page_title: William Menelaus
section_title: Dowlais Ironworks (1851–1884)
hierarchical_section_title: William Menelaus / Career / Dowlais Ironworks (1851–1884)
context_page_description: William Menelaus was a Scottish-born mechanical engineer, who made his name and fortune as the works manager at the Dowlais Ironworks in South Wales.
context_section_description: After the death of Thomas Guest died in 1807, his son John Josiah Guest became sole manager of the Dowlais Ironworks, by 1815 owning nine of the sixteen shares. His brother Thomas Revel Guest owned one and Whyndham Lewis, the remaining six. In 1835 Guest made the acquaintance of engineer G. T. Clark, who had both had been involved in the Taff Vale Railway. In 1850, Clark married Ann Price Lewis (died 1885), a descendant of Thomas Lewis. Ann's brother had sold her family's last remaining interests in the firm that year, to Guest.
  Having become sole owner, in 1851 Guest offered to double Menelaus's salary to £600pa to join the new management team. However, Guest died in 1852, and was buried at St. John's church in Dowlais. Guest named Clark, his widow Lady Charlotte Guest and Edward Divett as executors and trustees. Lady Guest would be sole trustee while a widow but she remarried in 1855 and de facto control fell to Clark. Henry Bruce, later to become Lord Aberdare, replaced Divett.
  For some time, the works had been in decline. The renewal of the lease had taken from 1840 to 1848, by which time Sir John Guest was starting a long and declining period of illness that would eventually lead to his death. Under the control of Lady Guest, the works had been in further and steeper decline. Clark resultantly took rapid steps to improve management controls.
  Clark became managing director looking after overall strategy, while he appointed Menelaus head of operational control. A student of modern management methods, Menelaus insisted on weekly reports on physical and financial performance from all departments, and took daily walks through the works. Clark and Menelaus based all of their decisions on long-run considerations: the spurning of short-run profit maximisation in favour of investment for long-run growth infused their magisterial 1857 report on the state of the Dowlais works. Resultantly, Dowlais again became a centre of innovation, and thrived with its new cost-effective production methods. Though the Bessemer process was licensed in 1856, nine years of detailed planning and project management were needed before the first steel was produced:
  1857: constructed the "Goat Mill", the world's most powerful rolling mill.
  1861: the company entered the coal trade
  1863: after recovery from a business slump, the company had no cash to invest for a new blast furnace, despite having made a profit. To explain why there were no funds to invest, the Clark and Menelaus made a new financial statement that was called a comparison balance sheet, which showed that the company was holding too much inventory. This new financial statement was the genesis of Cash Flow Statement that is used today.
  1864: ownership passed to Sir Ivor Guest
  1870: the works consisted of six Bessemer converters and four Siemens open-hearth furnaces
  Menelaus innovated in production systems and methodologies. He used small coal, a waste product, in the furnaces, releasing the large coal for sale as steam coal. He also scientifically demonstrated that old worn-out furnaces were merely destroying fuel. In 1870 Dowlais was first ironworks to use the waste gas from the coking ovens to fuel the furnaces.
  With local supplies of iron ore depleting, all of the South Wales ironworks became highly dependent on transport systems. The Dowlais ironworks site was located 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, and so required excellent transport connections to remain profitable and competitive. As a result, Clark and Menelaus drove railway development, connecting Dowlais to the docks at Cardiff, Barry, Newport and Swansea. They also built a new small steel plant within Cardiff Docks.
  In October 1871, Menelaus travelled to Spain to negotiate a long-run source of cheaper ores. This resulted in the formation of the Orcenario Iron Ore Company in 1873, an alliance company jointly owned by Dowlais, the Consett Iron Company and Krupp. The result was that while other South Wales-based ironworks failed or slid into decline during the same period, including the Crawshays of Cyfarthfa Ironworks, Dowl
caption: Bessemer converter
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