Park Gate Iron and Steel Company

Over the years, along with the business changing hands several times, the works expanded across Rotherham Road to the Park Gate site, which continued until the 1970s.

In 1854 Samuel Beale and Company made the cast iron armour plating for Isambard Kingdom Brunel's ocean liner Great Eastern.

This included Kaldo process basic oxygen steelmaking plant which was fed from the blast furnaces at Parkgate, ladles being moved by rail between the sites.

By the 1970s demand had changed and part of the old plant was demolished, the remainder of the Parkgate site was closed in 1985 with the closure of the heat treatment department.

The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR) opened its 0.5 miles (800 m) Park Gate branch to serve the works in August 1873.

The Midland Railway had links next to Parkgate and Rawmarsh station that served sidings next to the blast furnace plant, ore arriving here from the quarry in Northamptonshire.

When Parkgate opened its quarry at Hellidon in 1917 it had a 1.5-mile (2 km) mineral railway built to link it with the Great Central Main Line at Charwelton.

[1] Parkgate's Sproxton quarry had a 6-mile (10 km) mineral railway to link it with the East Coast Main Line south of Great Ponton.

The Parkgate fleet was joined by some locomotives from the Rotherham Works of Steel, Peech and Tozer when the latter was closed, including examples built by the Yorkshire Engine Company of Sheffield.