page_title: William Sandford
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: William Sandford / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Lithgow Blast Furnace: Built in 1906-7, the Blast Furnace was the sole producer of iron in Australia for the first seven years of its life. It remained a major producer for the next thirteen, until its closure in 1928.
context_page_description: William Sandford was an English-Australian ironmaster, who is widely regarded as the father of the modern iron and steel industry in Australia.
context_section_description: Sandford is viewed, justifiably, as the father of the iron and steel industry in Australia. The plant at Lithgow was further expanded under G & C Hoskins ownership. Between 1928 and 1932, the iron and steel making operations at Lithgow were relocated to Port Kembla, where steel is still made today. The wire netting plant plant that Sandford established at Chiswick in 1884—owned first by Lysaght and later by BHP—survived until 1998.
  Many of Sandford's managers and workforce stayed on at the works under the new management and were part of the growth of the iron and steel industry in the following decades. His General Manager, William Thornley, left Lithgow and set up an iron and steel foundry, W. Thornley and Sons, at Sydenham, in Sydney, to make railway equipment. It later also made commercial woodworking machine tools.
  Sandford was associated with the growth of the township of Lithgow. The area between Railway Parade and Read Street, bounded by Roy Street and the laneway behind John Street was subdivided by Sandford for housing in 1897 and, in 1902, Spooner and Harley Streets were added. Roy, Clarice and John Streets are named after Sandford's children. Sandford Avenue in Lithgow is named after him. The continuation of Main Street, west of the Great Western Highway is Caroline Avenue, likely named after Caroline Sandford, his wife. 
  The ruin of the blower house of Sandford's blast furnace still stands in what is now the Blast Furnace Park, Lithgow. Sandford's home, 'Eskroy Park'—later the home of Charles Hoskins— is now part of the clubhouse of the Lithgow Golf Club.
  Sandford Street in Mitchell, an industrial suburb of Canberra—the streets of which are named after Australian industialists—is named after him.
  Sandford's lifesize portrait—painted by Norman St Clair Carter, paid from funds raised by public subscription in 1908—has a chequered history. It hung for 30 years in the Art Gallery in Sydney, until his daughter was requested to take it away in 1938. It then hung at the Chamber of Manufacturers until 1951, when it moved to the Sydney boardroom of John Lysaght Australia. Presumably when that company was taken over by BHP, it moved to the offices of the Port Kembla steelworks (now Bluescope Steel).
  William Sandford was, in many ways, a very unusual person; an industrialist who felt more at home with nature; a capitalist just as concerned for his workers' wages as his own personal fortune; a businessman comfortable with a Labor government and state ownership of industry; someone wracked by self doubt and inner turmoil but who was well respected and liked, almost universally; someone honourable but still capable of deceit on occasion; someone proud of his ability to recruit talented, knowledgeable and loyal  people but who became obsessive about retaining personal control, and a visionary who lacked confidence in ultimate success but nonetheless pursued it, almost to the point of self destruction.
caption: Ruin of the blower house of Sandford's blast furnace at Lithgow, opened in 1907. It closed in 1928, when blast furnace operations were moved to Port Kembla.
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