Cast House

The large white building with the steeple is the Cast House. It is built around the furnace, which is the heart of the Hopewell community. Hopewell's iron products were made inside this building. Large stacks of wooden boxes called flasks line the entranceway to the Cast House.

The large stone structure in the center of the room is the furnace; it is about 32 feet to the top where the filler loads the stack. The cast house was a hot place to work when the furnace was in operation. The temperature reached nearly 3000 degrees inside the furnace. A bright orange light glowed from within as the molten materials dripped down through the stack. When the bottom part, or crucible, of the furnace was full, the workers would empty it. This was called tapping the furnace. The furnace was tapped twice a day. As the iron came out of the furnace either pig iron or other types of iron products were made. First, let's learn about pig iron.

When the furnace was ready to be tapped, a worker called a gutterman punched out a clay plug in the taphole in the dam stone at the base of the furnace. When this plug was removed, the red hot iron would run out into a channel which the gutterman had dug in the soft sand floor. As the iron ran along this channel, the gutterman directed the flow into smaller channels coming off from the main channel. The iron cooled into bars called pigs. The iron bars lying on the floor resembled a sow (the long bar) with little pigs lying beside her. Hopewell made a lot of pig iron which was sold to other iron works called forges. At the forge, the pig iron was processed into wrought iron.

The cleaning shed is where the new castings were taken after they cooled. Rough edges were filed off and stiff brushes were used to remove sand which had burned onto the iron. The moulders, other employees and sometimes even women and children worked in here cleaning the castings. The pay for cleaning castings in 1836 was seventy-five cents a ton.

When the castings were finished, the company clerk would inspect them and note in his ledgers how many each moulder had made. The moulders were paid for each perfect casting they made, so the harder they worked, the more money they earned. In 1835, the best paid moulder earned $352.24 for the year - but then beef cost only five cents a pound. Flawed castings were thrown on the scrap pile outside.

Just before the furnace was tapped, the gutterman would remove the slag or cinder. This is the waste material from the process of iron making. Since it was considered of little use, it was thrown away right outside the cast house! The slag pile got bigger and bigger as the years went by. One of the few uses for slag was to fill ruts and wet spots in the roads. The slag piles were once much bigger. Much of the slag was removed earlier in this century and used for road construction.

Next stop on your tour is the Blacksmith Shop.

The Cast House was the focus of life for the Hopewell Community. Behind and above it, the Bridge House can be seen connecting the top of the furnace to the Charcoal House.

 

Inside the Cast House is the most important thing in the village, the furnace.

 

Connected to the side of the Cast House, the cleaning shed is where cast iron pieces were taken to be cleaned and prepared for shipment.