Chester Shot Tower - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Chester Shot Tower, also known as Boughton Shot Tower, is a grade-II*-listed shot tower

Shot tower

thumb|The Shot Tower, Bristol, EnglandA shot tower is a tower designed for the production of shot balls by freefall of molten lead, which is then caught in a water basin. The shot is used for projectiles in firearms.-Process:...

located at in the Boughton

Boughton, Cheshire

Boughton is a neighbourhood to the east of Chester city centre, part of the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England...

district of Chester

Chester

Chester is a city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is home to 77,040 inhabitants, and is the largest and most populous settlement of the wider unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a population of 328,100 according to the...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The tower stands beside the Shropshire Union Canal

Shropshire Union Canal

The Shropshire Union Canal is a navigable canal in England; the Llangollen and Montgomery canals are the modern names of branches of the Shropshire Union system and lie partially in Wales....

and forms part of the disused Chester Leadworks. Built by Walkers, Parker & Co. in 1799, the tower is the oldest of three remaining shot towers in the UK, and probably the oldest such structure still standing in the world.

The circular red-brick tower is 168 feet (41.2 m) tall and 30 feet (9.1 m) in diameter at the base tapering to 20 feet (6 m) at the top, with small arched windows. A lift shaft dating from 1971 remains attached to the exterior; the interior retains a spiral staircase and melting pots.

Drop process of lead shot manufacture

The tower was one of the earliest built to manufacture lead shot

Lead shot

Lead shot is a collective term for small balls of lead. These were the original projectiles for muskets and early rifles, but today lead shot is fired primarily from shotguns. It is also used for a variety of other purposes...

using the method pioneered in the 1780s by the Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

inventor William Watts. Molten lead was poured through a pierced copper plate or sieve at the top of the tower, with the droplets forming perfect spheres by surface tension

Surface tension

Surface tension is a property of the surface of a liquid that allows it to resist an external force. It is revealed, for example, in floating of some objects on the surface of water, even though they are denser than water, and in the ability of some insects to run on the water surface...

during the fall; the spherical drops were then cooled in a vat of water at the base. Watts' process was less labour intensive than the earlier method of casting shot in moulds. An early use of the tower was to make lead shot for muskets in the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

. Although other methods were developed to manufacture shot during the 20th century, the Chester tower was still in use as late as 2001.

Lead industry in Chester

Lead is believed to have been exported at the port of Chester from lead mines in Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

since the Roman period. The construction of the Chester Canal

Chester Canal

The Chester Canal was a canal linking the south Cheshire town of Nantwich with the River Dee at Chester, providing a route for produce from Nantwich to reach Chester and, beyond it, the sea via the Dee estuary.-History:...

in the 1770s led to industrial development to the east of Chester, with the Walkers, Parker & Co. leadworks being established there in the late 18th century. The lead industry became one of Chester's major industries during the 19th century. An archeological investigation carried out in 2001 found evidence of numerous demolished buildings contemporary with the shot tower of 1799; by 1812, the leadworks is known to have also included pipe-drawing machines and a rolling mill for producing lead sheet.

The leadworks closed in 2001, with Calder relocating to West Chester. Most of the remaining buildings of the leadworks, with the exception of the shot tower, were demolished around 2004 to make way for urban regeneration of the canal-side area. A small park by the canal on part of the former site was opened in May 2006. The park contains a sculpture in stainless steel and blue glass which commemorates Chester's lead industry; 'Spheres of Reflection' by Edd Snell was inspired by lead drops impacting on the surface of water.

Other shot towers

The Chester Shot Tower is one of only three such structures to remain in the UK. Although shot towers were very common during the 19th century across the country (two appear in the London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

skyline in John Constable

John Constable

John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...

's 1832 painting, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge), the Chester tower is the only surviving example which dates from the 18th or 19th centuries. Other early shot towers include the Jackson Ferry Shot Tower (c.1807), an example of a stone shot tower in Wythe County, Virginia

Wythe County, Virginia

As of the census of 2000, there were 27,599 people, 11,511 households, and 8,103 families residing in the county. The population density was 60 people per square mile . There were 12,744 housing units at an average density of 28 per square mile...

, and the brick Sparks Shot Tower

Sparks Shot Tower

The Sparks Shot Tower is a historic shot tower located at 129-131 Carpenter Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Opened on July 4, 1808, it was one of the first shot towers in the United States, with the Jackson Ferry Shot Tower in Wythe County, Virginia possibly predating it by a year or so...

in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

(1808), both in the US.

The other British examples still standing date from the 20th century. The Cheese Lane Tower in Bristol

Bristol

, a reinforced concrete tower, was constructed in 1969 to replace Watts' original shot tower in Redcliffe

Redcliffe, Bristol

Redcliffe, also known as Redcliff, is a district of the English port city of Bristol, adjoining the city centre. It is bounded by the loop of the Floating Harbour to the west, north and east, the New Cut of the River Avon to the south...

, which was demolished in 1968. A military look-out post in Tynemouth

Tynemouth

Tynemouth is a town and a historic borough in Tyne and Wear, England, at the mouth of the River Tyne, between North Shields and Cullercoats . It is administered as part of the borough of North Tyneside, but until 1974 was an independent county borough in its own right...

dating from 1916 is also believed to have doubled as a shot tower. The so-called Crane Park Shot Tower at Twickenham

Twickenham

Twickenham is a large suburban town southwest of central London. It is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and one of the locally important district centres identified in the London Plan...

is no longer thought to have been used for this purpose.

Drop process of lead shot manufacture

Lead industry in Chester

Other shot towers

Further reading