THUNDERCLAPS tore the silence, and the concrete hulks - their front and back supports blown out - knelt forward with a tired sigh before settling in a cloud of black dust.

After 40 years of toil, three coal-blending buildings that were once part of the steelmaking process were demolished at the Llanwern steelworks site yesterday.

Demolition experts used explosives to bring down the 10,000-ton buildings, the highest at 200 feet, as the closed steelworks is slowly erased from the landscape.

Peter Adlam, 59, of Chepstow, a former manager of the coal-blending process at the works, was invited to press the firing button to demolish his old workplace.

He said: "I started here in 1962, and it was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We didn't stop for Christmas Day. It was part of a process that couldn't be stopped.

"There was a vibrancy of machinery working and a buzz of activity. And it was like that for 40 years. It all seems so quiet here now.

"I spent a few minutes having a walk around some of the empty bits of buildings, and the memories went through me. There were some great highs and lows.

"It's a shame it barely saw the end of its working life, but now the site is going to good use."

The heavy end of the steelworks was closed in April 2002 with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs - a bleak milestone in the industrial history of Gwent.

The coal blenders mixed coal of different grades to be turned into coke used in the now silent blast furnaces.

Now half of the 600-acre site has been cleared for regeneration as urban villages instrumental in Newport's expansion.

Half the site is eerily still - barren and covered with mud in rusty hues, pools of water and piles of rubble.

The colossal towers and nightmarish bunkers of the steelworks still loom.

Against this incredible landscape tiny specks of yellow are moving. They are the regeneration workers looking to completely demolish the works by the end of 2005.