Ballantine Castings Ltd. has a rich and expansive history of metalwork in the UK and beyond
Two brothers started the business during the 1820’s, and when one bought the other out, Arthur Ballantine & Sons was formally established in 1856. The firm built New Grange Foundry during 1876: it opened the following year and has been our home ever since.
In the early 1900s we developed an expertise in fabricating and erecting major bridges, complemented when the firm cast over seven miles of balustrading along the Thames Embankment, complete with “dolphin” lamp standards. The company also produced so-called pattern book castings: lamp standards, post boxes, cookers and window frames alongside one-offs such as replica cannon(s) for Edinburgh Castle, and the clock face for Hoover’s factory in Clydebank.
In the 20th century, the foundry made larger scale castings such as bulkheads for oil tankers then once the Great War was over, solid fuel stoves for the market garden glasshouses around Lanark and the Channel Isles. The decades following the Second World War saw greater changes in the foundry trade. Ballantines stopped making solid fuel ranges and stoves once electric cookers became popular, then our base load of castings for manhole covers, rones and underground drainage tailed off during the 1970’s and 80’s when plastic pipework was introduced .Ballantines merged with Bo’ness Iron Co in 1987, becoming Ballantine Bo’ness Iron Company which is now styled Ballantine Castings Ltd.
We are proud of our history, the heritage and family nature of the business. Throughout al these years we have built up a solid reputation for combining the most intricate and traditional craftsmanship skills with the most advanced, modern engineering techniques. For this reason Ballantine Castings Ltd. has been one of Britain’s foremost producer of architectural, ornamental and structural ironwork in the UK and beyond. We have the same passion and pride in the quality of the work we produce today as we did when we first started.