final closure of the glassworks and most remaining buildings were demolished. About this time the site was taken over by North-East Motors from Deema Glass. In 2001 there was still talk in some quarters of the cone being used as a museum of glass production. However, by this time the National Glass Centre in Sunderland had been in existence for three or four years.
During a visit at the time of final demolition work in August 1997, we were able to enter the site, including the cone itself, an office and laboratory building strewn with papers and another building that seemed to have been used in the manufacturing process. There were numerous abandoned examples of recent products – mostly industrial light covers of various designs and colours. In addition we could peer through the windows of a smaller building that appeared to house a dusty collection of moulds. One would have said that the previous owners had simply walked away from the site. What became of the work force?
Two archaeological investigations were carried out for Colvin-Smith (Construction) Ltd at the end of 1997. A desktop assessment includes copies of maps from as far back as 1767. There are also copies of two photographs taken in October 1997. Site visits were carried out by Northern Counties Archaeological Services. Evidence was found of flues or tunnels beneath the cone. It is known that they were used as air raid shelters during World War 2. There were annealing ovens (lehrs) attached to the cone dating from about 1858. It appears that the cone itself was out of use as a glass production area by 1895. Its main function was probably as a storage space.
The site of the works is now the Glassworks Business Units. In spite of problems of water seepage still to be resolved, the High Cone continues in use as a showroom and sales area for stoves and there is public access six days a week. The old glassworks site is therefore still an area of commercial and industrial activity after 220 years of continuous development. The cone itself was used in the making of the film of Catherine Cookson’s The Glass Virgin issued in 1995.
City and County
November 2008
