78 ROTHERHAM AND LINCOLNSHIRE STEEL 
end of 1920. The original works consisted of the following 
plant: ironstone mines, 96 Semet Solvay coke ovens, with 
an output capacity of 3,000 tons of coke per week, two 
blast furnaces of 700 tons per week capacity, four forty- 
five-ton basic open-hearth steel furnaces, and a 400-ton 
metal mixer, with steel rolling mills. The growing activity 
of the district is such that in 1913 a third blast furnace of 
similar capacity was put into operation. In 1917 a fourth 
furnace of 1,000 tons per week capacity was put into blast, 
and in 1922 a fifth furnace of 1,200 tons per week capacity. 
The steel plant can produce up to §,000 tons of finished 
steel per week. The output is made up of sheet bars in all 
qualities of steel, billets, slabs, etc., for automobile and other 
high-class work, special carbon and alloy steel, tube steel, 
low-conductivity steel and tin-plate bars, much of which 
goes to the plate mills of South Wales. 
The works of the firm of Richard Thomas were estab- 
lished as the Redbourn Hill Iron & Coal Co. in 1872 by a 
group of Birmingham investors. At the present time there 
are four furnaces, ofa total capacity of 3,500 tons per week. 
Steel works were erected during the latter part of the war, 
with a production capacity of about 3,500 tons per week of 
merchant bars and sheet bars. In 1925 the Company was 
absorbed entirely by Richard Thomas & Co. of South 
Wales, and is now known under that name. ‘This firm is at 
the head of the tin-plate industry, and is more fully referred 
to in Chapter XIX.