Taalintehdas (Dalsbruk in Swedish) is an urban settlement of around 1700 residents in the Kemiönsaari municipality. Kemiönsaari is the largest island of Finland, located in the heart of the archipelago in south-west Finland. A uniform archipelago area reaches from Aland Islands to Hanko. There are two bridges that “attach” Kemiösaari to the mainland.
The settlement of Taalintehdas developed around the blast furnaces of Taali, which were founded by a Swedishman Daniel Faxell in 1686. After Faxell the iron works went to Mikael Hising, who was also the owner of Billnäsi. The plant has passed from one owner to another more than 20 times. Still in 2010 it operated as a rolling mill of Ovako, receiving a new name FNsteel in late 2010. Later the operations in the plant stopped. The old blast furnaces and coal furnaces of the iron works have been partially renovated in the early 2000s. What is special in the settlement is that the foundation of many of its buildings or some whole houses are built of slag brick, i.e. bricks formed from the slag that is generated as a by-product in iron production. The oldest residential buildings in the Taalintehdas area are from the 18th century.
The urban centre includes several new apartment buildings, a health centre, a second town hall of Kemiönsaari, two food stores, clothing stores, household commodities stores, two restaurants, a coastal hotel, two bank outlets, a chemist, an Alko store, a post office and a versatile marina.
Finland’s National Board of Antiquities has acknowledged the historic industrial area of Taalintehdas as a nationally significant built cultural environment.
Source: Wikipedia