“In the steelworks you had a job for life.”

- Tony and Chris George, steel workers (Llanwern)

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Tony and Chris George (Nanette Hepburn)

Richard Thomas & Baldwins’ steelworks was the first oxygen-blown integrated steelworks in Britain when it opened in Llanwern in 1962. At its height, it employed thousands of workers, and was spread over several miles of the Levels.

“People said if you managed to get a job in the steelworks you had a job for life,” says Chris George. “In Tony’s case this was right.”

Tony had left school at 16. “I had a job at Llanwern in 1960. Chris and I married in 1963 and were allocated a bungalow in Tennyson Avenue.” There was a strong sense of community. “We knew everybody from the start of the village to the end of the road.”

A fence separated Tennyson Avenue (also known as ‘Managers’ Avenue, for many senior staff from the works were housed in the Avenue), from the Steelworks, the beating heart of industrial Newport. The stock yard lights were so bright you could read the evening Argus at midnight in the garden. And when the wind blew the wrong way, red dust rained down: “I had to wash Tony’s clothes every day and you couldn’t put the washing out.”

Work was plentiful. “There was Whiteheads (where Chris worked as a computer tape operator), Braithwaite’s, Stewart and Lloyds, Standard and Telephones, Monsanto, British Aluminium. By the time you were 19, you could have had three or four jobs,” says Tony.

It did not last. “We were producing material and then, eventually, other people came along and started making it cheaper. Then the industry closed up.” Now, says Tony, “we know hardly anybody here now.”

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Life on the Levels

“My father was an Italian prisoner of war.”

- Mike Mazzoleni, former Llanwern steel worker (Whitson)

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Mike Mazzoleni (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Mike Mazzoleni

“My father was an Italian prisoner of war and he was brought over to Llantarnam, a large Italian POW camp, after being captured in Europe somewhere. Every day the prisoners would be allocated to certain farms in this area. And after several appearances on Court Farm here in Whitson, they decided to keep him. So he never returned to Italy. And then that’s when he met my mother at the local dance down at the Farmer’s Arms in Goldcliff, and that’s how I came to be in Whitson today.”

Mike followed in his father’s footsteps by also working at Court Farm, Whitson, as a young man: “I’ve followed in his footsteps. I loved to work. I used to work on Court Farm… we could start baling at 8 o’clock in the evening. Oh my god it was hard work. I didn’t need anything to put me to sleep in those days, I was so tired. I had a job to climb the stairs… looking back on it, we had nothing, but god, I loved it.”

“All of a sudden in the 1950s they decided to build Llanwern [steelworks] and Court Farm was compulsory purchased… the saddest day of my life because they had an auction. I had to go back in the evening to open the gates… and it was silent. No cows, no chickens, and I cried like a baby.

“Strange thing is I started working at Llanwern. My dad made a few calls to some Italian friends in Newport, and I found my way into the steelworks.”

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Life on the Levels

“There was noise and a vibrancy to Llanwern steelworks.”

- Bob Dowsell, engineer

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Bob Dowsell (Emma Drabble)

▶ Watch interview with Bob Dowsell

Three generations of the Dowsell family put in time at Llanwern steelworks and Bob is the last of the line.  “Grandfather Charlie Dowsell was a night watchman down there and my father, when he retired from the RAF, drove the shale lorries.”

Shale was used to build the steelwork’s foundations and to bury four and a half kilometres of the Levels under a metre of rock. As a ten-year-old, Bob used to visit the steelworks. While his dad chatted with his mates, he’d wander off to see steel being made. “I’d make my way up onto the landings and I’d be watching the plant. Brilliant!”

Bob joined the steelworks after a spell with Black Clawson. Llanwern was, he says, “the most sophisticated steel plant in the world. One time we had 15,000 people working there and as many outside the plant, supplying materials.” 

When steel making finished Bob joined Llanwern’s decommissioning team. “For five years I worked demolishing what I’d enjoyed for 20 years.”

It wasn’t a happy end. “I feel sad. There’d be smoke and steam coming out of the works . . . there was a vibrancy there. Now? It’s a ghost town.”

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Life on the Levels

Life on the Levels interview:

Listen to Bob reflecting on his childhood in Goldcliff and Whitson, his career in a Newport foundry and the Llanwern steelworks and the ghost of Whitson.