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The Corus site at Scunthorpe is an integrated steelworks operating four blast furnaces, the 'Four Queens' of ironmaking. Given the critical link between the campaign life of a blast furnace and the condition of its hearth, it is important to ensure that the hearth is not just correctly designed and constructed, but is correctly managed as a valuable resource. Operating four blast furnaces has meant looking after four separate hearth pads, four separate hearth sidewalls, and six different tapholes through four different operational histories, which has lead to the accumulation of a wealth of data relating to blast furnace hearth operations. The experiences of Corus Scunthorpe in blast furnace hearth management are discussed in this paper. In order to correctly manage a blast furnace hearth it is necessary to have a good array of instrumentation, a dependable thickness model, and a workable system of watching and reporting on hearth condition and history. It is important to have an understanding of how a hearth is likely to react in certain circumstances, to recognise when a threatening situation is developing, and to know what remedial and preventative actions should be taken. Great insight for hearth management can be gained by having seen a hearth being constructed, and especially by seeing the excavation of a hearth at the end of its campaign. Fortunately this is one of the benefits of a regular mid-campaign repair program, as otherwise such opportunities are no longer common.