Chartered Institute for Archaeologists 2022

24 BOS Plant Teeming Bay, showing a de-gasser unit ©TEP THE SITE Teesworks is located at Redcar, North Yorkshire, and is currently being redeveloped to transform Europe’s largest brownfield site into a multi-sector industrial zone focused on clean energy and advanced manufacturing. The site covers 4,500 acres and will include the UK’s first carbon capture utilisation and storage facility. It is envisaged to create 20,000 new jobs and contribute £1 billion annually to the Tees Valley economy. The extensive site is over 5km from end to end and the larger buildings can be hundreds of metres long, with multiple levels, and containing substantial equipment and machinery. The principal objective of the survey was to produce an archaeological record of the site, including the various processes of materials movement and manufacturing that took place in the different areas of the works. The scope of recording encompassed many large and complex buildings and plant, including a blast furnace which at the time of construction in 1979 was Europe’s largest and most technologically advanced. The main areas to be recorded included raw materials handling facilities, coke ovens and by-products plant, sinter plant, power station and turbine hall, gasholders, workshops and offices, and the Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) plant. These were supported by an array of ancillary equipment including a network of conveyors and a dedicated rail system that carried raw materials around the site.