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In 1800, the town of Middlesbrough did not exist. Stockton was a small port, shipping farming produce to and fro' and Redcar was a small fishing settlement.

Just 100 years later, however, Teesside was one of Britain’s most Industrial of areas, with Iron and Steel works belching smoke and flame into the sky. This transformation took place so fast, it's surprising that it never left itself behind!

It was this period between 1800 and 1900 that gave rise to the Henry Bolckow and John Vaughen partnership, which set up Ironworks on the banks of the River Tees.

Opened in 1841, the works had reached an output of 20,000 tons by 1846. Bolckow and Vaughen however, weren't the only or first producers of Iron around the Tees. The Stockton Iron Works, Portrack Iron Works, Teesdale Iron Works, Pease & Partners Tees Iron Works and Normanby Iron works were all producing Iron at around the same time and earlier.

In the latter 1800's, competition from abroad forced a great deal of Teesside's Ironworks to join forces and amalgamate. This resulted in the emergence of Dorman Long, who in the 1880's switched to Steel production and by 1898 had added a Bridge and Construction works and Steel erection businesses to it's growing empire.

By 1904, Dorman Long’s 3 plants had a capacity of about 450,000 tons. The development of the iron and Steel industry on Teesside in turn gave rise to other industries that could use the end product produced from the industry. Two of the main iron and steel using industries to grow in the Teesside area were Engineering and shipbuilding.

Engineering

There was one or two small engineering firms operating around the Tees in the first half of the 1800's but it wasn't until after 1850 that engineering in the region really started to grow.

1840 saw the formation of the Teesdale Ironworks, which eventually was to become one of Teesside most well known engineering companies. The company was taken over in 1859 by Thomas Head and Joseph Wright and with the later addition of Joseph Ashby and Thomas Wrightson and the retirement of Joseph Wright, the company eventually became known as Head Wrightsons in 1866.

Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding had long been an industry on the Tees even before the emergence of the Iron and Steel industry in the 1800's. However, the ships of this time were constructed of wood and it wasn't until the iron and Steel came to the fore that shipbuilding really took off on the Tees.

The first ship to made of Iron on the Tees was 'The Advance', which was built by The South Stockton Iron Shipbuilding Company in 1854. By the end of the 1800's, six shipbuilding companies had established themselves on the Tees and in 1892, the north-east produced 42% of the worlds merchant shipping, with the Tees accounting for over a third of this figure.

Then in 1908, one other significant company set up shop, Smiths Dock. All this resulted in Teesside being one of the world’s foremost shipbuilding centres in the early 1900's.

Chemical Industry

Compared to the Iron and Steel Industry, the chemical Industry in the Teesside region was a slow starter. The first record I can find of a chemical company in the area is that of the Egglescliffe Chemical Company. They started business in 1833 at Urlay Nook, just west of Yarm. Their main products at the time were Sulphuric Acid and fertilisers.

Other chemical companies in the area didn't really start to appear until Henry Bolkow and John Vaughen discovered Salt under their Cleveland Iron works in 1863. Salt was then discovered at other location across the Teesside region and a number of other companies emerged. Companies like Bell Bros., Pease & Partners, Cleveland Salt Co. and United Alkali Co. all started to extract from deep beneath the Teesside soil.

Prior to the First World War, this was as far as the chemical industry on Teesside stretched. It was during and after the First World War that the chemical industry on Teesside really started to grow. The increasing demand for TNT during the war had given rise to the need for Sulphuric Acid. This resulted in the expansion of The Egglescliffe Chemical Company and the formation of The Stockton-On-Tees Chemical Works, who manufactured TNT for the government.

In 1918, construction was also started on a new chemical plant at Billingham, funded by the government, to produce Ammonium Nitrate, the main ingredient of high explosives. Work on the construction was suddenly halted at the end of the war and the government sold the site to a company called Brunner Mond & Co, who completed the plant and operated it under a subsiduary company called Synthetic Ammonia & Nitrates Ltd.

The company modified the process used to produce explosives to produce Synthetic Ammonia, which in turn was used to produce Fertilisers, dyestuffs and Anhydrous Ammonia in refridgeration. The Brunner Mond Company and it's subsiduary, Synthetic Ammonia & Nitrates Ltd were not however, to last long.

The war had highlighted the need in Britain to produce its own chemicals and in 1926, a number of companies, including Brunner Mond, Nobel Industries, United Alkali Company and British Dyestuffs Corporation Ltd merged to form a new company with the main aim of producing chemicals for the British Empire.

This company was to become a household name on Teesside. It was, of course, Imperial Chemical Industries, more commonly to become known as I.C.I. I.C.I. continued to grown over the next few years and as the need for Ammonia and it's products diminished, I.C.I simply diversified to produce more and more chemicals.

The production of Methanol started in 1928, Oil, Tar and Creosote also began being produced by I.C.I. around 1935. This period also saw the company starting to produce 'Perspex'. The inter-war years therefore, became very important in the developement of the chemical industry on Teesside with other companies starting to surface, like British Oxygen on Portrack Road (later Haverton Hill Rd) in 1923 and in the 30's, British Titan, specialising in the production of pigments.