#shot tower

Top Image -The Redcliffe Shot Tower - Bristol

Lower Image - The 'NEW' Shot tower

The Redcliffe Shot Tower was a historic shot tower in the English city of Bristol. It was the progenitor of many similar towers built around the world. The tower stood at the corner of Redcliffe Hill and Redcliffe Parade, in the suburb of Redcliffe, between the years of 1782 and 1968 when it was demolished.

In 1775, William Watts, a plumber, started converting his house, near St Mary Redcliffe Church, into the world's first shot tower, in order to make lead shot by his innovative tower process. He did this by adding a tower atop his house, and by excavating a shaft into the soft sandstone below, achieving a total drop of around 90 feet (27 m). By 1782, the tower was complete and in production, and Watts was granted a patent on his process, which involved pouring molten lead through a perforated zinc pan into water below thus producing round shot pellets....

The lower image shows the "NEW" shot tower on Bristol's Cheese Lane. Its no longer in use for lead shot production, and is listed Grade II as "Sheldon Bush and Patent Shot Company Limited".

The "NEW" tower was designed as a replacement by E.N. Underwood and Partners, a firm of structural engineers, for the Sheldon Bush and Patent Shot Company Limited. It was constructed on a site already in use for other purposes by that company, and is some 500 yards (460 m) from the site of its predecessor. The structure is of reinforced concrete, with a twelve sided crucible room at the top, giving it an outline reminiscent of a cotton bud. It is the last such tower to be built, one of the few to be built in the 20th century, and one of only three to survive in England. It received the Civic Design Award from the Bristol Civic Society for the year it was completed in 1969.

The shot tower, lead works and the lion brewery at Lambeth seen in 1949.

Both the lead works and the Lion Brewery were demolished in the early fifties to make way for the Festival Hall seen in the lower photograph

The Shot Tower was built for Thomas Maltby & Co. in 1826 and designed by David Riddal Roper. In 1839, it was taken over by Walkers, Parker & Co., a company that also operated the square shot tower to the east of Waterloo Bridge. They operated the tower until 1949 and shortly after that it featured in the film 'Night and the City' (1950) . In 1950, the gallery chamber at the top of the tower was removed and a steel-framed superstructure was added instead, providing a radio beacon for the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was the only existing building to be retained on the site for the Festival. After the Festival, the tower was demolished to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall, which opened in 1967.

Well what is a Shot Tower you my ask...

In a shot tower, lead is heated until molten, then dropped through a copper sieve high in the tower. The liquid lead forms tiny spherical balls by surface tension and solidifies as it falls. The partially cooled balls are caught at the floor of the tower in a water filled basin. The now fully cooled balls are checked for roundness and sorted by size. A slightly inclined table is used to to check roundness and those that are "out of round" are remelted. 

To make larger shot sizes, a copper sieve with larger holes is used. The maximum size is limited by the height of the tower, because larger shot sizes must fall farther to solidify. A shot tower with a 40-metre drop can produce up to #6 shot (nominally 2.4mm in diameter) while an 80-metre drop can produce #2 shot (nominally 3.8mm in diameter). Later polishing with a small amount of graphite is necessary for lubrication and to prevent oxidation.