Winlaton

Winlaton is a village situated in the Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. Historically in County Durham, it was incorporated into the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear and Borough of Gateshead in 1974. In 2011 the village was absorbed into the Gateshead MBC ward of Winlaton and High Spen. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 8,342.

Winlaton was once at the centre of the local steel industry. Ambrose Crowley, a Quaker nail-manufacturer, moved in 1691 to Winlaton. He set up furnaces and forges there and on the River Derwent at Winlaton Mill. The river was ideally suitable for tempering steel, as the sword-makers of Shotley Bridge also found. Crowley not only produced high-quality nails, but also iron goods such as pots, hinges, wheel-hubs, hatchets and edged tools. He could also make heavy forgings, such as chains, pumps, cannon carriages and anchors up to four tons in weight. The Crowley works were regarded as the largest manufactory of the kind in Europe. The gates for Buckingham Palace were also forged in Winlaton.