Any industrial history enthusiasts here?

[Harvestman]

I have become increasingly interested in the industrial history of my local area. My dad was always keen, and finding things to share with him seems to have got me interested too. I'm often out exploring old mine working and quarries, tramroads and the local canal. I'm photographing lime kilns and bridges and tunnels, and wanting to know more about what it is that I am seeing, before it gets lost to them ravages of 'development'. Most recently I have become really interested in finding bricks from old brickworks, and taking photographs of them. I have become a brick spotter! Over the last three days I have gone out brick hunting and now have bricks from 25 different brickmakers.

Here's a sample: 15 different bricks, all found in a walk of less than half a mile, in a single afternoon. One of them remains completely unidentified by my brick-identification contacts so far.

So, does anyone else on here share a passion for old industrial history?

 

[Toddy]

A bit....which is kind of surprising knowing my usual interests, but both sides of the family seemed to breed Engineers so we kind of got it in the Mother's milk

You're on good clay land there if you have that many brick makers to hand and since good brick making in the UK needs good drying, you'll be on good coal land too I suspect.

atb,
M

 

[Harvestman]

A bit....which is kind of surprising knowing my usual interests, but both sides of the family seemed to breed Engineers so we kind of got it in the Mother's milk

You're on good clay land there if you have that many brick makers to hand and since good brick making in the UK needs good drying, you'll be on good coal land too I suspect.

atb,
M

Excellent coal land, and there seem to be plenty of brickworks around across south Wales. So far I have 25 manufacturers of bricks: 20 Welsh, 3 English, and 2 Scottish. The Scottish bricks are mainly firebricks used in kilns and furnaces. One from Stirling and one from Cumbernauld.

 

[Toddy]

I did wonder how you got a Castlecary one....there's some of them in my back garden

Industrial archaeology is quite fascinating
http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/sit...ireclay+works/?&sort_typ=copyright&sort_ord=1

http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/spw020595

Somewhere Himself found an online listing of the mineral sources of the British Isles....written during the early days of Industrialisation, and it has everything from mineral wells to coal, varieties of clay, feldspars, etc., to ores like iron, tin, etc.,

I'll see if I can find it for you, but see once you start looking at things like that ? the world's never just full of growing stuff ever again

M

 

[sandbender]

I wouldn't say I was an enthusiast, but I do enjoy looking at and exploring old industrial sites. There are quite a few around these parts but they are quickly being flattened and turned into empty offices instead.

This brick is from an old greenhouse that once served one of the 'big hooses' near Corstorphine in Edinburgh.

This is the old Ganz factory in Budapest, mostly they'd makes electrical motors, trains, trams and such.

Not shown clearly here is the floor which is made from wooden cobbles.

If you want to look up the history of your bricks, this is the place to go.

 

[Nalsheen]

Several years ago I spent a few days compiling a database of mineral water companies and their different glass bottles for Oxford archaeology. If you're struggling to identify a brick it might be worth dropping a line to your local archaeologists


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Harvestman]

I wouldn't say I was an enthusiast, but I do enjoy looking at and exploring old industrial sites. There are quite a few around these parts but they are quickly being flattened and turned into empty offices instead.

This brick is from an old greenhouse that once served one of the 'big hooses' near Corstorphine in Edinburgh.

If you want to look up the history of your bricks, this is the place to go.

Yes, I know that website, but he doesn't have two of my bricks, and one of them isn't on my other source either. I see your brick is the exact same shot as is on Dave Sallery's website. Nice one.

 

[sandbender]

"...I see your brick is the exact same shot as is on Dave Sallery's website. Nice one..."

Yes, I gave it to him.

Here is a local one...

 

[tombear]

Yeah, I'll own up to being into Industrial History, around here there's a lot of preserved stuff relating to th wool and cotton industry. There's plentry of disused quarries, some with public information boards. Theres even a small museum to the slipper industry. We've got to know the folk in the local history society which has led to the odd impromptu visit like when I was dropping the eldest off at Helmshore Museum for his two weeks work experience and I was called over by one of the and taken into the mill opposite which isn't open to the public and was taken around the most fabulous collection of working looms that belonged to a small firm that does specialist weaving for mainly restoration work. The chap insisted on working each one and explaining about it. Honestly I was in shock by the time I left. I've found if you show some interest and intelligence folk are delighted to educate you.

ATB


Tom

Ps I'm looking for a broken 18th C brick to grind up for dust to use as a polish to get a authentic patina on some period trekking gear. In the early 19th they changed how most bricks were made and the dust doesn't make a good polish.

Yes I am a very sad man....

 

[Joonsy]

I like walking round such places, i don't have a passion for industrial history just a healthy curiosity, i like walking and mooching about anyway and things of interest always add to a nice walk. I’ve walked almost all of the canals in the midlands, and also disused rail/tram ways, old mills & mines, and all sorts of places. There are many well documented places of course but it’s nice when you come across some place/object that’s left lying forgotten, only a couple of weeks ago I came across an old iron water wheel and gearing while walking a small stream. Regarding bricks, brickmaking was a big industry here in the midlands, it’s noted for it’s famous old ‘Blue Brick’ which was used in the construction of many bridges/tunnels/aqueducts/canals etc etc. due it’s high strength and long lasting qualities. Some of these old blue bricks are now quite collectable. When you look at old big bridges and aqueducts made from Blue Brick they are still as good as ever, they are like an engineering work of art, just imagine the work that must have gone into building them, in the old days scaffold was wooden poles.

you may already know these links, if not you might find them interesting harvestman

Old bricks of Wales http://www.penmorfa.com/bricks/wales1.html

Old bricks of England http://www.penmorfa.com/bricks/england5.html

The Cakemore Blue Brick (used in bridgework on canals)

[FONT=&amp]On bridges, i like the old pedestrian suspension bridges that you get on the river wye, there’s a few of them but the one at Sellack Boat is really nice, they usually have a plaque displaying date and place where made. The bridge at Bredwardine is really nice, and the view from the top of Merbach Hill over the large loops of the wye is fantastic, you can see to the Toll Bridge at Whitney from the top of hill. Back in the summer I walked Coppett Hill by Kerne Bridge and there was some lime kilns there on the hill. Sorry to go on, good luck with your local history[/FONT].

Bredwardine Bridge

Sellack Boat Bridge

 

[Harvestman]

Good stuff folks.

On bridges, the arched stone bridge over the river Usk at Crickhowell is notable for having 13 arches if you look at it from upstream, but only 12 if you look at it from downstream, which makes it very unusual indeed.

 

[tiger stacker]

North South Lanarkshire has a lot of industrial sites of interest. Auchengeich is former colliery whose history is a sad one. Blantyre had its share of mining disasters too. Steel clay and coal were the staple industries that left their mark.

 

[Toddy]

.....and it's all around us still. Just sometimes you have to look for it
The 'Nature Walk' outside our garden at the gable end is the old mineral railway line for the Victorian Gasworks, and yet, when Himself dug up worked sandstone blocks in our front garden, I thought about the Castle not half a mile away that has been robbed for centuries for building in the villages around....then an elderly Auntie said to me, "Eh ? no, no, that's where the signal box was for the railway ! My faither used to stop there for his teabreak. There were cows in that field when I was little".
Now the railway's gone, and so is the gasworks, and the burn runs clean again and the old railway ash bed is the path
The sandstone blocks ? they're edging a path and flower bed in my garden

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Paul_B]

Never interested until a mineral processing degree. Mines are my interest. Living near the Lakes I'm in perfect territory. The Lakes is a truly industrial area that most visitors don't realize. Mining, gunpowder factories, quarries, lead mines, copper mines, silver and gold mines. The best, purest graphite source that helped defeat Napoleon!

Even farming is industry and the whole Lakes is evidence of that industry.

My original industrial interest started when my Dad showed me his rocks and mineral collection. Not big but it had a nice Galena sample. It became the start of mine and led to the mineral engineering degree. Interest in geology and walks that became an excuse to rummage throughlead mine waste heaps. The walk was just to link them together. Geological hammer was my favorite Xmas present when I was about 10.

If anyone is into mines Cumbria is something special in its variety. Then Yorkshire is so close with its numerous lead mines. Wales and Scotland for gold, Cornish tin obviously. We're a very mineral rich country. We'd starve if blockaded but would not run out of minerals. The only shortage is the rarer minerals used in electronics and uranium.

 

[Paul_B]

I actually live near old steelworks. That means charcoal burning, coppiced woods and later on coke ovens. Limestone is plentiful, still being quarried locally in several places. Iron from Furness was brought in to this small town to use the limestone and local charcoal then coke later on. There's a group being set up to look after the coke ovens, first meeting 4 or 5 months ago but I wasn't around. Seems there's pretty into industrial history round here.
Did once have a good chat with the group that explore and restore/maintain/dig out mines in the Hellvellyn area. They had just come out of one mine they had been digging out for several years.

 

[Harvestman]

It seems to me that every area has its speciality. I live right on the edge of the South Wales coalfield, so have masses of ironwork, steelworks, brick makers, tramroads, quarries and lime kilns, plus the associated railways, canal and tramroads. Yet if I go a mile or two east it is just rural agricultural. All the old industrial sites are those 'brownfield sites' that governements and local authorities are so keen on building houses on, typically destroying history and heritage in the process. Finding it before it is lost is what has got me into this.

 

[Goatboy]

Must admit to being more than a bit interested in it too. Growing up as a kid, and in later life I explored the auld Jute mills in Dundee, loved to be in old buildings and figure out what various rooms and locations were for. There's quite a catalogue of books on the subject and a few good museums in the area too. I do love the way that decoration was such a part of the fabric of the buildings too, I lived right next to Tempelton Carpet Factory for a while in my Glasgow days and it's a jewel of a building.

Also think that when you come across signs of industry in a seemingly remote area that it's very much worth a wander 'round to try and find the context of the thing in the landscape.

Cheers for posting up Harvestman, thought I was just being weird again.

 

[Joonsy]

I grew up in the Black Country so I was surrounded by industry, we used to play on spoil heaps, old coal mines, old tips, bomb holes and derelict land. There has been a big change over the years. The canals fell into disuse and some were filled in by rubbish and lost forever, though they have had a new lease of life with the rise in pleasure narrowboats, the character of the canal has changed from a working waterway to a place of relaxation, and in places old working basins have had upmarket flats built on them. With the rapid industrial decline in the 1970s/1980s many old places fell to the demolition man, huge swathes of industrial land lay waste and derelict for years. At the same time some of the old mines and derelict land we played on as kids was transformed into nature reserves and tourist attractions, the archaeologists moved in during the 80s and unearthed an old priory, the old derelict mansion we played in was turned into a working farm displaying the archaeological finds. There is an absolute wealth of industrial history in the Black Country, lots has changed over the years however there are still nuggets of old history lying in the undergrowth for those with an interest and a keen eye.

Here is an old narrow gauge railway line that transported coal from the mine to the canal, the bridge over it was a track to a mansion long since gone.

Lay of narrow gauge railway clearly seen despite nature trying to reclaim it

Lots of old brickwork and sandstone is found in the undergrowth nearby, and iron railings protruding through trees which have tried to grow round them.


This one not industrial (sorry, but hey!) this is the ancient well that gave Sandwell it’s name.

how the canals have changed, birmingham in the 1950s when it was still a working waterway

and now the same canal lined by coffee shops and overlooked by million pound flats

 

[xylaria]

Route 47 national cycle network. Llanelli to tumble. Outstanding ride through historical industrial wales that now is getting eaten back by nature. The bit above the resivour I have nick named the hanging gardens of llanelli. They blasted the railway route through the bedrock. It is now covered in ivy and ferns. The whole route apart from the hill out of the city goes up and down five metres .the lumpest county in the uk and victorians built a railway that was nearly flat to the transport of coal more efficient. I prefer the social history, the rebellious welsh stories that line the route.

I do like a nice sneaky around delirect workings. I know it is naughty, it aint history unless you are nosey.

 

[Harvestman]

Route 47 national cycle network. Llanelli to tumble. Outstanding ride through historical industrial wales that now is getting eaten back by nature. The bit above the resivour I have nick named the hanging gardens of llanelli. They blasted the railway route through the bedrock. It is now covered in ivy and ferns. The whole route apart from the hill out of the city goes up and down five metres .the lumpest county in the uk and victorians built a railway that was nearly flat to the transport of coal more efficient. I prefer the social history, the rebellious welsh stories that line the route.

I do like a nice sneaky around delirect workings. I know it is naughty, it aint history unless you are nosey.

Amazing that the engineers of the time could gut such things pretty much by hand. The Monmouthshire & Brecon canal passes right through the Brecon Beacons without a lock, on the longest stretch of lock-free canal in Britain, and has a gradient less than you find in a bathtub. All cut by hand. Impressive stuff.