This One’s for Gretchen, or What I Found On the Way to a Winery

Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

This isn’t a post about wines or wineries – although I did first discover this while on my way to a winery.  So, I suppose you could say this is about wine country, or more specifically, the interesting things you stumble across in wine country.

In the far northwest corner of Connecticut, just outside the town of Canaan, sits the first Connecticut winery I visited, Land of Nod.  I really like the winery, particularly their Blueberry-Raspberry wine (which makes a great Sangria) as well as their Chocolate-Raspberry Dessert wine, and their location, nestled in the foothills of the Berkshires, is one of the prettiest and most picturesque in the state.  I’ve taken friends there and have gone back several times for the views as much as for the wines.

Coming from the east, as I do, the turn off to the winery takes you past the Blackberry River and the Beckley Iron Furnace.  Each time I’d head down Lower Road towards the Land of Nod, I would see the historic markers as well as the top of the furnace and think about stopping or at the very least googling it when I got home.  But inevitably I’d have forgotten all about it by the time I’d left the winery, and the next trip would find me stumbling across it again and thinking, “oh yes, I should find out what that is.”  So, finally, one day a few weeks ago I stopped.

The Beckley Furnace is Connecticut’s only designated Industrial Monument.  Built in 1847, it operated until 1919 producing pig iron (so named because the molds used for producing the iron ingots resembled “piglets suckling on a sow”), which is the result of smelting iron ore with coke.  The pig iron is later refined into wrought iron or steel.

Beckley is a traditional blast furnace: a hearth at the bottom to collect the molten ore and slag; the “bosh” or middle zone (the hottest part of the furnace) where the combustion occurs; the vertical shaft and the the furnace top.   Fuel and raw materials are dropped in from the furnace top while air is pumped in from the bottom.  The air helps fuel the combustion in the “bosh,” melting the iron ore which then flows down through the furnace where it collects in the hearth.  Two holes in the hearth help separate the molten ore from the slag.

The furnace was closed in 1919 and over the next several decades was allowed to fall into disrepair.  In 1946, The State of Connecticut purchased the furnace designating it “Connecticut’s Industrial Monument,” and in 1978, the furnace was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Today the furnace has been carefully restored and sits proudly on the banks of the Blackberry River.

The furnace is smaller than I expected, particularly the hearth area, and looking at it I was struck with just how unpleasant the working conditions had to be for the men operating the furnace.   The heat had to have been intense, particularly in the hearth area as the molten iron is oozing down through the furnace and out the tap hole.   Note: the cut-away section of the hearth was added during reconstruction to give visitors the ability to see the hearth; in an operating blast furnace, this area would have been a continuous wall with just air, slag and tap holes.

But I also found myself fascinated by this glimpse into our industrial past which I knew nothing about.  And that, of course, made me wish I could share this with Gretchen, who loves this kind of stuff as much as I do.

So Gretchen, when we are finally able to schedule a day (or two) on the Connecticut Wine Trail together, I promise the Beckley Iron Furnace will be on the agenda.

Tags: Beckley Iron Furnace

This entry was posted on September 27, 2009 at 4:49 am and is filed under Connecticut, Connecticut Wine Trail, Marguerite Barrett, New England, Western Connecticut Wine Trail, Win(e)ding Roads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.