Museum Wendener Hütte

Casting hall with burdening floor and charcoal blast furnace, boiler house, raw material magazine, hammer mill, a coach house for carriages and carts, a horse stable and - within sight - a stately residential and administrative building for the owner: this is what Sauerland ironworks looked like in the 18th and 19th centuries, before the competition in the Ruhr area stole their thunder. And this is how it can still be seen in Wenden today ...

Infotext read more: … There, the journey from ore to iron is recreated step by step. In the operable hammer mill, blacksmiths regularly show how scythes, knives and high-quality steel rods are made, once traded via Cologne and the Ruhr District all the way to Holland. An eco-technological learning site with an exciting metallurgical trail, the Wenden Ironworks is aimed specifically at young fans of tech and nature.

It' s an unholy tug-of-war, the back and forth over the route of the Ruhr-Sieg railway built in 1861. Yet things do not look so bad for the Wenden ironworks: Louis Remy, then owner and president of the Chamber of Commerce for the districts of Olpe, Arnsberg, Meschede and Brilon, is well connected in the region and beyond. But it ends ill-fated: the urgently needed railway connection to the Ruhr District abandons the Bigge and Volme valleys. This spells doom not only for the Wenden Ironworks: after 138 years it ceases operations in 1866.

By then it is mainly owned by the Remy family, an industrial dynasty from France that has shaped the iron industry on the Rhine and Moselle for centuries. In Wenden the Remys enter the business in the 1730s, since the founder of the ironworks, Johannes Ermert, has overstretched himself financially with the construction of the plant. Right from the start, they opt for modernisation. They expand the hammer mill to become the first refining hammer in the Duchy of Westphalia, and initially Louis Remy plans to introduce the puddling process for producing wrought iron, familiar to him from England, to Wenden as well. The products – mainly semi-fabricates – are sold to wire drawing workshops near Altena and crude steel hammer mills on the Ennepe, but also make their way to Amsterdam and Rotterdam. This puts the Wenden ironworks in direct competition with the iron industry in neighbouring Siegerland. The superiority of the coke blast furnaces in the Ruhr District and the poor transport links with horse and ox carts finally prompt the site's abandonment. Today, as one of the oldest blast furnaces in Germany, it stands for the beginnings of iron smelting.

Steel Time Travel Destinations Nearby

Technikmuseum Freudenberg

Freudenberg

Old train station Hützemert

Drolshagen

The "Steel Time Travelers" Luise & Alfred: Museum Wendener Hütte

Lu:

High-quality iron was produced here in Wenden long before your time - since 1728. I'll show you a real model smelter, Alfred!

Full dialog text: Lu: High-quality iron was produced here in Wenden long before your time - since 1728. I'll show you a real model smelter, Alfred!

Al: Are you really sure that there will be a smelter here at all? The Bigge is only a trickle! How is this narrow stream supposed to drive four water wheels?

Lu: Such impatience! Here in Balve-Wocklum, we don't expect a blast furnace either. Here, everything is on site: iron ore, wood for coal, water power for propulsion.

Al: But far from the shot, Madame - but far from the old iron. Remy, the owner of the ironworks, is really very clever and inventive.

Lu: I met him recently in Paris - at the World's Fair - he was full of esprit. Uh, and didn't they show you there where the bells hang?

Al: So be it. In any case, the train has left here. Or rather - you don't get to go at all. The Ruhr-Sieg-Bahn gives Wenden a wide berth!

Visitor information

Address:
Hochofenstraße 6
57482 Wenden
Phone.02761/81401
info@wendener-huette.de
www.wendener-huette.de

Opening hours:
Apr-Oct: Tue-Sun: 3 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Nov-March: Tue-Sun: 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.
The area is accessible 24 hours a day.