The main site

The main site began around 1830, was rapidly developed in the 1840s by the 4th Earl Granville. Many coal mines were also sunk on the site, and railways built into the site. From 1920 it developed into an efficient modern steelworks. During World War II it was a frequent target for German bombers, it being impossible to fully blackout the light from the huge blast furnaces. Shelton Bar came under nationalised ownership after the war, and the main works was closed in 1978, after which the eastern 200 acres (0.8 km²) of the site was reclaimed for the 1986 National Garden Festival site, the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival.

The rolling mill site

Shelton Works steel rolling mill was opened in 1964 as the world's first continuous cast production mill, and it remained fully operational during and after the Garden Festival, being on the western side of the Trent and Mersey Canal. It was closed by Corus in June 2000. The half-mile long building was torn down in early 2005, then used as a major supplies depot in the £8-billion upgrade of the West Coast Main Line railway that runs alongside the site. The rolling mill site is now being rectified ahead of a major £120m regeneration by St. Modwen. A pre-Roman British cemetery probably lies under the site, since funeral urns were found when the foundations were dug.

As of 2005, there are now no steelworks or mines left in the city.

When Shelton (new works) was constructed in 1964 it was the fore runner in steel making using a Swedish design smelting furnace called "Kaldo" this process was very quick but the high cost of refractories that had to be used and the life of them made it very expensive to operate.

The main rolling mill was made by the German Company "Demag" introducing a quick order change, system, where the Rolling machines, that weighed around 200 tonnes were lifted out of the ground put in a dummy pit and the next machine for the next order was dropped in. This method reduced the time to change from one order to another down from around 8 hours to about an half hour.

Shelton was a pioneer in the research of "spray steel" where Iron was blown through a nozzle and oxygen added the result was Steel! However the idea was scrapped due to the high amounts of slag that was produced. Shelton also experimented with liner motors to move the steel through the mill and constructed a magnetic stacking machine.

Shelton produced the first "Guide Rail" (a "T" section) in the form of a "H" in a Universal beam housing and were able to snap them in half to make the "T".In this way they doubled production and the product cooled evenly preventing warping. They also perfected a very high quality flat section again in the Universal Housing and became know as "Shelton Flats".

In art

The industrial landscapes of Shelton Bar were depicted in art by Arthur Berry, and in poetry by Charles Tomlinson. The human side of steelmaking was depicted on the stage and BBC TV as 'Fight for Shelton Bar' (1973).