Shotts Iron Works Furnacemen, 1907

This team would have worked on one of the blast furnaces at Shotts and you can see a furnace in the background, to the left.

Although the caption describes them as 'furnacemen' one is clearly a boy. It was common for boys to follow their fathers into the ironworks and learn their trade from them. There were different roles within the team, including the Furnace Keeper who was in overall control, fillers whose job it was to transport raw materials to the furnace to, pig lifters who separated and transported the cast bars of cast iron. Others would be responsible for heating the furnaces and for preparing the moulds in the sand beds where the iron was cast.