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INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

NEWSTHE BULLETIN OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY FREE TO MEMBERS OF AIA

2016 Report � Sewage in the Black Country and PragueReuse in UK, France and Norway � Music from the anvil

181SUMMER

2017

2—INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS—181

INDUSTRIALARCHAEOLOGY

NEWS 181Summer 2017

Honorary PresidentProf Marilyn Palmer63 Sycamore Drive, Groby, Leicester LE6 0EWChairmanKeith Falconer32 Fromefield, Frome, Somerset BA11 2HEVice-ChairmanDr Michael NevellSecretaryDavid de HaanAIA Liaison Office, Ironbridge Gorge Museum,Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DXTreasurerJohn JonesHines Farm, Earl Stonham, Suffolk IP14 5HQIA Review EditorsDr Mike Nevell and Dr Ian WestIA News EditorChris BarneyThe Barn, Back Lane, Birdingbury CV23 8ENAffiliated Societies OfficerLynne WalkerConference SecretaryJohn McGuinness29 Altwood Road, Maidenhead SL6 4PBEndangered Sites OfficerAmber PatrickFlat 2, 14 Lypiatt Terrace, Cheltenham GL50 2SXLibrarian and ArchivistJohn PowellIronbridge Gorge Museum, Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DXPublicity OfficerRoy Murphy3 Wellington Road, Ombersley, Worcestershire WR9 0DZRecording Awards OfficerShane KelleherSales OfficerRoger FordBarn Cottage, Bridge Street, Bridgnorth, Shropshire WV15 6AFFacebook ManagerDr Paul Collins (Facebook) [email protected] MembersBill Barksfield (Website and Overseas trips)Dr Robert Carr (British Archaeological Awards)Tony Crosby (APPG Secretariat)Steve Dewhirst (Dorothea Conservation Award)Kate Dickson (E-FAITH)Bruce Hedge (Membership development)Shane Kelleher (IHSO)Michael MessengerStephen Miles (Conference bookings)Ian MillerRoy Murphy (Publicity)Dr Tegwen Roberts (Social media)Mark Sissons (Restoration Grants)Mark Watson (TICCIH – GB National Representative)Honorary Vice-PresidentsProf Angus Buchanan Sir Neil CossonsProf John Hume

Liaison OfficerDavid de Haan, AIA Liaison Office, The Ironbridge Institute,Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DX.Tel: 01952 416026.E-mail: [email protected]: www.industrial-archaeology.org

COVER PICTUREPreparing to scan – night shift on the Forth BridgeHistoric Environment Scotland.

Photo: Chris McGregor

A team of surveyors from Historic EnvironmentScotland’s Conservation Directorate and theGlasgow School of Art’s School of Simulation andVisualisation has completed 3D surveys of TheForth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge. Theteam, which operates under the flag of the twoorganisations’ joint partnership, the Centre forDigital Documentation and Visualisation (CDDV),has also documented the construction of the newQueensferry Crossing, which is due to open inMay/June 2017.

Miles Oglethorpe, Historic Environment Scotland

Funding for the survey work has been provided bythe Scottish Government through TransportScotland, and further resources have been setaside to develop digital educational resources topromote STEM subjects in Scottish schools.

In the case of The Forth Bridge, it took over1,400 separate scans to create a comprehensiverecord of the 2.5km-long structure, and thesehave now been woven together into a single 3Dmodel which, in the process, has generated anenormous dataset. In addition to educationalapplications, it will be useful to Network Rail’sconservation and maintenance programme,acting as an exceptionally accurate baselinerecord from which monitoring and interpretationwork will be possible. It will also be a valuableasset when developing a potential visitor

experience at the Bridge itself, and online forvirtual visitors.

By chance, the survey coincided with thefracture of one of the Forth Road Bridge’s ‘truss-end links’ in December 2015, and it was thereforepossible at the time to use the laser scan data inthe analysis and planning of repairs to thedamaged link, and for the reinforcement of theother three links, there being two at each end ofthe structure. As with the neighboring railwaybridge, the 3D model will be a useful resourceboth for the maintenance and conservation of thebridge, and for interpretation and educationpurposes. The ‘A’-listed structure, the largestsuspension bridge in the world outside NorthAmerica when it opened in 1966, will be closed toall traffic except public transport, bicycles andpedestrians when the new crossing opens later in2017.

In the longer term, CDDV hopes that theexperience gained surveying these enormousengineering structures can help with therecording, conservation and potential restorationof other World Heritage Sites, some of which haverecently suffered severe damage as aconsequence of both natural and humandisasters.

Fly-through animations derived from the 3Dmodels of the Forth Bridges were made availablein January 2017, and can be found in a film onYouTube at: youtu.be/ikLjgXXAMas

The FORTH Dimension: 3DDocumentation of the Forth Bridges

Completed Survey Historic Environment Scotland

Setting up the equipment Historic Environment Scotland

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS—181—3

Sad news for the world’s last steam-powered cotton spinning mill

Following on from the news in 2016 thatLancashire County Council had taken the decisionto close several of its museums, including QueenStreet Mill and Helmshore Mills Textile Museum,English Heritage has just announced its decisionnot to acquire these two sites. For the moment,care and maintenance will continue but themuseums will not re-open for the foreseeablefuture, if at all. Higher Mill at Helmshore datesfrom c.1789 when the Turner family constructed asmall, stone-built mill to enable local home-basedweavers to have their cloth fulled without havingto trek all the way across the fells to Rochdale. Itpossesses one of the very few remaining woodenfulling stocks driven by a water wheel. The secondmill on the site, Whitaker’s Mill, was a cotton millwhich suffered the common fate of fire due to theflammability of cotton dust, but was rebuilt andequipped for condenser spinning which makesuse of cotton waste. It was therefore a spinningmill, and so is complementary to Queen StreetMill which is for weaving. The museum displaystell two stories, the Wool Story and the CottonStory, and has quite recently been refurbishedwith an ingenious hub linking the two sites.

Queen Street Mill, dating from the 1890s, isthe only surviving site in the world where the

original steam engine is still fired daily and worksthe original weaving looms in the mill. It was runby a community of weaving concerns, not by anentrepreneur seeking a profit, and as such is avery rare example of this cooperative way of thecommunity establishing a new mill for mutualbenefit. The site has Grade 1 listing status.

Negotiations for the future will continue buta prolonged shut down with only static care andmaintenance would certainly prejudice theresurrection of Queen Street Mill. Ian Gibson,former Curator of Industry and Technology,Museums Service, Lancashire County Council, haspointed out that the boiler flame bed is belowmill pond water level and with no fires lit overmany months the fire brick will get wet enough tostart disintegrating. Given the importance oftextiles to the British economy from the medievalperiod onwards, it is shameful that neither theCounty Council nor the body concerned with theconservation of historic places which bring thepast to life consider these two sites worth saving.

Marilyn Palmer

Congratulations toKeith Baker

Congratulations to Keith Baker who has beenawarded the 2016 John Monash Medal byEngineers Australia for his ‘outstandingcontribution in raising awareness andconservation of the ACT’s heritage, and providingnational leadership in the promotion ofengineering heritage’.

Despite serious ill health, Keith guided theAIA and Newcomen group on a fascinating tour

of Canberra, part of the trip touring southernNew South Wales which was organised byHeritage of Industry and preceded the 2015Australian Engineers Conference.

The medal perpetuates the memory of SirJohn Monash as Australia’s greatest militarycommander, and an exceptional engineer.

Keith said he was honoured and delighted.“It’s so easy for industrial heritage to become lostor degraded,” he said. “It’s not as pretty as somethings regarded as ‘real’ heritage. To my mind,engineering has so much to do with everything

that goes on in daily life, that to not record theengineering that goes into things is to only getpart of the story.

Water powered fulling stocks at Helmshore

Loom shed at Queen Street – all in working in order

VISIT THE AIAWEBSITE

www.industrial-archaeology.org


If you have not yet booked for this year’s AIA conference, itwould be a good idea to do so straight away as the variousvisits are filling up fast. The detailed programme is on the AIAwebsite, together with the booking forms – do use the newelectroniAc booking system which is both quick and convenient.

The Thursday seminar has an impressive range of speakersfrom archaeological contract units on the ‘big’ projects that aretaking place across the UK, including the M74 completionproject round Glasgow where a lot of industrial sites wereuncovered, and the remarkable discoveries made during thetransformation of the Kings Cross Goods Yard in London.

Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire have not previouslybeen explored in any depth by AIA conferences, and talks willcover the major brick industry in that area, the boots and shoeindustry and the history of lifts, since one of the visits is to theimpressive Lift Tower in Northampton, a landmark seen frommany miles around.

This is also an important transport corridor, and we expectto have a film of the construction of the M1, talks on variousrailways in the area and the Rolt Memorial Lecture on theheritage of what is now the Canal and River Trust. Visits will bemade to various heritage railways, the Blisworth Tunnel on theGrand Union Canal, the former Royal Ordnance Depot atWeedon, the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden Aerodromeand the Museum of Computing together with the Home of theCodebreakers at Bletchley Park which has developedconsiderably since some delegates visited it from the HatfieldConference.C3 Roller mills at Jordans Mill, Biggleswade

AIA Conference, Moulton College, Northampton25 – 30 August 2017

Pre-conference Seminar:The contribution of developer-funded projects to industrial archaeology.

Moulton College, Northamptonshire, 9.00 Friday 25 August 2017

The AIA has always tried to begin its annual conference with a day seminar intended to bring together both professionals and volunteers engaged in workadvancing the discipline of industrial archaeology. Given the volume of work that has been carried out in recent times on industrial sites that are scheduledfor redevelopment, this year’s seminar will concentrate on the enormous contribution of developer-funded projects, particularly large-scale projects in citycentres. The seminar is open to non-conference delegates and is designed to bring together academic staff and students, archaeologists and other heritageprofessionals as well as AIA members attending the conference. It is hoped that contributions to the seminar will be published on the AIA’s website, andthe opportunity exists for some articles based on these contributions to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Industrial Archaeology Review.

Norman Redhead, Heritage Management Director (Archaeology), Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service: Industrial Archaeologyand the National Planning Policy Framework: the Greater Manchester experience

Michael Shapland, Senior Archaeologist (Historic Environment), Archaeology South East: From Moby Dick to the Transatlantic TelegraphCable: the former Whaling Company and Telecommunications Factory at Enderby Wharf, Greenwich

Gerry Thacker, Senior Project Manager, Oxford Archaeology: Upper Bank, Swansea: the Excavation of a Copper and Zinc Smelting Works

Russel Coleman, Director, Headland Archaeology: The M74 Completion Project, Glasgow: Industrial Archaeology on an Industrial Scale

Rebecca Haslam, Senior Archaeologist, Pre-Construct Archaeology: An Immense and Exceedingly Commodious Goods Station: Excavations atKing’s Cross Goods Yard

Lucy Dawson, Project Manager (Built Heritage), Wessex Archaeology: Thrills and Spillways: Pumping Industrial Enthusiasm into WaterInfrastructure

Mike Nevell, Head of Archaeology, University of Salford: The Research Impact of Developer-funded Industrial Archaeology


Friday 25 August17.00 Registration

Drinks Reception followed by dinner

Conference opening lecture Brian Giggins: From smelting to tugs– 2000 years of industrial development in Northamptonshire andMilton Keynes

Saturday 26 August – From 9.30Peter Perkins: The boot and shoe industry of Northamptonshire

Tim Smith: The history of lifts

Mark Phillips: Onion barns and other light agricultural buildingsin Bedfordshire

Alan Cox: The Bedfordshire brick industry

Members’ contributionsIntroduction to the 2017 AwardsDrinks Reception in the Loft Bar followed by the AnnualDinner

Sunday 27 AugustAssociation for Industrial Archaeology AGM followed byreports on Overseas visits and an update on the 2018 AIAconference

The Rolt Memorial Lecture:

Nigel Crowe: The Grand Union Canal – Engineering andArchaeology

Afternoon visits

Tour A: Carpetbagger Secret Warfare Museum, Harrington Airfield

Tour B: Northampton Boot & Shoe Quarter; Phipps Brewery

Tour C: Rushden Transport Museum; Irchester Country Park

Dinner followed by

Nick Burton: ‘The Leighton Buzzard Light Railway’

Monday 28 AugustFull day tours to: the Shuttleworth Collection, Jordans Milland Leighton Buzzard Light Railway

Dinner followed by film of the M1’s construction

Tuesday 29 AugustFull day tours to: National Museum of Computing; BletchleyPark, Blisworth Tunnel, Stoke Bruerne Canal Museum andWeedon Depot

Dinner followed by talk Phil Marsh: The Wolverton Railway Works

Wednesday 30 August Full day tours to: Wolverton Works; Milton Keynes Museum,National Lift Tower and Church’s Shoes

The Loft Bar will be open each evening from 21.00 to 23.00

Further details and timing may be found on the AIA website together with bookingform and details of the electronic booking system.

Leighton Buzzard Light Railway

Church’s Shoe Factory, Northampton

Royal Ordnance Depot, Weedon Bec

Conference programme


Saving Sandfields Pumping Station – a Hidden History of theBlack Country

They say that bad news travels fast, so lookingout for bad news is a survival skill that we havehoned to perfection. It protects us, and keeps usfrom harm by giving us fair warning of adverseevents. It enables us to prepare for the worst.However, in 1831, no amount of bad news orearly warning could have prepared us for theevents that were going to land on the shores ofour island fortress. A new and deadly disease wassweeping across the continent, wiping outeverything in its path. There was no knowncause, and there was no known cure. Words likegerm and virus were not a part of the scientificvocabulary in the mid nineteenth century.This disease knew no boundaries. It wiped outthe young, the old, the rich and the poor. If youcaught the disease and were lucky, you would diewithin four hours. If you were not so lucky, youwould die an agonising death in around twodays. The victims’ bodies would turn blue; hencethe disease became known as ‘the blue death’.

David Moore, Chairman of the Lichfield Waterworks Trust

Cholera, as it is now known, arrived in the port ofSunderland early in 1832, and was witnessed bya young apprentice doctor called John Snow.Within a matter of weeks it had wiped outSunderland and devastated the town ofNewcastle.

By August 1832 Cholera struck Bilston. Bymid-September 742 people were dead. In theBlack Country, over ten thousand people hadbeen affected by this deadly disease. So manypeople were dying that the burial grounds had toclose and the victims were buried in mass graves.

Cholera became firmly established in theindustrialised towns of Britain. Epidemic followedepidemic, thousands became ill and died. Oneepidemic in 1849 killed another 600 people,leaving over 450 orphaned children under the ageof twelve. An orphanage was set up in Bilston toeducate these children with the money raisedfrom public donation. All the children were givena medal so that they could attend the Choleraschool in Bilston.

During one cholera epidemic in Soho,London, John Snow plotted the individualoutbreaks of cholera on a map, and by statisticalanalysis found the mean centre of the outbreak tobe within a few feet of a communal water pumpin Broad Lane, Soho.

John Snow’s hypothesis was that it wascontaminated water, not air, that spread cholera,and so he quickly removed the handle from thepump. John Snow’s research gave birth to thescience of epidemiology, the study and analysis ofthe patterns, causes, and effects of health anddisease. Snow established the need for anorganized water supply.

The authorities were quick to realise that anorganised water supply would cost a fortune to

set up, so hurriedlyreplaced the handle ofthe pump.

While someauthorities turnedtheir backs on thecauses of cholera, inthe Black Country anengineer and mineowner called JohnMcClean took up thechallenge to supplythe Black Country withclean safe drinkingwater.

Most of the watersupplies in the BlackCountry had eitherbecome contaminatedby industry orineffective seweragesystems, or the wellshad dried up due tomining operations. Inview of this McCleanlooked to Lichfield toprovide the solution.Eleven miles away and350 feet lower,Lichfield citizensalready benefittedfrom quite asophisticated systemof water supply. TheFranciscan Friary hada piped supply ofwater from a springat Aldershawe as early as 1301. Even with thecity’s needs for clean water already satisfied,Lichfield had an abundance of fresh drinkingwater that had yet to be tapped, so McClean setabout establishing the South Staffordshire WaterWorks Company.

McClean changed the face of Lichfield byturning the city into a living waterworks. Hecleaned out and deepened Minster Pool which forhundreds of years had been used as a cesspit forthe cathedral close. He substantially enlarged anddeepened Stow Pool. Bishops Pool was drainedand remodelled to what is now known as TheMuseum Gardens and Beacon Park, and thewhole system connected up with a mile-longtunnel to the pumping station at Sandfields.

Sited near the Lichfield to Walsall railway asteam pumping station was built to pump twomillion gallons of water each day. The steam pumpswould lift the water 70 feet to the surface, and thenpush it up a further 300 feet and along an elevenmile pipeline to a brand new reservoir at Walsall.

There is a rumour that the original steampumping engines were originally destined to beused on Brunel’s ill-fated atmospheric railway inDevon.

So successful was the scheme that a decisionwas made in 1865 to double the capacity of thepumping station to four million gallons of watereach day. This was certainly a tall order. It was notpossible to knock down the older pumpingstation to start again as a water supply had to bemaintained. Thus a very specialist engineer wasemployed to provide a solution.

William Vawdry was born in Cornwall andserved a seven year apprenticeship with Harvey’sof Hale before moving to the industrial Midlands.The Cornish built the biggest steam engines in theworld, and were quite used to designing steampumping engines that could move vast quantitiesof water to great height and distance withamazing efficiency.

Vawdry designed a unique 190 horse powerCornish beam engine and employed some of thefinest Black Country craftspeople to build it.Jonah and George Davies of Albion Foundry,Tipton were iron masters of the Black Country.They won awards at the 1851 Great Exhibition inLondon for their engineering skills, and oftensupplied engine parts to Boulton and Watt, arelationship that was often fractious. However, forWilliam Vawdry, they were able to build an

The authorities were quick to realise that an organised water supply would cost a fortune toset up so they replaced the handle of the pump.


immense and beautifully crafted machine thatonly the skills of the Black Country workforcecould produce.

The new engine ran almost uninterruptedfrom 1874 until 1927, when it was replaced bytwo uniflow engines.

So pleased were the South Staffs WaterCompany with their Cornish beam engine thatwhen it was retired from service they placed itinto a state of preservation so visitors couldcontinue to marvel at the engineeringachievements of the Black Country ironmasters.

Sadly, in 2005 the site was sold to a housingdeveloper, and has become rundown following anumber of unauthorised entries and metal thefts.With cholera now a thing of the past in Britain,the death and despair it caused has passed out ofliving memory. Now that clean safe drinkingwater is part of the fabric of everyday life, peopleno longer take an interest in a redundantVictorian waterworks building. Like mostmonuments to the past its familiarity in thelandscape has eroded curiosity.

In 2012, a small group of people started acampaign to save Sandfields Pumping Station.From its small beginnings, the group has grownsteadily over the last four years, and is now aCommunity Incorporated Organisation registeredwith the Charities Commission as the ‘LichfieldWaterworks Trust’. The objective of the Trust is tosave the pumping station and bring it back intouse for the benefit of the community. The Trust isaiming to restore the beam engine back to steamand to open it up to regular visits. The Trust alsowants to convert the electric pump house into acommunity focused centre.

Progress has been made. On 1 February 2017Persimmon Homes Ltd handed a set of keys to thetrust to commence a six-month licence to enterthe building to conduct a feasibility study.

This is a key milestone achievement as theLichfield Waterworks Trust is now one step closerto achieving its plan to bring the redundant

Grade II* building into reuse as a communityfacility.

Following a short ceremony presided over bythe Lord Mayor of Lichfield, Sheelagh James, PaulFoster of Persimmon Homes Ltd handed the keysto David Moore, chairman of the LichfieldWaterworks Trust.

The beam engine and the building areunique. They were built to serve the community ofthe Black Country, and should continue to do so.The building has now started to tell its own story.There is a complete archive of all the workingdrawings, tender documents, and shareholdercertificates. There is also a full and detailed recordof all of the South Staffs Water employees,showing a unique record of each individual’sworking life.

By opening up this building and reuniting itwith its archive, we can create a unique place.This could bring together the best in scientific andrelated education (STEM), arts opportunities, bothsocial and local history, industrial archaeologyand industrial heritage for everyone to study,enjoy and enrich their lives.

Finally, let us not forget, cholera still affectsan estimated 3–5 million people worldwide andaffects mostly children. By working together, werid Britain of one of the most dreadful diseasesknown to the human race. Let us continue towork together, improving our knowledge so thatwe can rid the world of cholera and enrich thelives of many.

Vawdry’s unique 190 horse power Cornish beam engine

E-FAITH (European Federation of Associations for Industrial Heritage

I attended the E-FAITH board meeting on 13January and a full day future planning workshopin Barcelona the next day. The 2017 weekend willtake place in Barcelona on 20-22 October and thetheme is ‘Industrial Heritage – exploringopportunities for education and lifelonglearning’. Are there any UK organisations who areparticularly well placed to talk about this themeand who could be encouraged to go along andmake a presentation? The meeting agreed thatthe theme for the 2018 Technical Weekend shouldbe ‘Industrialisation, science and technology –Key to European integration’ (embracing allcountries of the European Council under theumbrella of E-FAITH).

For 2018, the European Year of CulturalHeritage, E-FAITH agreed it should coordinate aseries of monthly seminars around differentindustrial heritage themes, building on thesuccess of the 2015 Year for Industrial and

Technical Heritage and the heightened profile ofE-FAITH that this achieved.

It was agreed that as part of 2018 EuropeanYear of Cultural Heritage, E-FAITH shouldcoordinate a series of monthly seminars duringthe year around different industrial heritagethemes, building on the success of the 2015 Yearfor Industrial and Technical Heritage andheightened profile of E-FAITH that this achieved.Themes put forward were as follows:

• Adaptive re-use

• Harbours and harbour cranes

• Land transport infrastructure (canals,roads, railways, airfields,...)

• Water towers and water distribution

• Energy and power, including steam, theproduction of gas, electricity and powerstations – even nuclear and renewableenergies

• Social aspects of industrialisation –including workers housing, livingconditions etc

• Museums of industry, science andtechnology (note: the InternationalMuseums Day is always mid-May)

• Small enterprises (SMEs)

• The heritage of building industries(including brick making, stone quarries,architectural iron, etc)

What role might AIA play in this? Can weorganise a seminar (Practical Day) on any of thesethemes? Do we know of AIA memberorganisations who might be persuaded to put ona day focussing on any of the themes?

Kate Dickson


Excavating a CellarThe National Archives has awarded the MillsArchive the status of an Accredited ArchiveService, specialising in all aspects of mills andmilling. As one of the first, and, certainly theyoungest, to be so recognised, they praised ‘our

excellent website, online provision andcataloguing and strongly commended our workwith the wider mills heritage community’.

Within days of the award we had to mobiliseour forces to rescue an important archive

destined for destruction. The importantarchitectural practice of Gelder and Kitchen hadrecently been liquidated and their large collectionof files at Maister House, a National Trustproperty in Hull, was under severe threat. AlfredGelder, the architect who set up the firm in 1878,was a close personal friend of Joseph Rank. Asclose neighbours and staunch Methodists, Rankapproached Gelder to design his first roller flourmill, The Clarence Mills in Hull. Gelder took on apartner, Llewellyn Kitchen, in 1892 and the firmdeveloped expertise on the design of flour mills,oilseed crushing mills and related facilities at atime when Hull was a major European centre forthe industry.

Amazingly, we were the only repository toexpress an interest in any part of the vast archivethat had been assembled over the previouscentury and a quarter. We had, however, to movequickly as the whole archive was destined for thedump within two or three weeks. The MillsArchive archivist, accompanied by the author,spent two days emptying the basement of all themill files to be taken by courier to Reading.

We had not realised the difficulty of the jobbefore us. The National Trust curator had warnedthat there was no heat or water in the house. Thefiles were in two cramped and crowdedbasements with only a 5ft 6in ceiling; no problemfor me, but more of a challenge for our over 6ftarchivist!

Moving various boxes and other items beforewe could get to the files ensured that after thefirst hour we were already warmed up. We couldonly carry 5 or 6 large files at a time out of thebasement labyrinth to stack them in the hallway.

Some twelve hours hard work resulted in usrescuing over 600 files. The images illustrate oursuccessful expedition. The files are now beingcleaned, repackaged in archival storage boxesand catalogued. The earliest files we have foundso far are from 1896 with details of The ClarenceMills. We have rescued quite a treasure trove,with more to find as we work our way throughthem, but now they are saved for futureresearchers.

Mildred Cookson

Progress onCK18477

The AIA awarded the LNER Coach Association£15,000 towards the restoration of the ThompsonCK No. 18477 originally built in York in 1950. TheLNERCA have reported on progress.

18477 is parked on the concrete hard-standing outside the Carriage &WagonDepartment shed and is moved into position asand when the C&W workload permits. The nowderelict carriage looked a sorry sight, with most ofthe corridor side having been removed, exposingthe compartments. Most of this side is beingreplaced by new hardwood. However, already, anew section of framing has been lifted into placeand the transformation has begun. This section ofSapele framing had been assembled in the Atkinsshed after being machined in Andrew Daniel’sHarrogate workshop. The frame section wastreated with fungicide and then painted withaluminium wood primer in the hope of giving it arather longer working life than the original. Thesection was lifted out of the shed by four willinghelpers and hoisted into place using the C & W’snew telehandler machine. It was a doddlecompared to the laborious manual handling ofold, and just shows how a little mechanization cansave a lot of time, a point which will be duly notedwhen the new steel panels come to be fitted!

The framing, of course, sits on the top of thesolebar and this had to be derusted and paintedbefore the framing could be placed on top. Muchgrinding in the marsh could be heard oneDecember weekend as this was carried out.

In theory, with the bill for the asbestos

removal still to come in, the entire AIA grantmoney has been spent, but the LNERCACommittee has agreed to fund the remainingwork to complete the replacement of this side,after which a further application will besubmitted.

Hardly the best storage

1908 Elevation of Rank provender mill

CK18477 New side taking shape


Tower Mill inAction

It must be over 50 years since I last stepped insidea cotton spinning plant in the UK and at least 55years since I worked in one. It was therefore withgreat interest that I attended an open day at therefurbished Tower Mill at Dukinfield in GreaterManchester though the courtesy of CulimetaSaveguard and English Fine Cotton.

Mark Sissons

Tower mill is a grade II listed building designed byPotts, Pickup & Dixon in 1885 and spun cotton,using mules and spinning frames until 1955 whenit closed and passed into other use. It has beenbought, restored and re-equipped to ring spinsuperfine counts in 2016 and is the only cottonmill in production in the United Kingdom. In 2015the mill was chosen as the new manufacturingsite for English Fine Cotton. The company isinvesting £4.8m with a £1m grant from the TextileGrowth Programme to restart cotton productionin Greater Manchester for the first time since the1980s. The mill is using new technology framesand produces cotton for high value products.

So what had changed? The most immediatelyobvious differences when compared to atraditional mill was the huge reduction in noiseand airborne cotton fly and dust. Looking atchanges in the spinning process the most obviouswere in the area of fibre preparation prior tocarding. The traditional blow room equipment haddisappeared to be replaced by the innovativeTrutzchler opening, cleaning and blending system.This is far gentler on the cotton fibre and achievesa very high level of trash removal. The technologyof the carding system is conventional but thewhole machine now sits in a silenced box with fulldust extraction. Most production is combed onconventional rectilinear combs with quite a lowrate of waste extraction at combing due to the veryhigh quality of cotton fibre used. Spinning is on sixZinser ring frames with automated doffing. All yarnis wound from the spinning cop on to appropriatepackages for subsequent operations on Saurerautomatic winders.

I might also comment on the disappointingcomplete absence of any British built machinery in

the mill. Both the speed frames and the spinningframes take advantage of the latest draftingtechnology.

Thanks to Roger Holden for providing me withbackground on the mill building itself.

ERIH UK Chapter Meeting, 14 February 2017

Tower Mill ???

Tower Mill ring spinning frames

The iconic Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay wasthe venue for the ERIH Meeting on 14 February.This attractive, red brick building was built in1897 as the offices of the Bute Docks Companyand it became a prominent landmark withinCardiff Docks. The building was retained as partof the redevelopment and regeneration of thedocks area and is now used by the NationalAssembly of Wales as a conference and exhibitionvenue.

Over 35 people attended the ERIH UKmeeting, which was opened by Lynne Neagle whois the Assembly Member for Torfaen, which

includes Big Pit at Blaenavon, an ERIH AnchorPoint.

The programme for the morning sessionfocused on ‘The effective use of former railwaysand canals as footpaths and cycle trails and theircontribution to industrial heritage tourism’ andincluded presentations about the Vennbahn cycletrail in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg; cycletrails in South Wales and the work of the Canaland River Trust in looking after the UK’s canalheritage.

After lunch, delegates were introduced to theCornish Man Engine and plans to take it on tour in

the UK in 2017 and mainland Europe in 2018. Thiswas followed by a presentation about plans toorganise a major, high profile event in the UK in2020 which will involve the nine UK industrial WorldHeritage Sites and which has been inspired byExtraschicht in Germany and Industriada in Poland.

Jonathan Lloyd ERIH Coordinator, UK and Ireland

The 72-page ERIH booklet European IndustrialHeritage: the International Story by Barrie Trinder,can be downloaded from the ERIH website as aPDF.

The 2016 AIA Conference took place at theTelford Campus of the University ofWolverhampton last September. I arrived excitedabout the agenda and as anyone who haslistened to my talks will know, I have a particularinterest in the history and heritage oftelecommunications. To my delight I spottedindustrial heritage right in front of me, evenbefore I’d made it to registration!

Andy Sutton

Those who attended the conference willrecognise the view in figure 1, a hard-standingsports area which is flood-lit in the evening bylights mounted on four columns, the only thing is,one of the columns looks very different from theothers, it is in fact a cellular radio base station site– or more strictly this should read: ‘it was…’

The column in the centre of figure 1 is tallerand of heavier construction than the other threestructures, which are just lighting columns. Theantenna housing can be clearly seen at the top ofthe heavier column and therefore my interest insurveying this site was very high. I hinted earlierthat this site was a cell site but is no longer inoperational use; this is an important point as thesite was part of the UK’s first 3G network, ownedand operated by Hutchison 3G UK Limited (H3G)for their network which is marketed with thebrand name ‘3’. In 2007 H3G and T-Mobile UKformed a joint venture company known as MobileBroadband Network Limited (MBNL) with the aimof building a shared 3G network to reduce theiroverall costs by sharing cell sites along withassociated active (i.e. 3G radio base stations) andpassive (i.e. antennas) equipment. T-Mobile hadan established 2G network and had upgradedsome of these sites with 3G technology, H3G hada 3G only network which had significantgeographical overlap with T-Mobile’s network. Tobuild a common shared network with the lowestoperating costs meant decommissioning andremoving duplicate sites, those which providedcoverage to the same area; this did not mean thatthe sites were necessarily co-located, rather thatthey provided mobile phone signal to the samearea. This network consolidation is not unlikewhat happened historically with the railwayswhen multiple lines and stations originallycompeted between the same towns and citieswere eventually merged.

Many decommissioned sites have completelydisappeared and may have left no evidence of theirprevious role in providing the UK with 2G and/or3G mobile network services. There is very littledocumented about these sites, while the sites thatremain are constantly evolving such that their formchanges with function, therefore even an existingcell site is unlikely to be properly documented froma historical perspective. The reason the column infigure 1 survives is because of its secondary use asa lighting column. The actual base station has beenremoved and all that remains is the concrete plinthwhich once housed some incredibly advancedelectronic communications technology. Figure 2shows the antenna shroud at the top of thecolumn along with the flood-light. Suchinstallations typically consisted of three cabinetsalongside the column, the largest cabinet beingthe 3G radio base station, a smaller electricalpower cabinet and the third, being mounted on thecolumn support structure to house activeamplifiers which helped to improve the ‘receivesensitivity’ of the base station.

The coaxial cables would connect from theantennas at the top of the column via anunderground cable duct to the amplifiers in thecabinet shown in figure 3. The cables from theamplifiers would pass through anotherunderground duct to the base station cabinetwhere they would connect to the transmitters andreceivers as per the site specific configuration. Thebase station cabinet would also connect to atransmission line which would be provided by athird party fixed network provider such as BT,Cable and Wireless or Virgin Media. Thistransmission line would connect signals from thelocal base station to the mobile networkoperator’s core network, from where telephonecalls could be switched or data connectionsrouted as appropriate, be this to the Internet orother data networks. This particular site had afixed line connection from BT, this is confirmed bythe close proximity of a BT inspection chamber tothe site. The third cabinet would terminate anincoming electrical power supply, typically to anelectricity meter, and then provide electrical powervia a distribution panel to the various componentswhich required it. The electrical cables would alsoarrive via an underground duct and be routedbetween cabinets via other ducts, resulting in

quite a complex local subterranean network ofinterconnectivity.

Figure 4 allows one to imagine how the sitewould have looked; the concrete plinth in theforeground would have supported the electricitysupply cabinet with three ducts visible, one forthe incoming supply, one for the electricity feed tothe base station and a spare for future expansion.

The larger concrete plinth, just beyond thecabinet used to accommodate the receiveamplifiers, is where the 3G radio base stationwould have been installed, cable ducts from theelectricity cabinet and amplifier cabinet enter theside of the plinth and would have connected to

the systems within the base station cabinet.Given the geographical location of this cell site,the base station would have been a NokiaOptima Compact solution. This would havesupported a number of 3G radio units and alsoaccommodated the terminating equipment forthe copper or fibre optic transmission line.

The site was an unexpected find. However ashort archaeological investigation of the remainstells a fascinating story. From being a keycomponent of the UK’s first 3G network, whichwas launched on 3 March 2003 to being surplusto requirements just a few years later. It is anexample of how quickly our industrial landscapecontinues to evolve.


From high-tech to industrial archaeology, in less than a decade!

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4


Something is missing, although it might beexpected in such an unusual place. It’s thestench! For Prague’s old water treatment plant inBubene has not been used to clean up thesewage from the Golden City on the Vltava fordecades. Instead, the imposing redbrick buildingwith its two chimneys has long been a touristattraction. The site in the sixth quarter of Pragueis one of the most significant industrial buildingsin the Czech capital. The building, erectedbetween 1901 and 1905, is still in a good state.Indeed it is the oldest extant construction of itstype in Europe. The grit chambers, sluices,sedimentary basins and the unique two-storeyengine house with its steam engines haveremained unchanged.

Since people in towns live close to oneanother sewage treatment is a problem thatbecomes ever more urgent when the towns beginto grow. As early as ancient Greece people werebuilding sewer systems and public lavatories.Rome had a sewer system in 600 BCE. But thetechnical achievements of ancient times fell intooblivion after the collapse of the Roman Empire.In the Christian west, in the Middle Ageseverything was thrown onto the streets. It took along time before the disgusting stench compelledhouseholders to set up sewage sumps. Indeed itwas not until the mid-nineteenth century that theproblems of water supply and sewage disposalcould no longer be ignored. Towns and cities grewat lightning speed during industrialisation.Catastrophic hygienic conditions led to epidemicsof typhus and cholera that forced people to takeaction.

In 1884 the city fathers in Prague announceda competition for a new system of sewers and asewage cleaning plant. The winner was theEnglish engineer, William Heerlein Lindley (1853 –1917), who had already had experienceoverseeing the construction of Warsawwaterworks which had been designed by hisfather, William Lindley (1808 – 1900), an assistantto Marc Brunel and a disciple of Chadwick, in

1876-8. Lindley went on to design water andsewage systems in several other European citiesand as far east as Baku.

His design exploited the sloping ground tosuch an extent that it was unnecessary to pumpout the wastewater. Indeed the network ofsewers – at the time this comprised more than 90kilometres catering for 700,000 inhabitants –flowed into a new wastewater plant in Bubene .An architect by the name of Quido B lský wascommissioned to supervise the construction. Trialoperations began on 27 June 1906, five yearsafter construction work had begun.

The plant was originally planned to be inoperation until the end of the 1930s. In fact, itlasted until 1967. In that year a new, mechanical,chemical wastewater plant was opened on thenearby Emperor Island (Císa ký ostrov). Howeversince this was subject to frequent disruptions, thehistoric building remained in reserve to deal withemergencies. At the start of the 1980s the originalclarification tanks were still used to contain theslurry from the new clarification plant. In the1980s the building was discovered by a group ofenthusiasts who began to return it to its originalstate and in 1991 the site was declared anhistoric landmark. The treatment plant has been anational cultural monument since the 1 June2010.

A tour begins at the bottom of theoperational building. Originally the sewageflowing from the city was used to drive a waterwheel here, but this no longer exists. The waterwheel delivered the power necessary to ventilatethe building, but this was later replaced byelectrically-driven engines. Parts of the ventilationpipes leading to the two chimney stacks can stillbe seen on the roof. The second room in thebuilding was used to draw off the smoke from thesteam boiler

In the main room of the cellar – the largestroom in the Prague sewer system – the sewageflowed in from three entrance points for pre-treatment and screening. At first this was done by

hand, later by mechanical rakes which pushed allthe trash in the water up along a rounded grid.The refuse was then moved to a lift whichtransported it to the surface. In the next step thewater was pushed into sand chambers. Theremains from this process were then used toflatten out the ground on the Emperor Islandnearby. Before the water flowed into the Vltava itwas channelled into large sedimentation tankswhich collected all the particles heavier thanwater. The slurry from the sedimentation tankswas in great demand as a fertiliser.

The two-storey engine room is the high pointof the tour. Both the Breitfeld & Dan k steamengines that were built in 1903, are still inoperation and demonstrations are given fromtime to time. A walk through one of the old oval-shaped channels proves a particular adventure.Visitors can choose two possible ways to avoidhaving to step into the water in the middle. Theycan either straddle it on both sides or hop to andfro from one side to the other. But don’t worry!The water in the middle is no longer sewage. Andthe stench is no longer noticeable.

The Museum is an Anchor Point on theEuropean Route of Industrial Heritage

Text: Frieder Bluhm; English translation: Roy Kift

Originally published in Industriekultur

More for theRestoration Fund

The AIA is delighted to announce that a second‘anonymous donor’ has come forward to supportthe AIA Restoration Fund. Please celebrate thisgood news which will enable the AIA to helpfurther projects. The next edition of the IA Newswill have a comprehensive review of the state ofcurrent projects and a list of the 2017 awards.

A sewage works turns into an adventure – The OldWastewater Museum, Stará istírna, in Prague, Czech Republic

William Heerlein Lindley

Sewage tunnel

1903 Engines


Major restructuring has taken place in ourmodern society as a result of the massive close-down of heavy industries. Many of these post-industrial sites have become integrated into theurban fabric and are centrally located in cities.Increased urban density and the demand fordevelopment and building sites increase theattractiveness of these areas for privatedevelopers. Architects and planners find thespecial qualities of such sites an opportunity tocombine cultural heritage and innovativearchitecture in creating attractive city spaces (seebelow). The cultural/creative sector, in particular,has welcomed these sites as inspiringenvironments for creative activity.

Grete Swensen, senior researcher, and Sveinung K. Berg, researcherNorwegian Institute for Culture HeritageResearch

The transformation of the former industrial sitesat Hammerdalen in Larvik and Papirbredden inDrammen are examples of this process. InHammerdalen, parts of the present buildingshave been in use since the seventeenth century asforge and saw mills. Other parts are more recentremnants from industry and workshops of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as thesilo in Papirbredden. Culture in combination withseveral other functions has played a central role,both as a motivation for starting up and as abasis for developing a commercial opportunity.During the transformation, various degrees of‘parkification’ have taken place with partialrenovation and by adding new structures to thesites.

In Hammerdalen there has been a demand tolimit such ‘parkification’ as far as possible. The plansfor both projects have aimed to add new functionsand to incorporate new elements side by side with

the old structures. This process has required manydecisions: which changes are acceptable and whichare not. Various institutions at different levels haveco-operated to achieve compromises. Both casesresult from a partnership between private andpublic sectors, and culture in combination withother factors has been an important motivator. Butthere are also differences related to timing, thelength of the planning process and the buildingperiod, and the degree of engagement early in theplanning from local user groups and activists. Asurvey in several Norwegian municipalitiesstudying the re-use of former industrial buildingsshows that around half the sites in the survey areused as various forms of cultural arenas, while lessthan a third are for purposes which combine cultureand business. Population density, historicdevelopment and economic adaptation varybetween the municipalities, but the point to stressis the variety in the forms of adaptation that thesurvey identified. While some have grown out ofinitiatives from artists, others are based oncooperation between private entrepreneurs andmunicipal planners. There are convincingarguments in the planning debate concerningrehabilitation of redundant industrial buildings,concerning both environmental consideration andsustainability. The two studies referred to aboveillustrate that the reuse of redundant industrialbuildings has become a common strategy inNorwegian cities and towns. Several activities canmake use of these buildings in the contemporarycity. They are robust but susceptible to change andcan be subject to different degrees of restoration;they can be used to bring new life to dilapidatedareas and their original rough character and‘unfinished surfaces’ are attractive. The two projectsreferred to share a common framework. Nationalpolitical guidelines specify cultural policy, urbantransformation and cultural heritage, and thecultural policies in Norwegian municipalities mirror

these guidelines. The ability to work across differentdepartments in the municipalities seems to be thedecisive factor in the success of this type ofrehabilitation, rather than economy. Themotivations that govern the different participantsinvolved will vary. While artists might find oldindustrial buildings cheap to rent as studios,entrepreneurs might see a potential fordevelopment which makes it worth investment.New interest groups and partners have beenbrought together through renewal of industrialheritage as a vital contribution to urbanregeneration and development and will continue tochallenge the future for industrial heritage as apossible resource. Urban regeneration is closelyconnected to the emphasis which has been put onculture and creative industries as drivers fordevelopment. This has shaped a considerable partof the new development projects in Norwegiantowns and cities. Some of the buildings that areused to house culture are ‘landmark buildings’designed by recognized architects and havebecome prestigious projects used to promote thecity profile.

With kind permission from the TICCIHBulletin No. 75, 1st Quarter 2017

A warm welcometo our newmembers:

Mark Barnard, Kenilworth

Henry Cary, New Brunswick, Canada

Terrance Christian, Jackson, Oregon, USA

John Copping, Warwick

Richard Godley, Chesterfield

Rebecca Haslam, Kennington, London

Stephen Hipkin, Royston

Joanna Layton, Shrewsbury

Chris Mayo, Warlingham

Frank Parker, West Haddon

Christopher Pattison

John Pickin, Stranraer

Nick Renwick, Cowbridge, Cardiff

and to both the Northern ArchaeologicalAssociates of Barnard Castle, and theLichfield Waterworks Trust who havejoined us as Affiliated Societies.

However we are sorry to hear of thedeaths of these members:

Professor R Carey

George Crutcher

Isobel Hartley

William Harris

John Kelleher

Norwegian Industrial Buildings for the Cultural Sector

The Hammerdalen mill was used for processing raw wood into wood pulp, cellulose, cardboard or fibreboard. It wasconstructed in 1875 and extended in 1905 and 1975, and finally closed down in 2000. It was totally renovated and adaptedfor the Larvik Cultural School and the dance studio Nille in 2007/2008. Photo: Fritzøe Eiendom AS


‘This ExploitedLand of Iron’

The legacy and landscape of ironstone mining onthe North York Moors will be celebrated in a fouryear project which will explore the industrythrough art, archaeology and conservation. As theNorth York Moors National Park has said, themoors made a huge contribution to the industrialrevolution.

Virtual 3D models of ironstone kilns inRosedale and blast furnaces in Grosmont will becreated as part of the project. Warren Moor mine,

the only Victorian ironstone mine chimney stillstanding in the UK, will be opened to the publicfor the first time and ironstone trails across themoors will be created. Conservation effortsinclude planting rowan trees for the endangeredRing Ouzel – which nests in Rosedale duringsummer – and surveying the Fen Bog naturereserve.

Tom Mutton, of North York Moors NationalPark, said: “The Victorians blazed a trail in theNorth York Moors with the discovery andsubsequent mining of ironstone. With manyarchaeological remains of this historical period

continuing to melt back into the landscape asnature reclaims them, recording this legacy willbe as important as the work to slow down thedegradation process and preserve the biodiversitywhich the area supports.”

The project covers 14% of the national park,from Goathland in the east, north alongStephenson’s rail route to Grosmont, along theEsk Valley to Kildale and over the Moors toRosedale. It was launched with a three-week artexhibition and one-day festival at North YorkMoors National Park Centre at Danby.

Information from Neil Preston

Anvil SoundsThe blacksmith’s anvil is, in a sense, a musicalinstrument. It is far more than a dumb block ofiron. The skilled smith makes use of the ringingsound it produces when struck, and when forgingmetals uses its sound as an additional indicationof what is taking place as he works the piece. Insome senses an anvil might be compared with alarge bell.

Robert Carr

The anvil is a deceivingly sophisticated tool, madein many styles, materials and sizes. The best anvilsare made from selectively hardened tool steelwith a well-balanced shape and several usefulworking surfaces. It has taken centuries todevelop the shape and, in the same way as thebody of a violin, anvil styles were perfected manyyears ago and will probably never change. Anvilsare made in a variety of sizes; a small jeweller’sanvil might weigh as little as five ounces whereasa forging anvil can weigh 200 pounds.

The block of the anvil should be as massive aspracticable, because the greater the inertia themore efficiently it causes the energy of thestriking tool to be transferred to the workpiece.On a really good anvil the smith’s hammer shouldrebound with almost as much energy as the smithputs into the downward stroke, thereby makingthe job easier and less physically strenuous.

We are unused nowadays to hearing a largenumber of smiths working in one place at thesame time but 150 years ago things would havebeen quite different. The sound of anvils otherthan the smith’s own being struck would havebeen quite apparent to each individual smith andso what might at first be expected to be a randomcacophony would in fact have had considerablemusical content, particularly so if some of thesmiths had latent musical talent.

As mentioned above, anvils can be quitesmall, not necessarily like the large items we areused to in a country blacksmith’s shop.Goldsmiths, silversmiths and so on would haveused quite small anvils, so in a mixed industrialartisan area with a variety of small workshopsthere would have been quite an orchestra ofthese instruments. In Wagner’s Rheingold, thefirst instalment of the Ring Cycle, the composermakes extensive use of multiple anvils to

illustrate the atmosphere of intense artisanactivity. It is said that Wagner visited areas oftowns where numerous smiths were at work tohear the sound, and so was able to reproduceapproximately in music the sound characteristicof such areas.

Another often quoted example of the interestof a composer in the sound of an anvil is Handel’sharpsichord piece known as The HarmoniousBlacksmith which is said to have been inspired inpart by a roughly similar kind of experience whenthe composer was sheltering from the rain in avillage smithy. This is not really true; the story wasactually made up in the nineteenth century long

after the composer’s death. At Whitchurch,Edgware, there is even a tombstone to theHarmonious Blacksmith in question, erected in1868.

When the world was quieter than it is now,the sounds of an artisan area with numerousmetalworkers at their anvils would have beenquite distinctive. A variety of smiths in aworkshop locality working together is a soundnow lost and which disappeared too long ago beincorporated into an example of musiqueconcrète. As an instrument it has also enteredpopular music, in the Beatles song Maxwell’sSilver Hammer an anvil is played by Ringo Starr.


Re-using industrial buildings in France and England

When recycling industrial buildings, it is notunusual to see conflicts arising between theconservation of the industrial heritage and theirnew cultural re-use, especially when this requiresarchitectural interventions and the association ofnew buildings with historic architecture.

Aurore Caignet

Architects and developers are often asked toconsider the significance of historic buildings andto retain key elements from their original functionso that future generations can read the materialtraces of their industrial past. Moreover, the roleof industrial archaeologists and preservationtrusts can consist in underlining the historical,architectural, cultural values of industrialbuildings and in providing information and advicebefore any irreversible and detrimental actionmight be carried out. A dilemma often appearsbetween a willingness to maintain theauthenticity and intrinsic value of buildingsthrough minimal intervention, and a desire topromote a new, distinctive image as well as toacquire professional acclaim by adding innovativearchitectural elements.

Such clashes were apparent in 1994 whenManchester’s only remaining hydraulic pumpingstation was turned into the National Museum ofLabour History, now known as the People’sHistory Museum and when plans to redevelopand expand the pump house emerged in 2007.This building supplied hydraulic power from 1909until 1972. At the time of its conversion into amuseum twenty years later, it was decided not togive prominence to its former industrial function.More attention was therefore paid to theconservation of the attractive architectural shell.The contrast between old and new is nonethelessclear when considering the original building andthe recent extension, a visual confrontationwhich hints at dynamism and creativity asopposed to frozen time and architectural inertia.

Another type of re-use approach wasadopted for the conversion of the LU biscuit

factory in Nantes, France, into a cultural venue forcontemporary arts. An industrial identity is stillhighly visible. The factory was built at the end ofthe nineteenth century and partly demolished inthe mid-1970s before being resurrected in 2000as the Lieu Unique – a new name from the oldinitials which are meant to recall the formerindustrial activity. Architectural interventionswere intentionally modest, and major industrialfeatures such as cast-iron columns and the glazedroofing were kept and enhanced. Wheneveralterations were made to redesign the internalspace, industrial elements and raw materialswere used not only to reinforce the industrialcharacter of the building, but also to give it anunfinished look.

Likewise, during the conversion of IslingtonMill in Salford, England, into art studios, BillCampbell insisted on the need to keepinterventions to a minimum and guarantee theexpression of the potential, a place in motion andopen to change, as opposed to one preserved inaspic. Alterations and additions, when they are

respectful of history, enable industrial heritage tobe reshaped so that it remains alive and relevantto twenty-first century uses.

However, the tower of the French biscuitfactory was restored, its decapitated dome rebuiltto how it would have originally looked whereasthe extension of the Manchester’s pump house isa visually strong contemporary architecturaladdition. It is indeed surprising, given thedeliberate emphasis on the unfinished industriallook of the factory, to opt for such faithfulrestoration over a strategy of controlledruination.

One may wonder whether it would have beenmore thought-provoking, from a historical andarchitectural perspective, to keep the towerwithout a dome, as an atypical symbol ofregeneration and a reminder of a once-neglectedheritage, or to rebuild it in a contemporary way,evoking the incremental juxtaposition and nearfusion of past and present in a single entity.Cutting-edge architectural additions can produceremarkable temporal juxtaposition, and suchcontrast is not incompatible with a balancedarticulation between conservation andarchitectural production. Not only does the re-cycling of industrial heritage help guarantee itsdurability within a sustainable developmentapproach, but the palimpsestic dimensioninduced by the creative relationship betweenadaptive re-use and contemporary architecturalredevelopment can also offer a dynamic visualdialogue.

Originally published in TICCIH Bulletin 75 andreprinted with kind permission

CorrectionThe image of Millennium Mills in IA News 180 onpage 20 shows the building before 1933reconstruction, not after.

Apologies Ed

Lieu Unique, Nantes, France

People’s History Museum, Manchester


A Burning Question: Why So Many Mill Fires?

2016 seems to have been a particularly bad yearfor fires in the historic textile mills of northernEngland. The year started with the destruction ofDrummonds Mill in Manningham in Bradford inJanuary. This was followed by a series of mill firesin Greater Manchester, most notably thedestruction of Bailey Mill in Saddleworth in June.The empty Newsome Mill in Huddersfield wasburnt down in suspicious circumstances on 18November as was Howard Mill in Glossop,Derbyshire in the same month. The year finishedwith a devastating fire at Maple Mill No. 1 inOldham on 15 December, which destroyed thestructure. This has now been confirmed as arsonby Greater Manchester Police. These fires all havetwo things in common. The structures were largeand empty and all the fires appear to have beenthe result of arson.

Mike Nevell

Textile mill design developed in part to reduce therisk of fire from the grease, oil and fibres thatcovered each mill floor. This can be seen in theshift from wooden floors supported by woodenbeams to brick-barrel vaulting supported by cast-iron columns and then steel frame and concreteconstruction. Even so, no mill is absolutely fire-proof. Although the building materials used maythemselves not be flammable a hot enough firewill affect the structure and ultimately bring itdown. Cast iron will fail catastrophically,particularly if cold water is played on it when hot,while steel will ultimately distort under high heat.Even brick arches will fail if intense heat loosensthe bricks.

Historically, catastrophic mill fires were notuncommon in the working mills of Derbyshire,Dundee, Glasgow, Lancashire, and Yorkshire.Vernon Mill in Stockport burnt down in 1902, asdid Ellenroad mill in 1916. Both fires were foundto have been started by friction in the spinningmule headstocks. Fires in working mills continuedinto the mid-twentieth century despite new fireregulations: spectacularly so at Clover Mill inRochdale in 1952, Texas Mill in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1971 and at Thorp Street Silk Mill inMacclesfield in 1977. In the late twentiethcentury, as most cotton, jute, linen, silk andwoollen mills were closed, there was anincreasing trend towards fires in empty factories.Dramatic examples include Tudor Mill in Ashton-

under-Lyne in 1970, Banksfield Mill in Bolton in1984, Granville Mill in Oldham in 1999. This trendhas continued into the early twenty-first century,with the loss of several listed early textile mills atClegg Hall Mill in Rochdale in 2003, Paton’s Millin Jonhston, Renfrewshire, in 2010 and Frost’sMill in Macclesfield in 2011.

What is worrying has been the rising numberof arson attacks in the last few years. A recentfreedom of information request to the WestYorkshire Fire and Rescue Service revealed thatthere were 103 mill fires in the Bradford area overa six year period between April 2010 andSeptember 2016. Fifty eight were found to bearson attacks, of which 36 were in mills classifiedas derelict or empty (Telegraph and Argus28/12/2016). Some of these fires can beattributed to rough sleepers lighting a fire to keepwarm but others are deliberate attempts to burnthe structure.

Similar figures are not available for GreaterManchester, although the Greater ManchesterFire and Rescue Services’ website notes at least28 major mill incidents between 2010 and 2016.Several empty mills have become a focus forrepeated arson, such as Elisabeth Mill in

Stockport (now renovated), the derelict GidlowMill in Wigan and Maple No. 1 Mill in Oldham.The latter appears to have had six arson incidentsin 2016 which culminated in the destructive fireof December 2016.

There remain two stark facts that threatenmuch of our textile mill heritage across Britain.Firstly, that the huge block spinning mills of the latenineteenth and early twentieth century which canbe seen in the Greater Manchester, Lancashire andWest Yorkshire urban landscapes, are still perceivedby some councils and developers as difficult to re-use. The second is that empty industrial buildingsattract vandalism leaving them open to constantsmall-scale arson incidents that can lead tocatastrophic fires. This is why Historic England havebeen working with the Greater Manchester Fire andRescue Service on compiling advice as to how tominimize the risk of fire, especially in emptyproperties. Work by Historic England has alsoshown that the best way to reduce fire attacks is tokeep such buildings occupied, the sprinkler systemsmaintained, and to reduce the time such structuresare empty ahead of redevelopment: simple stepsthat could help to save more of these importantindustrial monuments.Mlnrow Cotton Mill 1992

Drummond Mill fire 2016


Tavistock CanalBicentenary

This year sees the bicentenary of the TavistockCanal which opened on 24 June 1817. This fourmile long tub coat canal took no less thanfourteen years to build mainly because of theneed to drive a 2,540 yard tunnel through theunyielding rock of Morwell Down. The canal runsfrom Tavistock where water is abstracted fromthe River Tavy to a point above the river port ofMorwellham on the River Tamar. The connectionto the port was by a 237 yard inclined plane witha gradient of up to 1 in 6, powered by a 30 x 3 ftwaterwheel. As well as the tunnel and incline, thecanal crossed the River Lumburn on an aqueduct,near which a branch was cut to serve slatequarries at Mill Hill.

The engineer in charge of construction wasfamous mining engineer, John Taylor, appointedmanager of nearby Wheal Friendship at the age of19. The canal prospectus made clear that asubsidiary purpose of the enterprise was theidentification and exploitation of mineral lodes.The cutting of one such in the early stages of thetunnel led to the opening of Wheal Crebor andthis was run by the canal in its early years.Unfortunately the prolonged gestation of thecanal meant that, by the time it opened, the localeconomy was in slump and the mines in decline.

In 1872 the shareholders, facing continuinglosses, sold the canal to the Duke of Bedford whoowned all the land it traversed. The Duke wasunder no obligation to maintain the waterwayand it disappeared from the Canal Returns in the1880s. In 1933 the canal bed was cleared and a

new cut made from the tunnel to a new reservoirabove Morwellham. This feeds a vertical pipe to asmall hydro-electric power station on the oldcopper quay, which remains in operation today.The whole canal can be traced, including theabandoned section, to the incline head.

Tavistock Museum is marking the bicentenarywith an exhibition which will include a set ofspectacular photographs taken inside the tunnel.

There will also be a digital plan of the canalproposals overlaid on modern mapping and aprogramme of walks. The Trevithick Society will bepublishing a large, definitive volume on thehistory and archaeology of the canal, written byRobert Waterhouse, one time archaeologist atMorwellham Quay.

Graham Thorne

Essex IndustrialArchaeology Group

The Essex Industrial Archaeology Group (EIAG)was formed in 2013 following the very successfulAIA Annual Conference held in 2012 in Essex,organised by David Alderton. Now entering itsfourth year, the Group continues to go fromstrength to strength, and this year, alongside aprogramme of visits to industrial sites andspeakers on related topics, there are two majorinitiatives to highlight.

The Essex Society for Archaeology and History(ESAH) which is EIAG’s parent Society haslaunched its own independent website; theprevious one was hosted by the University ofEssex. As part of this new website the EIAG willhave its own web pages. These are still indevelopment, the address being –esah1852.org.uk/eiag. Do visit the pagesregularly to see how it develops and learn moreabout the activities of the Group and Essex’sindustrial past.

Following on from a small, but successfulIndustrial Heritage Fair held at Braintree DistrictMuseum in 2015, the Group is organising a

bigger and better Fair this year, on Saturday 7October 2017 at Wat Tyler Country Park,Pitsea, SS16 4UH.Search: wattylercountrypark.org.uk

We will again be inviting all the localindustrial heritage groups, sites and museums tohave displays at the Fair, putting on a series ofshort talks and activities, and giving anopportunity for the groups to network with eachother. The site of the Country Park has a longindustrial history, including fishing and thecultivation of oysters, as evidenced by theremains of oyster pits on the edge of the Park. Inthe nineteenth century the British ExplosivesSyndicate established a factory manufacturingnitro-glycerine based explosives and in 1920 theNobel Explosives Co. took over the site. Some ofthe original buildings and the protective blastbarriers, in the form of large excavations or banksof earth, can still be found scattered throughoutthe Park.

AIA members would be very welcome tocome along on 7 October for this all day, freeevent. For more details of the programme, andabout the Group generally, email us [email protected].

Tony Crosby EIAG Chairman

Europa Nostraawards for the UK

On 5 April the European Commission and EuropaNostra revealed the winners of the 2017European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage /Europa Nostra Awards, Europe’s top honour inthe heritage field. The 29 laureates from 18countries are being recognised for their notableachievements in conservation, research,dedicated service, and education, training andawareness-raising. Independent expert juriesexamined a total of 202 applications, from 39countries across Europe, and chose the winners.The United Kingdom received two awards.

One went to Cromford Mills, Building 17 inthe Conservation Category.

The other award which was in the Education,Training and Awareness-raising category, went toSAMPHIRE: Maritime heritage project. Thisproject focused on western Scotland’s coasts andislands which enables local communities toengage with professional underwaterarchaeologists based in Scotland and aims tosupport the identification, investigation andappreciation of Scotland’s marine heritage.

Tavistock Canal, approaching the tunnel photo Robert Waterhouse


At Northampton, the 1873 engine shed built bythe Midland Railway for the Northampton toBedford line is being conserved. It lies on theedge of the University of Northampton’s newWaterside campus which is now underconstruction. Unused for some 20 years anddamaged by fire in 1999, the Grade II listedengine shed is being refurbished to provideoffices and other facilities for the University ofNorthampton’s Students Union. Heritage LotteryFunding has been approved to restore the shed toits original state, including refurbishing thewooden roof structure and reinstalling theclerestory roof that disappeared a long time ago.

The two-road engine shed was built in 1873at Hardingstone Junction, where the MR’sNorthampton (St Johns) to Bedford line met andcrossed the LNWR’s Northampton (Bridge Street)to Peterborough line. It is believed to have ceasedbeing used as an engine shed in 1924 and fromthe 1960s was used as a welding school by BritishRailways. It then stood disused and deterioratingfor many years on wasteland behind a ring ofsteel fencing.

A recent visit revealed that the roof trusseswere being dismantled for refurbishment andthere is progress in renovating the externalbrickwork using bricks that closely match theoriginals. The original iron-framed windows, sentaway for stripping back to the metal andrepairing where necessary, are to be reinstalled.Removing the floor which had been laid when thebuilding was a welding school, revealed theformer inspection pits. One of these had been

‘robbed out’ and was incomplete, but the otherone was intact with even the chairs and part ofthe track still in place. After recording, it isexpected the pits will be re-covered.

When completed, the shed will become thehub of Students Union activity on the newWaterside Campus and will also be available for

community use. As part of the funding package,the Students Union will provide interpretation onthe history and heritage of the engine shed.Further information can be found atwww.northamptonunion.com/engine-shed/the-engine-shed

Peter Perkins

Midland railway engine shed in 2001

Reuse for the former Midland Railway Engine Shed at Northampton

Looking forward to 2018

The 2018 AIA Conference will be in Caithness from 22 to28 June (well before the midges) please save the dates –meanwhile here are some tasters.

Dounreay 2016

Holborn Head lighthouse

Subsea 7 pipe layer and Telford bridge in Caithness

Meetings and RepresentationIn 2016 the AIA Council met three times: Leicesterin February, London in June and a two-daymeeting was held in Coalbrookdale in October.Extracts of the meetings were posted on the AIAwebsite and reported in IA News. The duties ofthe Council members will be listed in the nextedition of IA News. Council members alsorepresent the AIA and industrial archaeologymatters in other groups and committeesregionally and nationally to promote the Objectsof the Association and these appointments willalso be described in the next edition.

Lobbying, Advocacy andCommunicationVice President Sir Neil Cossons, the President andthe Chairman submitted representations to variousbodies and local authorities about the threats tosignificant industrial heritage sites – notably theLancashire museums, Helmshore Mills TextileMuseum and Queen’s Mill in Burnley. TheEndangered Sites Officer reviewed over a hundredrelevant cases during the year, mostly applicationsfor de-listing or demolition of industrial sites, andsubmitted comments on 29 of them. Keith Falconerand Tony Crosby represented the Association attwo of the HLF’s Industrial, Maritime andTechnology group meetings, where the Fund’sofficers are informed of the issues within the sectorand how grants might be best directed to supportthis. The first was in Portsmouth in June (reportedin the Autumn edition of IA News) and the secondwas in London in December. On an ad-hoc basisseveral members of the AIA Council advise HistoricEngland on matters of industrial heritage.

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) onthe Industrial Heritage met in March when thethreat to the Lancashire mills was discussed.Miles Oglethorpe informed the meeting about thework of Historic Environment Scotland, and ChrisSmith brought them up to date about the divisionof English Heritage and the new Historic England.Despite the turmoil following the EU referendumthe next meeting went ahead in June where therewere representatives from AIA Council, HistoricEnvironment Scotland, the Architectural HeritageFund, the National Museum Directors Council, theHeritage Railway Association, FakenhamGasworks and Waltham Abbey Royal GunpowderMills. Sir Neil Cossons informed the meetingabout changes in the sector’s role – no longerbeing just about preserving interesting places andmachinery, but championing how industrialheritage contributes to the economy,communities, the environment and education.

Although there are specialists from theindustrial heritage sector who brief members oncurrent issues, the number of MPs and Peersattending the APPG remains small and we urgeall AIA members to encourage their local MPs totake an active part in this group and thereby raisethe profile of industrial heritage. For our part, inMarch we wrote to every museum director of a

site with elements or collections of industrialheritage, urging them to press their local MP toget involved in the APPG.

AIA Practical DayTegwen Roberts and Mike Nevell organised‘Speaking up for Industrial Archaeology’, a verysuccessful advocacy workshop on 23 April inIronbridge attended by 35 delegates. There werespeakers from three umbrella groups – the AIA,Civic Voice and the CBA – as well as three casestudies from delegates and a very useful sessionfrom John Batchelor about making the most ofsocial media. It was an information-packed daywith lots of lively discussion and a considerableamount of live tweeting to broaden the audience.

Annual ConferenceThe conference was held at WolverhamptonUniversity’s Telford campus from 9 to 14September and was well supported with 137delegates attending over the six days, a recordturnout for recent years. At the Friday Seminar on‘Britain’s Industrial Heritage: What has WHSinscription done for it?’ The programme was wellbalanced with contributions from UNESCO whohave been working on measuring the value ofWorld Heritage status, from managers ofIronbridge, Derwent Valley, and Blaenavon WorldHeritage Sites, from the Lake District as apotential WHS and from a Liverpool regenerationcompany. The seminar closed with a view of thewider context from Sir Neil Cossons.

As part of the conference on ‘Shropshire andBeyond’ the AIA commissioned Dr Barrie Trinder toproduce an updated edition of his book TheIndustrial Archaeology of Shropshire and it waslaunched at a reception prior to the author givingthe inaugural lecture of the main conference.Copies were posted to members who were unableto attend. The following day there were lectureson the Iron Bridge and on Early Transport Routesof the East Shropshire Coal Field, followed bycontributions from seven members, reports fromthe recipients of awards, and the annual dinner.Following the AGM on 11 September attended by83 members and guests, John Yates gave the RoltMemorial Lecture on ‘The Three Ages of theDitherington Flax Mill’. On subsequent eveningsthere were lectures on Middleport’s BurleighPottery and on Birmingham’s Coffin Works.

During the weekend of the conference therewere visits to the 1875 model buildings of ApleyPark Home Farm, to Broseley Clay TobaccoPipeworks and to Wappenshall Canal Basin.Delegates also visited the limestone mininglandscape of Lilleshall, Ditherington FlaxmillMaltings, Leighton Furnace, and RAF MuseumCosford with a behind-the-scenes tour of theconservation hangar. Over the next three daysfurther visits took delegates to the BurleighPottery, Cheddleton Flint Mill, Mill MeecePumping Station, Kidderminster Carpet Museum,Kidderminster Railway Museum, the 1940sDrakelow Tunnels, the Birmingham sites of

Newman Brothers Coffin Works and Evan SilverWorks, plus a visit to see live casting at the AgaFoundry in Coalbrookdale, the Snailbeach leadmining sites, the roads and canals of ThomasTelford in North Wales, and the Clee Hillsindustrial landscape. A full illustrated reportappeared in the winter edition of IA News.

Full credit must go to our Conferenceorganising team of David de Haan, Ian West,Steve Dewhirst, Shane Kelleher and John Powelland for the excellent support from JohnMcGuinness and Steve Miles. Our thanks also goto the many host organisations for theirinvolvement with the study visits.

PublicationsIA News: This quarterly is the bulletin and maincommunication organ of the AIA. Four issuesunder the editorship of Chris Barney werepublished by the Association in 2016, whichcontinues to encourage high standards in allaspects of the study of industrial archaeology.Illustrated reports covered all the Association’sactivities as well as short technical articles,reports on the work of the AIA Council, affiliatedsocieties, restoration grants, regional news,international news, visits, conferences, letters, etc.Highlights during 2016 included illustratedreports on our new Creative Re-use Awards, theoverseas tour to New South Wales, a Scottishmachine tools project, our Restoration Grants,Lancashire museums, the 1929 North East CoastExhibition of Industry, the Spring Tour toRomania, Woodbury Wetlands, the annualconference with a special report on the visit tothe Aga Foundry, and Germany’s Zollverein site.

IA Review: Peer reviewed and with aninternational Editorial Board, the journal of theAIA edited by Dr Michael Nevell and Dr Ian Westwas published for the Association by Maney. TheMay issue, Volume 38.1, contained papers onMobile Phone Communications, the Archaeologyof Guano in Chile, the Ballast Pump of anAmerican Civil War-era Submarine, St Luke’sNational School for Workers in Sheffield, andWater Resources of Farnborough Hall. TheNovember issue on textile mills, Vol 38.2, wasdelayed and did not appear until February 2017.

AwardsTo encourage scholarship and investigation in theindustrial archaeology field, awards were madeto archaeologists, historians, professionals andstudents

The winner of the Peter Neaverson Awardfor Outstanding Scholarship was David Gwynnfor his book Welsh Slate: Archaeology and Historyof an Industry.

The Peter Neaverson Digital InitiativeAward went to Claire Lewis of Take 27 for ananimation of Peace, a compound steam engine atQueen Street Mill Textile Museum, Burnley.

Peter Neaverson Student Travel Bursarieswere awarded to Jamie Davies for a visit to theZollverein World Heritage Site in Germany, and to


AIA Directors’ Report for the year ended 31 December 2016

Wes Forsyth to attend the World ArchaeologyCongress in Japan.

The Voluntary Societies PublicationAward went to Mike Shaw for Aerial Ropewaysof Shropshire.

The Commercial Publications Award wentto Colum Giles and Mike Williams (editors) forDitherington Mill and the Industrial Revolution.

The Postgraduate Dissertation Award wentto Joanne Harrison for Heritage at Risk: Victorianback-to-back houses in 21st century Leeds.

The Undergraduate Dissertation Awardwent to Bill Pickering for The Role of Souvenirs inthe 1929 North East Coast Exhibition.

The Best Creative Re-use of an IndustrialBuilding went to King Edward Mine nearCamborne.

The Dorothea Award went to Kew BridgeEngine Trust for the restoration of an 1898Bentham & Co deep well pumping set at theLondon Museum of Water & Steam.

GrantsIn 2016 the Association received a further verygenerous amount from the same anonymousdonor to support conservation projects. Thesenew projects and progress on the on-goingprojects were reported in greater detail to theannual conference in September and there waswidespread support for them. As is usually thecase with grants, the fund was heavily over-subscribed. This year there were 23 applicationsrequesting total grants of £368,809 towardsprojects with a total value of nearly £1.3 million.Six awards were made totalling £84,400:

Restoration of the fo’c’s’le of the DawnSailing Barge, £8,500.

Restoration of Leigh Spinners Mill engine,Lancashire, £14,900.

Repair of the winding engine house roof atHemingfield Colliery, Barnsley, £20,000.

Repair to an 18ft waterwheel at WhealMartyn, St Austell, £20,000.

Replacement of windmill stocks and a newset of sails to Billingford Mill, Norfolk, £20,000.

Restoration of a ‘Melotone electrostatic unit’for an organ at the Penistone Cinema Organ Trust,£1,000.

Industrial Heritage SupportOfficer (IHSO)With further funding secured this project is nowin its fifth year and the sector has benefittedenormously from the work of the IHSO who hasprovided advice, support and training to helppreserve industrial sites in England. Ian Bapty leftin July and the post was taken up by ShaneKelleher. Key outputs in 2016 have included:

Working with Historic England to organize,chair, and lecture on the ‘UnderstandingIndustrial Assets’ course at the University ofLeicester on 5 and 6 September

Forming part of the organizing committee forthe Association for Industrial Archaeology’sAnnual Conference in Telford

Working with Museum DevelopmentYorkshire to develop and then launch theYorkshire Industrial Heritage Network at the

National Railway Museum on 21 October;developing and launching the West MidlandsIndustrial Heritage Network on 30 March atCoalbrookdale with the West Midlands MuseumDevelopment Programme and HLF West Midlands

Securing three further years of funding forthe Industrial Heritage Support Officer Projectfrom Historic England’s National CapacityBuilding Programme

Directly supporting over 45 industrialheritage sites/organisations through the project’s‘clearing house’ service. Twitter and Facebookprofiles have been set up and maintained for theproject, and the Industrial Heritage Supportwebsite has been redeveloped to become asource of up-to-date information on funding,training, and support opportunities for the sector.

VisitsSpring Tour to Romania, May 201640 participants attended, mostly from the AIAand the Newcomen Society. ‘Heritage of Industry’,an independent travel company, organised this 7-day tour and a full report by Nigel Grizzardappeared in the autumn issue of IA News. Visitsincluded the oil museum in Ploiesti, a water-powered woollen mill in La Valtori, the goldmining sites of Rosia Montana, the steel town ofHunedoara and nearby Govajdia, and in Sibiu anopen air museum, a hydro-electric power station,the Avrig Glass factory and a railway museum.

Country House Comfort and ConvenienceIn this continuing series of specialist toursorganised by ‘Heritage of Industry’ AIA PresidentMarilyn Palmer led a visit through small and largecountry houses in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshireand Surrey, from Greys Court with its Tudor horsewheel, Nuffield Place, former country residence ofLord Nuffield, to Polesden Lacey in Surrey, homeof the Edwardian hostess Mrs Ronald Greville inthe early 20th century, and ending with a belowstairs tour of Blenheim Palace with its superb setof sprung bells.

Financial statementsSubject to approval by the independent examiners,the net outgoing resources for the year amountedto £87,722 with £86,215 attributable to restrictedfunds (2015: net incoming resources of £17,568which included £30,793 attributable to restrictedfunds). In preparing this report, the Council hastaken advantage of special exemptions applicableto small companies conferred by Schedule 8 of theCompanies Act 2006.

Changes on CouncilIn February David Alderton retired from Councilafter playing an active role since 1979, duringwhich time he has served as Conference Secretary,President and Secretary. Paul Sauter, another long-standing member, retired in June. For many yearshe organised the overseas visits and was also thePresident of E-FAITH. In September Amber Patrickand Bruce Hedge were appointed as Councilmembers. The Honorary Secretary continues to actas the Liaison Officer, who throughout the yearsupported Council, dealt with queries andforwarded information to the appropriate quarter.

We are very grateful to all officers and members ofCouncil for the extensive amount of time andeffort that they commit voluntarily to ensure thesmooth running of the Association throughCouncil and its committees.

David de Haan, Honorary Secretary

APPG – IndustrialHeritage

My report on the All Party Parliamentary GroupIndustrial Heritage meeting on 29 June 2016 was inIA News No. 178 and set out what the Chairman,Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, hoped to achieve overthe coming months. The Group met next on 17October 2016 for its AGM. This was a very goodmeeting with eight MPs and peers in attendance,three of them really engaging with the discussionabout sites within their constituencies which are atrisk – Grimsby Ice Factory and the Kasbah; Redcarsteel works; and Neath steel works. The AGMbusiness was successfully completed so the Groupis secure for at least another year.

The Chair then set out the next steps for theGroup:

A visit to the King’s Cross regeneration areain December 2016.

Two evidence sessions each based on aparticular theme, such as current challenges,good practice and funding, again hopefully inDecember 2016.

A report and manifesto coming from theEvidence Sessions.

Launch of the report in spring 2017.Although the King’s Cross visit was arranged

for 1 December 2016 and we had agreed topostpone the Evidence Sessions until the New Yearto allow more time for planning and securingspeakers, this was all postponed owing to serioushealth issues in the Chair’s family. However, theKing’s Cross visit did take place on 2 February 2017.Although only three MPs and one peer attended,the Chair was very pleased with the visit, its contentand message, and the fact that four political partieswere represented: Lord Andrew Stunnell (Lib Dem),Pauline Latham (Cons, Mid Derbyshire), AnneMclaughlin (SNP, Glasgow NE) and Nick Thomas-Symonds (Lab, Torfean). The Group had anintroductory talk by the King’s Cross visitor centrestaff around a model of the whole area, followed awalking tour of much of the area including inparticularly the historic industrial structures whichhave been adapted to new uses. All those whoattended found the visit very informative andPauline Latham expressed a wish to bring a groupdown from Belper to see what can be achievedwith heritage-led regeneration. There will be anarticle about the visit in the Houses of ParliamentHouse Magazine and also a press release.

The Evidence Sessions are now likely to beheld on 27 April 2017. The delay allows plenty oftime for planning and securing speakers, myabsence for much of February, and the fact thatthere is a Parliamentary Recess from the end ofMarch until 18 April. With luck the report,manifesto and launch can follow soon after.

Tony Crosby



Endangered Sitesthe first months of

2017Over the Christmas period there are often fewerplanning and listed building applicationsaffecting industrial sites and this year was noexception, so in January 2017 there were fewercases for consideration. However, there are fourcases worthy of mention.

Two were appeals by applicants againstcouncil decisions to refuse permission. The firstwas in respect of the Chance Glassworks in theWest Midlands. The No 1 Skip Hire appealedagainst Sandwell Council’s Enforcement Orderthat they should vacate the site, their argumentbeing that they should be allowed two years toachieve the move. However, as they have beenoccupying the site without planning permission,such a long time scale was not appropriate. Untilthe site is empty the major regeneration scheme,which will create a mixed use facility for thebenefit of the local community and ensure thesurvival of this nationally important site, cannotproceed. Therefore the Association supported thecouncil’s decision. The next case was in respect ofthe Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills,Powder Mill Lane, Waltham Abbey, Essex. Againthe Association supported Epping Forest Councilin their decision to refuse permission.

There have been two textile mill cases. In thefirst, Bolton Council approved an application todemolish Beehive Mills (Nos 1 and 2) CrescentRoad, Bolton. However, Historic England has‘called-in’ the application. Therefore the

Association has been able to make furtherrepresentations. These include that Bolton wasthe second most important cotton spinning townin the world. The Beehive Spinning Company wasthe only textile company founded in a depressedyear. Therefore it is atypical, and the double mill isnow relatively rare, exceeded in Bolton only bythe trio at Swan Lane Mills, and it was designedby the reputable architects’ firm of Woodhouse &Potts. Owen Ashmore described Beehive Mills asan ‘outstanding example of late brick-built cottonmills’ in his The Industrial archaeology of North-west England, published by ManchesterUniversity Press. The Mills are also noted in theAIA’s Manchester Gazetteer which was producedfor the conference there in 2000.

The final case was in respect of theapplication to Kirklees Council to demolish theremains of Newsome Mills, Hart Street/RuthStreet, Newsome, Huddersfield. This imposingfour storey mill suffered from a disastrous fire inNovember 2016 which resulted in the demolition,on safety grounds, of all but the ground floor andup to the first floor window cills of the main milland much of the single storey weaving sheds. Theclock tower survived as did the gates andarchway entrance to the site as well as the lodgeand office façades. The indication was that thesewould be retained but the remains of the mill andweaving shed would be demolished. To supportthe latter a structural survey was included. If theremains of the mill were to be demolished, thesite could be more easily used for the proposedhousing. The Association recommended thatevery effort should be made to retain the remainsof the mill and that we would object moststrongly to the demolition of the clock tower,

admittedly not in theory included for demolition.It is pleasing to note that Historic England haveexpressed serious concern over the proposals.

Amber Patrick,Endangered Sites Officer

From the TreasurerSubscriptions

Thank you to all of our members who haverenewed their subscriptions so promptly this year.After last year’s troubles, it is pleasing to recordthat by 3 April only 39 members have still torenew their subscriptions. If you are one of the 39and for any reason don’t want to renew yourmembership, please would you let me know –email address as below. A brief note of yourreasons for non-renewal would be helpful.

Should you have any queries with Taylor &Francis over your subscription or Direct Debits,your best contact is Jacqueline Tearle, [email protected] .

Email addressesCommunication by email is fast, economical andconvenient, but we hold email addresses for onlyhalf of our members and we believe that some ofthese are out of date. If you’ve changed youremail address in the last few years or believe thatwe don’t hold yours, just send an email to me,quoting your name and address, and I will checkfor you.

Gift AidThe tax we reclaim from Gift Aid – £8.25 on a £33subscription – is a valuable addition to ourincome and goes a long way towards helping usto keep subscriptions down. However, we canclaim the tax refund only for those members whohave signed a Gift Aid declaration and there arestill quite a few who haven’t done so. You onlyhave to sign the form once and it will be valid foras long as you remain a member and are a UKtaxpayer. A blank form can be downloaded fromour website or I can send you one. If you’re indoubt as to whether you’ve given us a Gift Aiddeclaration, just send me an email and I’ll checkour records.

John [email protected]

Nominate anendangered site

If you know of important heritage that isendangered – such as a historic monument orarchaeological site, a place of worship, anindustrial complex, a historical park, a museum oreven a movable heritage asset – nominate it. Formore information search – 7 Most Endangeredprogramme 2018.

The final list of 7 most threatened heritagesites in Europe will be announced by EuropaNostra in February 2018 during the European Yearof Cultural Heritage. Deadline: 30 June 2017.

Can you help AIA share itsgood news?

AIA communicates with its members, supporters and the wider world via avariety of media, including the IA News, the AIA web site, Twitter and Facebook.We’d like to think that these channels are quite good at sharing informationabout our activities with people who already know us, but we’d like to get betterat bringing news about things like our events and awards to a wider audience.We are therefore looking to recruit someone to join AIA’s Council to take on therole of Communications Manager, to co-ordinate the messages we put outthrough our existing channels and to develop new ways of publicising ouractivities.

Like all the other roles fulfilled by Council members, this will be unpaid but itwill be a great opportunity for someone to get more involved in AIA’s work andin industrial archaeology across the UK. Ideally we are looking for someone withexperience in publicity and communications, but it would be possible to arrangetraining for someone who was keen to develop these skills. If you would like tofind out more about this role, please contact AIA’s Secretary, David de Haan,email [email protected]


AIA CouncilMeeting

4 March, 2017

Like a Russian Oligarch the AIA has many homes:Coalbrookdale, Leicester and London. The venuefor the first Council meeting of 2017 wasLeicester University. The highlights and decisionstaken are summarised here

Matters discussed but reported elsewhere inthis edition of IA News are not included in thissummary.

Electronic publication of the Brightonseminar proceedingsThe October 2016 Council meeting had discussedthe possibility of publishing the proceedings ofthe Brighton seminar to a wider audience.Unfortunately as the quality of the availablematerial is inconsistent and incomplete, it wasdecided not to pursue the initiative.

Chairman’s ReportsA petition had been launched opposing cuts andappears to have had some success, BirminghamCity Council having announced that the proposedbudget cuts have been removed for the nextfinancial year, until March 2018. Council memberTegwin Roberts has agreed to co-ordinate a groupto assess future threats and to recommend action.

Treasurer’s Reports2016 Accounts – The draft accounts show a smalldeficit of £1,500 for 2016. Full and final accountswill be published with the AGM papers in duecourse.

Restoration Grants – With donations fromour anonymous donor and the associated GiftAid, the total funds made available since 2008amounts to £476,587. After grants already madeand promised, the balance available (as at March2017) is £34,153.

Problems with Taylor & Francis – All membersmust by now be aware of the problems we have hadwith the handling of subscriptions by T&F. By theend of last year 79 members were recorded ashaving failed to renew for 2016. In February Davidde Haan wrote to almost all of them and so far 21of them have renewed for 2017, eleven of them alsopaying for 2016. A further 19 told us they hadresigned, and three members have died. It seemsthat many members had returned Direct Debit formsto T&F but no payments had been taken, and manyof the resigning members had informed T&F whohad not advised us. A further meeting with T&F isscheduled for later in March to resolve the problemsand seek compensation for our lost income.

Secretary’s ReportIt was agreed that a new membership leafletshould be actioned, the target audience beingpeople interested in industrial heritageconservation and restoration. One growth area isthe young archaeologist.

Marilyn Palmer was appointed as our HeritageAlliance representative in place of David Alderton.

Conference Secretary’s Report2017, South-East Midlands 25 to 30 August –Thanks to Bill Barksfield electronic booking hasbeen made possible for the first time via our web-site. The tour programme has been circulatedwith IA News and is also on the web-site. Anexisting regional gazetteer is being reprinted andwill be mailed out to all members with theAutumn issue of the IA News.

2018, Caithness 22 to 28 June – TheConference Secretary will be visiting the region inMay to finalise accommodation and to meet localorganisers. It is recognised that cost may have aneffect on conference numbers, subsequentlybudgeting is based on 70 delegates. Subject toavailability some of the Saturday afternoonaward winners’ presentations may be done viaSkype.

Publications Editors’ ReportsUnfortunately issue 38.2 (2016) of IA Review wasdelayed by technical and copyright issues butappeared in print in early March 2017. The nextissue should be with members in May, and willcontain five articles including John Minnis’ Roltlecture on Tom Rolt’s automotive interests. Therehas been a marked increase in unsolicitedarticles, particularly from overseas, reflecting thejournal’s enhanced overseas profile as a result ofthe Taylor & Francis takeover. This will be the lastyear Mike Nevell will be a Co-editor of IA Review.There are three candidates for the position and allwill be interviewed in due course.

Gazetteers – Steve Dewhirst has scanned 23gazetteers and 18 sets of tour notes for adding toour web-site as PDFs.

Field Visits – by Heritage of IndustrySpring Tour 2017 – The Randstad, 15 to 21 May

This tour was opened for booking on 29December and sold out by 11 January. Most of thearrangements in the Netherlands have beenmade by Jur Kingma who is working very hard tomake sure everything will run smoothly. As part ofthis tour, Amber Patrick and Mark Watson haveagreed to speak at the Friday afternoon seminarin Utrecht on the topic of re-use of industrialbuildings.

Spring Tour May 2018 – Former EastGermany,

Further news will be given at AIA Conferencein August.

Country House Comfort & Convenience tours

IHSO (Industrial Heritage Support Officer)report for October 2016 to March 2017

Shane Kelleher reported on a wide range ofactivities that he had been involved with in hisrole of Industrial Heritage Support Officer. Directadvice or support was given during the period to22 organisations and sites, and training to over150 individuals. The IHSO works closely with alarge number of partnerships and forums in theheritage field. To keep up to date with Shane’swork see: https://industrialheritagesupport.worldpress.com,and the twitter account @ihsoengland.

Bruce Hedge

Best Creative Re-Use of an Industrial

BuildingThis AIA award is now in its third year andgaining recognition and respect.

The awards are for building conversions thatstrike that tricky balance between the practicalityof their new function and the readability of theirold. Projects that demonstrate a viable andsustainable long-term use for buildings at risk areparticularly encouraged to apply. There are twoaward categories:

(a) a project led by a not-for-profit developer(‘community focussed’)

(b) a project led by a private sector owner ordeveloper (‘commercial’)

For more information about the awards, includingthe assessment criteria and a downloadableapplication form, see the AIA website.

We need nominations, so if any member isaware of a building they think worthy ofconsideration, even if they have no connection orinvolvement in its conversion please, email:[email protected] tomake the judges aware of its existence but pleaseact swiftly.

The deadline for submissions is 31 May 2017.

TICCIH CongressProceedings NowAvailable Online

Most of the TICCIH Congress Proceedings arenow accessible online. Working with the staff atthe library of Michigan Technological University,we have scanned the Congress Proceedings andused optical character recognition software tohelp optimize searches of the contents. Elevenvolumes, beginning with the 1973 Congress, aremounted on servers through BEPress andSelectedWorks and are universally accessible atworks.bepress.com/theinternationalcommitteefortheconservationoftheindustrialheritage/

From this platform, users can search,download, print and share an incredible array ofpresentations from the past 40-plus years ofTICCIH scholarship. In this open-source format,we expect that searches on a full range of sitesand topics should reach researchers in ways notpossible in the past. We also intend to ultimatelymount a full run of TICCIH Bulletins in this format.

Twitter – True Facts43% of our 1203 followers are in the 25-34 agebracket, 80% are in the UK and 46% are women.


Kerbstone MarksThe note in IA News 180 on ‘Kerbstone Marks’reminded me once again of the many fancifulexplanations that I have seen regarding thesignificance or otherwise of such marks. They havenothing whatsoever to do with mason’s marks, norland ownership, nor pilgrim’s way markers, etc. Thetruth, certainly for Newcastle upon Tyne, but Isuspect also for any area with such marks, is reallyquite prosaic. They simply indicate the nature of anelectrical connection between a main cable, buriedin a street, and an adjacent property – codedguides to early supply lines. I have on record about30 different kerbstone symbols for Newcastle uponTyne which mainly comprise squares, triangles,arrows, crosses, circles and letters, sometimes incombinations, chiselled into the kerbstone in situ,almost certainly by electricity supply companyworkers.

In the 1970s I was in communication with aMr E H Sadler, who had arrived in North EastEngland from London in 1925 to take up aPremium Pupil student apprenticeship –‘equivalent to a BSc’ – with the Newcastle uponTyne Electricity Supply Co (NESCO). Mr Sadlerwould remain in the Newcastle electricity supplyindustry for the rest of his working life, and wasvery familiar with the kerbstone marks. In hiswords:

“Cable faults ... were common and there wasa continuously manned emergency squad ofone engineer and three assistants to give ‘firebrigade’ style service to deal with thesefaults. Location of the actual faults wasdifficult, and heating of the pavements fromthe fault current going into the earth wasoften the quickest and best indication. Tohelp, the position of every joint was markedon the kerbstones of Newcastle.”

Incidentally, this heating of localised areas ofpavement through faults led to some interestingscenes, again as described by Mr Sadler:

“The ‘warm pavement’ fault technique waseasy when there was a light shower of snow,but on a dry day the spectacle of three or fourblokes on their hands and knees on theGosforth [Newcastle upon Tyne] High Streetpavement shouting ‘Cold, cold’, or ‘A bitwarm’, as they progressed along thepavement certainly created alarm if notdespondency among passers-by.”

The commonest kerb mark in Newcastle is asquare with a diagonal cross, Saltire style, whichsimply indicated a ‘joint’ (Figure 1.) An added plussign indicated a joint in the ‘positive’ cable, whilean added minus sign indicated a joint in the‘negative’ cable (Figures 2, 3). The letter ‘F’indicated a fused connection, (Figure 4) and soon. Figure 5 indicates an early fused servicegiving a 3 wire supply to the premises, e.g. 250Vfor lighting and 500V for power. All of thesemarks probably date from the 1920s and possiblythe 1930s.

There is no particular reason to suppose thatidentical symbols were used elsewhere, for therewere no national standards. It was up toindividual supply companies to decide to marktheir joints on the kerbs, and to determine thedesign of such marks. The situation in London wasbound to be very complicated, for historically itwas the most confused district in the country interms of its electricity supply. By 1917 it had 70different suppliers, (hence 70 power stations), 50different types of system, 10 differentfrequencies, and 20 different voltages; some ofthese companies would undoubtedly use kerbmarks, with their own preferred symbols, whileothers would not. Hence a possible explanationof ‘long runs – several hundred yards – of uniformkerbstones with no marks’, and hence, no real‘conundrum’. Newcastle’s situation in the 1920swas much simpler, with only two major supplycompanies, and far-sighted electrical engineers inthe Merz family running the show.

Stafford M Linsley.

Is it archaeology?In his report on the demolition of WestburyCement Works chimney Peter Stanier wonderswhether the works are ‘perhaps too recent to beconsidered as ‘archaeology’’. I say most certainlynot! (Although whether any physical remains willsurvive the inevitable ‘regeneration’ of the site, tobe discovered by future archaeologists, is open todoubt.)

Surely what matters is that here was a worksthat was established, flourished, and then hasbeen erased in only a half century. Almostcertainly it incorporated equipment andprocesses that were of their time, even if it is onlyfrom the recent past, and those are part of thehistorical evolution and archaeology of thecement industry. To take another example, no-oneI imagine would regard the Concorde aircraft andthe processes that produced it as being ‘toorecent’ for inclusion in the history andarchaeology of the aircraft industry.

Of course, it does depend on what one meansby ‘archaeology’; but even in its narrowest usage,when taken to mean just the physical remains(without for example relating these to

documentary sources or oral history), the termsurely embraces the tangible evidence. And to getthe best understanding of that now and in thefuture it is best to ‘get in there’, wheneverpossible, while the site is still operating.

In 1969 I and two colleagues produced agazetteer ‘Industrial Monuments of GreaterLondon’, published as the ‘swansong’ of theThames Basin Archaeological Observers Group,predecessor of GLIAS. We were pleasantlysurprised to receive several favourable reviewsand mentions, including a review by the late RexWailes, one of the pioneers of the IA movement.While welcoming the publication, he took us totask for suggesting in our Introduction that“industrial archaeology may be said to beginwhen the machine stops or the factory closes”.

And of course he was right! Regardingindustrial archaeology as something that shouldbegin only when the activity has ceased, is ratherlike saying that one should wait until a personhas died before beginning to gather informationon their life.

Michael Bussell

Chris Barney forwarded your email re mysentence suggesting Westbury cement workswasn’t ‘archaeology’. It was a bit of a throw-awayline – glad you spotted it. I probably should haveinserted ‘by many people’ to the sentence. Theoriginal article was for the CBA Wessexnewsletter, for whom I am the IA representative,so the comment was partly aimed at ‘traditional’archaeologists to show that archaeology doesn’tend with the middle ages, but also theunenlightened population, including localcouncillors etc. The coming and going of anyactivity or structure with little or nothing to showfor it is something I have always felt very stronglyabout. I do wonder how future archaeologistswould interpret any remains if there were nophotographs or plans to guide them. And this isanother thing – I am assuming they exist forWestbury. That’s something we can all be guiltyof, to just assume there has been some form ofrecording undertaken, without checking!

Peter Stanier

Didcot powerstation tragedy

On Tuesday 23 February 2016, the boiler house atDidcot A power station suffered a partial collapseduring preparation for its demolition – see IANews 177. One man was killed and three otherswere trapped beneath piles of debris. Not until 11September was last body, that of Mr John Shaw,was recovered from the site. In some newspaperarticles the four men killed were described asworkmen. They were highly skilled demolitionexperts. We extend heartfelt sympathy to thefamilies of those involved.

Robert Carr

LETTERS


A The Casting shopB Preparing to castC Opening the mouldD Bells waiting for attentionE A selection of clappersF An assembled frame

Photos B C and D Whitechapel Bell FoundryA E and F Chris Barney

The WhitechapelBell Foundry

A

D

E

F

B

C


Breathe New Lifeinto an Old Place –Make it a Heritage

Action ZoneHistoric England has announced a new scheme.Their new Heritage Action Zones initiative willunleash ‘the power in England’s historicenvironment to create economic growth andimprove quality of life in villages, towns andcities’.

Working with local people and partnersincluding local authorities, Historic England willhelp to ‘breathe new life into old places that arerich in heritage and full of promise’ – unlockingtheir potential and making them more attractiveto residents, businesses, tourists and investors.They plan to do this with joint-working, grantfunding and sharing skills.

Historic buildings that have deterioratedthrough decades of neglect will be restored andput back into use; conservation areas improved tokick-start regeneration and renewal; and unsungplaces will be recognised and celebrated for theirunique character and heritage, helping instil asense of local pride wherever there’s a HeritageAction Zone.

The first ten Heritage Action Zones are in:Appleby

Coventry

Elsecar

Hull Old Town

King’s Lynn

Nottingham

Ramsgate

Sunderland

Sutton

Weston-super-Mare

In IA News 182 There will be a description of howthis will affect the mining and ironworking worldof Elsecar.

Transport TrustAwards

Each year the Transport Trust invites nominationsfor awards to assist individuals and groups whoare working hard to preserve items of importanceto the Nation’s transport heritage. Awards aremade annually to high quality transportrestoration projects which are well advanced butwhich could be helped towards completion by acash injection and recognition from the Trust.

Awards generally come with a substantialfinancial lump sum up to £3000 which it is hopedwill assist with making good restorations great.Award nominations are invited anytime but thoselodged with the Awards Administrator no laterthan 1 October will be considered for award inthe following calendar year. An Award Panel willthen select winners who will be advised in theearly New Year, and award cheques will follow

shortly afterwards. Winners will also be invited toa high profile transport related location for anawards ceremony at Brooklands Museum whereawards are presented by the Trust’s Patron, HRHPrince Michael of Kent.

In addition to the Restoration Awardsnominations are also invited for the Trust’spersonal recognition awards: Preservationist ofthe Year, Young Preservationist of the Year (whichhas a £500 prize) and Lifetime Achievement.These awards enable the Trust to acknowledgeand publicise a wide range of endeavours in thecause of transport preservation, frommanagement or administration to hands-onrestoration work.

Further details are available on the TransportTrust’s website or from the Awards Administrator,Paul Brook: 07979 720466 or [email protected].

Planning BillAmendment

Peers have passed an amendment to theNeighbourhood Planning Bill that wouldensure that the government cannot prevent localauthorities from attaching conditions to planningpermission where those conditions meet thepolicy tests in the National Planning PolicyFramework (NPPF).

The amendment, moved by former Lib DemDepartment for Communities and LocalGovernment Minister Lord Stunell, requires that“no regulations shall be made … that wouldhave the effect of preventing a local planningauthority from requiring a condition that wouldotherwise be in conformity with the NPPF”.

Minister admitsdefeat on

archaeology A-levelThe plight of the archaeology A-level was in themedia again owing to a defeatist comment madein the House of Commons.

When questioned on the matter by DanJarvis, Labour MP for Barnsley Central, Nick Gibbthe Minister for School Standards stated that,“Officials at the Department held a range ofdiscussions with the A-level exam boards on thisissue as soon as AQA made clear that it did notintend to continue developing a new A-level inarchaeology. However, it is for individualexamination boards to decide whichqualifications to offer and we regret that noboard has come forward that is willing to developa new A-level in archaeology for teaching from2017.”

However, despite the Minister’s fatalism, theCBA is continuing dialogue with several partnersto look at alternative options to deliver thesubject and continue to keep archaeology asaccessible as possible to new students.

Threat toBirmingham andWalsall Museumsabated for now

Many members will have signed the change.orgpetition to oppose the cuts to funding of theindustrial museums in Birmingham. The petitionseems to have been successful for the comingyear at least and Ellen McAdam, Director ofBirmingham Museums Trust, has posted thisreply:

“As announced by Birmingham City Councilwe are pleased to confirm that the proposedbudget cuts to Birmingham Museums have beenremoved until, at least, March 2018. With over9,000 signatures on our petition and many lettersof support, we would like to thank all of oursupporters who have helped to show how valuedour city’s museums are and how vital fundingsupport is to their continued success. .

“The reduction announcement means thereis no threat to closure of Birmingham Museums’sites in the next financial year. While we arepleased to share this news, funding beyond 2018is uncertain.”

Meanwhile Walsall City Council has alsoreversed controversial proposals to cease itsfunding for New Art Gallery Walsall and either toclose Walsall Leather Museum or move it to asmaller site. It has agreed to keep it open at itscurrent venue while seeking out new commercialopportunities to maximise its income.

“Some of the proposals we put forward werecontroversial and received the response weexpected, but at least people could understandthe position we’re in,” said Ian Shires, thecouncil’s portfolio holder for agenda for change.“That sparked the interest we needed and set offa two-way conversation. Out of that have come anumber of proposal changes we’ve been able tomake. It can honestly be said, this time around,people have influenced the budget.”

HLF grants to helpwith management

Resilient Heritage grants of £3,000-£250,000 canhelp you to strengthen your organisation, andbuild the capacity of your staff and volunteers tobetter manage heritage in the long term.

This programme is available to organisationsin the UK who want to build their capacity orachieve strategic change to improve themanagement of heritage. Grants can fundactivities to help you acquire new skills orknowledge, or new models of governance,leadership and business to put your organisationin a better position for the future. Organisationsin the early stages of planning their activities mayalso apply.

Whether you’re facing challenges aroundincome and fundraising, or preparing to take onnew forms of investment, such as socialinvestment, Resilient Heritage can support theseprocesses.


Holmes MillClitheroe

This former textile mill is being redeveloped intoa food, drink and leisure hub, with the first phase– ‘The Boiler House’ – already open.

The project is the brainchild of localentrepreneur James Warburton of James’ PlacesGroup who is transforming the 200 year-old siteinto a bar with brewery followed by a 30bedroom hotel with gym/pool/spa, and a foodhall to showcase the area’s local produce.

The Boiler House, which opened in summer2016, is home to the Bowland Beer Hall whichcontains the Bowland Brewery and possibly ‘thelongest bar in Britain’ at 106ft, as well as agelateria, function room and café.

The Boiler House still contains the 1910cross-compound horizontal engine built by

Clayton, Goodfellow & Co Ltd of Blackburn. It isno longer in working condition but it completeand may, in the future, be cosmetically restoredand motorised for demonstration purposes. Nowdrinkers and diners can sit around the giantengine, known in its working life as ‘Elizabeth’,and walk under the rope drive.

Clayton, Goodfellow & Co Ltd wereestablished at the Atlas works in Darwen Street innearby Blackburn in 1850 and manufacturedcomplete engines as well as acting as contractorsfor complete factories. The horizontal engine atHolmes Mill replaced two beam engines whichhad serviced the site for the past 60 years.

The oldest part of Holmes Mill is a multi-storey spinning block erected in 1823 by JohnTaylor. A second spinning block, named New Millwas added to the site in about 1830 by Edmund,John & James Mercer along with David Murray,who purchased the original mill and combinedthe two into a single manufacturing complex.

The mill expanded in 1848 with the additionof a four-storey office and warehouse extension,followed in 1853 by a weaving house. By now thecomplex housed 16,000 mule spindles and 707looms.

Clitheroe Manufacturing Limited took overproduction of the mill in 1884. Shortly after, theoriginal 1820s block was stripped of itsmachinery and used as Clitheroe Technical Schooluntil 1916.

The New Mill and its associated buildingswere sold to Henry Parkinson in 1905 whoinstalled 496 looms and leased the property toJames Thornber.

During both World Wars the site producedgun barrels and torpedo tubes, artillery shells,parts for tanks and battleships and even thewinching gear for Mulberry Harbours.

The business declined in the 1960s and in1969 was sold to a merchant bank which kept thecompany going until 1983 when it ceased totrade. James’ Places Group purchased the site in2015.

The Boiler House is only one tenth of theHolmes Mill site. Construction is currently takingplace on ‘The Weaving Shed’, which will be hometo the food hall, gym, pool and spa, and ‘TheSpinning Block’ which will house the bar & grill,hotel, and apartments.

Arson at the BataReminiscence

CentreAt the 2012 AIA Conference, a party visited EastTilbury, Essex, the home of the remarkable 1932Bata Shoe Factory (IA News 163). Local peoplemade us very welcome at the Bata Reminiscenceand Resource Centre and we spent some timethere inspecting the broad range of exhibits welldisplayed in glass cabinets. As well as examplesof the shoes produced by Bata there was periodadvertising and packaging, many manyphotographs – and various other kinds ofmemorabilia – trophies, badges, bags and so on.Unfortunately the fine display that we saw thenhas since suffered a tragic fate.

On Friday 6 January this year in the earlyhours of the morning a Ford Fiesta wasdeliberately reversed through the doors of EastTilbury Library which houses the ReminiscenceCentre. The car was set on fire and a large numberof irreplaceable items which were on displaythere were destroyed. When the fire servicearrived around 5 am about 25% of the buildingwas alight and it was 100% smoke logged. It tooksome days for the building to be made safeenough for Bata volunteers to enter the libraryand start assessing the damage.

It had been thought that the loss to thearchives was very serious indeed but afterconsiderable work by Reminiscence Centrevolunteers it can now be reported that about95% of the records have been saved. Most ofwhat has been lost would have been the itemsthat we saw on display near the entrance of thelibrary during our visit in 2012.

Almost everything from the Heritagecollection has been smoke damaged; some thingshave been destroyed, but it is hoped that a gooddeal of the collection can be cleaned andeventually put back on display. It will be a longjob; surprisingly good humoured volunteers havebegun cleaning selected items salvaged from thelibrary. Soft toothbrushes, plenty of warm soapywater and much old fashioned elbow grease isnecessary. And so far there has been somesuccess with the bust of Tomas Bata.

At East Tilbury the Bata factory buildingswere originally single storey. Multi-storeybuildings could be added later. All productionruns were really big. This was mass production inthe style of Henry Ford. They made shoes for the

masses, not exclusive items. Low cost was theaim. Leather shoes accounted for about sixtypercent of production and rubber forty percent. Atone time there were more than 300 Bata shops inthe UK.

The Bata shoe factory at East Tilbury was likeCrewe railway works in that they madeeverything they could themselves – in house. Theywove socks and nylon stockings and wove theirown shoe laces. The machines weaving shoe laceswere very noisy we were told. The engineeringdepartment employed more than 200 people.There was a foundry, pattern making andmachine shops. Some of the factory’s ownspecialist machinery were made by Batathemselves. They made their own cardboard shoeboxes. They had their own road transportdepartment and even their own dairy. In EastTilbury milk was delivered in Bata milk bottles.

One item that was lost in the fire was a veryrecent gift of just such a bottle which had been ina farmer’s field for over 60 years and when dugup was found to be in near perfect condition.Unfortunately, this item was in the foyer displaycabinets and although it has not been possible toaccess these for safety reasons it is thought thatthe glass has melted in the fire. If any reader hasone and would like to donate it to East Tilbury theBata Reminiscence Centre would be very gratefulindeed. If you have anything else appropriate andwould be prepared to donate it, this mightperhaps help just a little to make up for the sadloss suffered in January.

People thinking of making a donation shouldemail Mr Mike Tarbard, [email protected],or write to him at Waterview, Orsett Road,Horndon-on-the-Hill, Essex SS17 8NS.

Robert Carr

‘Boiler House’ at Holmes Mill with 1910 engine

Holmes Mill

Part of display 2016

Govan Workspace receives its plaque

The AIA Best Creative Re-use plaque was presented to Govan Workspace in Fairfield Shipyard DrawingOffices at the STICK AGM on 24 March.

After Pat Cassidy, Director of Govan Workspace, had received the AIA award we were able to seethe new space for business start-ups and how new mezzanine floors have been suspended from newbeams to either side of original roof trusses without touching external walls.

New home wantedfor hydraulicaccumulator

Somerset Industrial Archaeological Society hasbeen asked to find a new location for a hydraulicaccumulator which has been used for many yearsby a plastics factory in Somerset.

SIAS has been advised that the usage wasunusual and the machine should if possible bepreserved. If you know of any museum thatwould be interested in it then please [email protected]. We understand thattransport costs will be borne by the developers ofthe site.


Govan workspace with suspended mezzanine floor

The winners of this years awards were announcedat a special ceremony on 24 February at ‘CurrentArchaeology Live! 2017’. This annual event whichwas held at Senate House, University of London on24-25 February is in some ways rather like our ownAIA Conference although there are no field visitsinvolved.

The awards this year had five categories:Archaeologist of the Year, Book of the Year, RescueProject of the Year, Research Project of the Year, andBest Archaeological Innovation of the Last 50 Years.The Current Archaeology Awards are voted forentirely by the public – unlike the BritishArchaeological Awards there are no panels ofjudges.

The entries for these Awards are mostlytraditional excavation archaeology carried out inBritain, and generally involve Roman or prehistoricsites, so for IA News only those entries for laterperiods will be discussed here. Among thenominations shortlisted for the Book of the Year,mention might be made of The Home Front inBritain 1914 – 1918 edited by C Appleby, W Cocroft,and J Schofield. For the Rescue Project of the Yearthe nomination Fast track to the past: celebratingCrossrail’s archaeology should be of interest. Theshortlist for the Best Archaeological Innovation of

the Last 50 Years consisted of Digital data, DNA,Geophysics, Isotope analysis, and Lidar.

The winners of the ninth annual CurrentArchaeology Awards this year were as follows: theArchaeologist of the Year was Mark Knight of theMust Farm Project. The chosen Book of the Year wasImages of the Ice Age by Paul Bahn. For theResearch Project of the Year the StonehengeHidden Landscapes Project was selected. Thewinner of the Rescue Project of the Year Award wasMust Farm. The Best Archaeological Innovation ofthe Last 50 Years was judged to be Lidar.

Lidar, Light Detection and Ranging, is asurveying technique that measures the distance toan object with laser light. It can be used to makehigh resolution maps with applications in manyfields and is immediately applicable to archaeology.In an aerial survey it can see through both forestcanopy and undergrowth to reveal details of theground beneath, something previously almostimpossible. Archaeological featuresindistinguishable on the ground can now be clearlyrevealed. You can also create high resolution digitalelevation models of archaeological sites.

An application in industrial archaeology thatimmediately comes to mind is a survey of theCentral Valley of Scotland where extensive

reforestation is taking place. In a few years timethe many former industrial sites will becompletely obscured but an aerial survey usingLidar will be able to reveal them in crisp detail.

As previously mentioned, Lidar received theaward for the Best Archaeological Innovation ofthe Last 50 Years. The Award was given to the NewForest National Park Authority for a survey of theNew Forest. Here laser mapping has revealedthousands of previously unknown archaeologicalsites. Clearly this is a great advance in technology,revolutionising how we see landscapes.

The proliferation of awards for archaeology isa little confusing, hence some explanation isappropriate. The Current Archaeology Awards aresponsored by the periodical Current Archaeologyand take place every year. In addition to these,every second year, there are also the BritishArchaeological Awards (this is a ‘fallow year’ withno awards ceremony); these are generally ofmore interest to AIA members. They are chieflysponsored by English Heritage, Historic Scotland,Cadw, the British Museum and the Robert KilnCharitable Trust. The British ArchaeologicalAwards have judging panels and the ceremony isheld at the British Museum.

Robert Carr

Current Archaeology Awards

PUBLICATIONS

Local Society and other periodicals received

Abstracts will appear in Industrial Archaeology Review.

Bristol Industrial Archaeological Society Bulletin, 150 Spring 2017

Dorset Industrial Archaeology Society Bulletin 47, January 2017

Histelec News: Newsletter of the South Western ElectricityHistorical Society, 64, December 2016

ICE Panel for Historical Engineering Works Newsletter, 152,December 2016; 153, March 2017

Industrial Heritage Association of Ireland Newsletter, 48, December2016

Merseyside Industrial Heritage Society Newsletter, 361, February2017; 362, March 2017

Northamptonshire Industrial Archaeology Group Newsletter, 141,Winter 2017

North East Derbyshire Industrial Archaeology Society Newsletter,65, February 2017

Piers: the Journal of the National Piers Society, 122, Winter 2016

Scottish Industrial Heritage Society Bulletin, 80, February 2017

Somerset Industrial Archaeological Society Bulletin, 134, April 2017

South West Wales Industrial Archaeology Society Bulletin, 128,February 2017

Suffolk Industrial Archaeology Society Newsletter, 136, February2017

Surrey Industrial History Group Newsletter, 213, February 2017

Sussex Industrial Archaeology Society Newsletter, 173, January 2017

Sussex Mills Group Newsletter, 173, January 2017

Trevithick Society Newsletter, 174, Winter 2016

Triple News: Newsletter of the Kempton Great Engines Society, 49,Autumn 2016

Welsh Mines Society Newsletter, Autumn 2016

Yorkshire Archaeological Society Industrial History SectionNewsletter, 99, Early Spring 2017

Devizes ConferenceSaturday 28 October.

Devizes Town Hall, St John’s Street, Devizes SN10 1BZ.

Registration at 0930. Symposium closes at 1630. £14 which includes morning coffee and

afternoon tea.

Mike Stone – ‘Food Production in North Wiltshire 1660-1960’.

Geoff Hobbs – ‘Bus Services in North Wiltshire and Surrounding Areas1955-1985’.

Bob Clarke – ‘Adventures in Aviation: Some lesser known aspects ofthe Boscombe Down industrial landscape’.

Roger Clark, curator of the Bradford-on-Avon Museum – ‘The returnof the Iron Duke, an early rubber machine, to Bradford-on-Avon’.

Booking is either via the museum website atwww.wiltshiremuseum.org.uk, by post to The Bookings Secretary,

Wiltshire Museum, Long Street, Devizes SN10 1NS – cheques payableto ’WANHS Ltd.’ or by phone on 01380 727369.

European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH).Annual Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark

20 to 22 September 2017.

“Industrial Tourism: Linkingthe past with the present

and future”.

Industrial tourism is generally regarded as falling into two areas,the promotion of past industry and visits to modern industrialpremises. ERIH falls into the first category, presenting sites whichevoke the great industries and society of the late 18th, 19th and20th centuries. Although some ERIH sites, such as breweries, arestill producing with updated methods they differ from organisedvisits to active industrial premises with modern productionmethods.

New technologies and international communication meanthat traditional industries are increasingly seen as historicand obsolete, especially by the younger generation. Howcan we beneficially link the two strands of industrial

tourism?

EERIAC 2017This year’s EERIAC will be held on

Saturday 3 June, in Braintree.

The first speaker will be George Courtauld, whose familyestablished their first silk mill in Essex in 1789 and went onto become a major force in the textile industry. George willspeak on the early history of the business and those whoheard him at the AIA’s Essex conference in 2012 will knowthat he is not only well-informed but also a veryentertaining speaker.

Next, Tony Crosby will speak on the housing provided bylarge Essex businesses for their workers. The county has anumber of good examples, notably East Tilbury, designed byCzech architects for the Bata shoe company, and Silver End,built by the Crittall company (presumably all with steel-framed windows – we will find out on the afternoon trip).

After the AGM and a lunch break we will first visit theWarner Textile Archive and then go on for a guided walkingtour of Silver End.

Many of you have been to previous EERIAC meetings, butsome haven’t. It is more than just an interesting dayconference, it is a chance to socialise and talk industrialarchaeology with like-minded people from your own andadjacent counties.


Top: Farmer’s bridge on the BCN (then 1993)Bottom: Farmer’s bridge on the BCN even more then (1973) Photos: Terry Evans

28 © Association for Industrial Archaeology, May 2017Registered in England under the Companies Act 1948 (No. 1326854) and the Charities Act 1960 (No. 277511)

Registered office: c/o IGMT, Coach Road, Coalbrookdale, Telford, Shropshire TF8 7DQProduced by TBC Print Services, Blandford Forum, Dorset DT11 7FP

DIARY

3 June EERIAC 2017Braintree EssexSee page 27

22 – 25 June 2017INSTITUTE OF HISTORICBUILDING CONSERVATIONANNUAL SCHOOLManchesterHistoric Transport Infrastructure –the backbone of civilisation

24 June 2017WATERWAYS RESEARCHRailway & Canal Historical SocietyBirmingham University

6 – 10 July 2017BRIDGE: THE HERITAGE OFCONNECTING PLACES ANDCULTURESIronbridgeHistoric Transport Infrastructure –the backbone of civilisation

25 – 30 August 2017AIA ANNUAL CONFERENCE,SOUTH EAST MIDLANDSSee pages 4 and 5

20 – 22 September ERIH ANNUAL CONFERENCECopenhagenIndustrial Tourism: Linking the pastwith the present and futureSee page 27

7 October 2017ESSEX INDUSTRIALHERITAGE FAIRWat Tyler Country Park (formerNobel explosives works)[email protected]

7 – 8 October 2017COMMUNICATION OFWORLD HERITAGE VALUESInternational Institute for CulturalHeritage, University of Birminghamin association with World HeritageUK Ironbridge will hold a specialinternational meeting to discuss

research and global policy. The eventwill be immediately followed (9-10th October) by the third annualconference of World Heritage UK Forfurther information and if you haveany questions please [email protected]

20 – 22 October 2017E-FAITH WEEKENDBarcelona

28 OctoberDEVIZES CONFERENCESee page 27

22 – 28 June 2018AIA ANNUAL CONFERENCE,CAITHNESS

9 – 16 September 2018TICCIH CONGRESS Santiago ChileIndustrial Heritage Making aSustainable future by understandingthe past

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS(formerly AIA Bulletin ISSN 0309-0051)ISSN 1354-1455

Editor: Chris Barney

Published by the Association for IndustrialArchaeology. Contributions should be sentto the Editor, Chris Barney, The Barn, BackLane, Birdingbury, Rugby CV23 8EN.News and press releases may be sent tothe Editor or the appropriate AIA RegionalCorrespondents. The Editor may betelephoned on 01926 632094 or e-mail:[email protected]

Final copy dates are as follows:

1 January for February mailing1 April for May mailing1 July for August mailing1 October for November mailing

The AIA was established in 1973 to promotethe study of Industrial Archaeology andencourage improved standards of recording,research, conservation and publication. Itaims to assist and support regional andspecialist survey groups and bodies involvedin the preservation of industrial monuments,to represent the interests of IndustrialArchaeology at national level, to holdconferences and seminars and to publish theresults of research. The AIA publishes anannual Review and quarterly News bulletin.Further details may be obtained from theLiaison Officer, AIA Liaison Office, TheIronbridge Institute, Ironbridge GorgeMuseum, Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DX. Tel: 01325 359846.

The views expressed in this bulletin arenot necessarily those of the Associationfor Industrial Archaeology.

Information for the diaryshould be sent directly to theEditor as soon as it isavailable. Dates of mailingand last dates for receipt ofcopy are given below. Itemswill normally appear insuccessive issues up to thedate of the event. Pleaseensure details are sent in ifyou wish your event to beadvised.

More Diary Dates can befound on the AIA website at

www.industrial-archaeology.org

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