Dorman Long & Co: История британской сталелитейной компании и мосты мира

British steel company

Dorman Long & Co was a UK steel producer, later diversifying into bridge building. The company was once listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The company was founded by Arthur Dorman and Albert de Lande Long when they acquired West Marsh Iron Works in 1875. In the 1920s Dorman Long took over the concerns of Bell Brothers and Bolckow and Vaughan and diversified into the construction of bridges. In 1938 Ellis Hunter took over as Managing Director and he continued to lead the business until 1961. In 1967 Dorman Long was nationalised, along with 13 other British steel making firms, becoming subsumed into the government owned British Steel Corporation. In 1982 Redpath Dorman Long, the engineering part of the business, was acquired by Trafalgar House who in 1990 merged it into Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company in Darlington.

The following is a list of some of the bridges built by the Dorman Long: it is not fully comprehensive. Bridge Location Year Total length Notes Image Refft mOmdurman Bridge White Nile, Sudan 1926 2012 feet (613 m) 7 fixed spans, one swing span, 3,700 tonsDesouk Bridge Lower Nile, Egypt 1927 2010 feet (613 m) 10 spans including 194 feet (59 m) swing span, 3,800 tonsTyne Bridge Newcastle, England 1928 1254 feet (382 m) Approximately 8,000 tons, (Road)Alfred Beit BridgeSouth Africa 1929 1515 feet (462 m) 1,876 tonsSydney Harbour Bridge Sydney, Australia 1932 3770 feet (1149 m) Total weight of fabricated steelwork 51,000, weight of steel in the arch 38,000 tonsGrafton Bridge , NSW, Australia 1932 1309 feet (399 m) It is a dual level road and rail Bascule Bridge, the upper deck carrying a roadway and the lower level carrying the rail line and foot bridge. Lambeth Bridge London, England 1932 776 feet (237 m) 5 spans, 4,620 tons, (Road)Memorial Bridge, Bangkok Thailand 1932 755 feet (230 m) 1,100 tons, (Road)Khedive Ismail Bridge Cairo, Egypt 1933 1250 feet (381 m) 3,000 tonsNewport bridgeMiddlesbrough 1934 270 feet (82 m)The central lifting span 66 feet (20 m) wide, weighing ; the towers are 182 feet (55 m) high. The total weight is 8,000 tons. Birchenough Bridge Zimbabwe 1935 1241 feet (378 m)1,242 tons. Storstrøm BridgeDenmark 1937 10535 feet (3211 m) 21,000 tons, (Railway and Road)Chien Tang River Bridge China 1937 3480 feet (1061 m) 16 equal spans, 4,135 tons, (Railway and Road)Adomi Bridge (originally Volta Bridge) Atimpoku, Ghana 1957 1096 feet (334 m) arch bridge with roadway suspended from arch Silver Jubilee BridgeRuncorn and Widnes, England 1961 1582 feet (482 m) Road

In 1904 Sir Arthur Dorman of Dorman Long gave the Dorman Museum to Middlesbrough in honour of his youngest son, George Lockwood Dorman, an avid collector who died in the Boer War. Amongst the museum's exhibits is a collection of ceramics from the local Linthorpe Pottery, which was known for its iridescent glazes which, at the time, were not produced anywhere else in Europe.

The Dorman Long tower was built from 1955 to 1956 as a coking plant for steel production. It was scheduled to be demolished in 2021 due its poor state of repair The tower was demolished between 00:00 and 00:20 on 19 September 2021 in a series of controlled explosions.