- Bob Dowsell, engineer
Bob Dowsell (Emma Drabble)
▶ Watch interview with Bob Dowsell
Three generations of the Dowsell family put in time at Llanwern steelworks and Bob is the last of the line. “Grandfather Charlie Dowsell was a night watchman down there and my father, when he retired from the RAF, drove the shale lorries.”
Shale was used to build the steelwork’s foundations and to bury four and a half kilometres of the Levels under a metre of rock. As a ten-year-old, Bob used to visit the steelworks. While his dad chatted with his mates, he’d wander off to see steel being made. “I’d make my way up onto the landings and I’d be watching the plant. Brilliant!”
Bob joined the steelworks after a spell with Black Clawson. Llanwern was, he says, “the most sophisticated steel plant in the world. One time we had 15,000 people working there and as many outside the plant, supplying materials.”
When steel making finished Bob joined Llanwern’s decommissioning team. “For five years I worked demolishing what I’d enjoyed for 20 years.”
It wasn’t a happy end. “I feel sad. There’d be smoke and steam coming out of the works . . . there was a vibrancy there. Now? It’s a ghost town.”
Life on the Levels interview:
Listen to Bob reflecting on his childhood in Goldcliff and Whitson, his career in a Newport foundry and the Llanwern steelworks and the ghost of Whitson.