The works were built to exploit the high-quality iron ore and low-sulphur coal found in the area.

At one time it was the largest ironworks in Yorkshire, a major complex of mines, piles of coal and ore, kilns, blast furnaces, forges and slag heaps connected by railway lines.

The ironworks depended on the excellent resources of high-quality coal and iron ore found in the vicinity.

After some sales of shares the partners were Richard Hird, Joseph Dawson,[a] a minister, and John Hardy, a solicitor.

[11] In 1795 the company won contracts to provide guns, shot and shells to the government, which had been at war with revolutionary France since 1793.

[13] In 1800, the company opened the Barnby Furnace Colliery on land leased from Walter Spencer Stanhope.

In 1802 the Low Moor Furnace Waggonway was constructed connecting the colliery to Barnby Basin on the Barnsley Canal.

[13] In 1803 a regiment of volunteers was formed at Low Moor ready to repel the expected French invasion.

[19] The Airedale poet John Nicholson wrote in 1829, When first the shapeless sable ore Is laid in heaps around Low Moor, The roaring blast, the quiv'ring flame, Give to the mass another name: White as the sun the metal runs, For horse-shoe nails, or thund'ring guns ... No pen can write, no mind can soar To tell the wonders of Low Moor.

There was no room to expand in the original site, which was crowded by industrial works, offices and workers houses.

This was cast into pigs with crystalline or granular structure, and then refined by cold blast, coming out flaky.

[8] Robert Wilson, Works Manager at James Nasmyth's Bridgewater foundry in Patricroft near Manchester, had improved Nasmyth's 1842 design for a steam hammer, inventing the self-acting motion that made it possible to adjust the force of the blow delivered by the hammer – a critically important improvement.

The foundries at Low Moor produced quantities of guns, shells and shot for troops fighting in the Crimean War (1853–56) and the Indian Mutiny (1857–58).

The works turned to making weldless railway tyres, steam engine boilers, sugar pans for refineries in the West Indies, water pipes and heavy iron components for industrial purposes.

New rolling mills were also built to meet demand for iron plates in shipbuilding, supplied by slabs forged in the works.

[38] A description of the works at that time said The accumulation of cinders and calcined shale actually overspreads the country, and will soon rival in cubic bulk the mass of the Pyramids.

In some cases the hillocks of rubbish have been levelled, and covered with soil brought from a distance... Iron plates, bars and railway tires, sent to Russia, America, India, and, in fact, all over the world, are the principal manufactures here; but guns (from 32 to 68-pounders) are also made here... Every runlet of water for miles around is damned up to supply the works, and every drop is carefully economised.

In form they resemble an ordinary lime-kiln, and, on the summit, in the midst of the eager flames, are strange-looking wheels–appendages of the machinery by means of which the ironstone and other matters are dragged up an inclined plane on iron waggons to the mouths of the furnaces, which waggons, self-acting, where no living power could perform the office, turn topsy-turvy, and there unload their contents.

[37] In 1876 about 2,000 coal miners were employed in pits ranging in depth from 30 to 150 yards (27 to 137 m) in the surrounding townships of North Bierley, Tong, Bowling, Shelf, Wyke, Clifton, Hipperholme and Cleckheaton.

The company also employed about 800 miners in collieries to the east at Beeston, Churwell, Osmondthorpe and Potternewton, near Leeds.

An 1876 description said "the natural effect of the perpetual smoke-canopy under which the vegetation of the district exists is to give to it a dinginess not pleasant to look upon...

In 1888 Low Moor was converted to a limited liability company, although descendants of the founders retained control.

[43] The outbreak of World War I (1914–1918) caused a temporary surge in demand for shell casings and drop forgings, including shoes for the tracks of the first tanks.

[43] Attempts to use high-sulphur coal created serious problems and destroyed the reputation of the works as a supplier of high quality iron, while a slump in heavy industry in the 1920s further reduced demand.