page_title: George Thomas Clark
section_title: Dowlais Ironworks
hierarchical_section_title: George Thomas Clark / Work / Dowlais Ironworks
caption_attribution_description: English: Painting of Dowlais Ironworks by George Childs (n.n.) 1840.
context_page_description: Colonel George Thomas Clark was a British surgeon and engineer. He was particularly associated with the management of the Dowlais Iron Company. He was also an antiquary and historian of Glamorgan.
context_section_description: In 1855 Clark took control of Dowlais Ironworks. The works had been, for a while, in some decline and Clark took rapid steps to improve management controls, attracting additional capital and persuading Henry Austin Bruce to share with him the responsibility of the trusteeship. Clark took up his residence at Dowlais and devoted all his energies to the development of the works and the redemption of the estate. As Bruce devoted himself to politics, the whole responsibility of management devolved on Clark alone, whose rare capacity for administration was displayed no less by his rapid mastery of a complicated situation than by his wise selection of heads of departments, chief among whom was his general manager, William Menelaus.
  By the mid-1860s, Clark's reforms had borne fruit in renewed profitability and he was rewarded with an annual salary of £3,500 and five percent of the profits. Clark and Menelaus invited Henry Bessemer to Dowlais, where he perfected his process for making malleable iron direct from the ore. Dowlais became a centre of innovation, and, though the Bessemer process was licensed in 1856, nine years of detailed planning and project management were needed before the first steel was produced. The company thrived with its new cost-effective production methods, forming alliances with the Consett Iron Company and Krupp. 
  Dowlais was soon first in the field in the production of steel rails, and for some time held a monopoly of that trade in Wales. The consequent expansion of the industry, and the difficulty of procuring an adequate supply of suitable ores at home, led Clark, in conjunction with the Consett Iron Company and Messrs. Krupp of Essen, to acquire an extensive tract of iron-ore deposits near Bilbao in Spain. To render the works independent of the vicissitudes of the coal trade he also purchased large coal areas, undeveloped for the most part, in Glamorganshire.
  As his wealth grew, he delegated the day-to-day management to Menelaus, his trusteeship terminating in 1864 when ownership passed to Sir Ivor Guest. However, Clark continued to direct policy, in particular, building a new plant at the docks at Cardiff and vetoing a joint-stock company. Under his regime Dowlais became in effect a great training school which supplied to similar undertakings elsewhere a much larger number of managers and leading men than any other iron or steel works in the country. Finally, he procured the establishment, in 1888–91, of furnaces and mills in connection with Dowlais, on the seaboard at Cardiff, which reduced transport costs considerably but, eventually, led to the decline of Dowlais as an industrial centre. He was induced by Lord Wimborne to continue his administration of the Dowlais undertakings down to the end of March 1897 He formally retired in 1897.
caption: Dowlais Ironworks by G. Childs, 1840
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