5.Scrambled City: Deindustrialisation and the Merging of Town and Country in late-Twentieth Century Britain
The original conception of the Garden Cities proposed a new relationship between town and countryside. This talk is about the fullest realisation in Britain of such a merging of the urban and the rural, not least in the Mark III New Towns of the 1970s, which were , bound together by networks of roads, telephone wires, and electricity pylons. The talk will keep in sight the fact that these processes happened in places with existing environmental and architectural histories, and intersected with other centrifugal processes such as electrification, deindustrialisation, suburbanisation, and automatability.
Presentation by assistant professor Dr Otto Saumarez Smith, Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Warwick. His most recent book is Boom Cities: Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain (Oxford University Press, 2019). He is currently researching and writing ‘The End of Urban Modernism in the 1970s’. He is a Trustee and Chair of the Casework Committee for the Twentieth Century Society
Welcome and thank you very much for joining us in in this series of talks so we wanted to look at uh the uh Landscapes of housing in a different and complimentary ways from the talks given at our Symposium on housing uh last November uh and those recordings are available from our fer
Website so in the first talk we visited uh government and local Authority archives with Katherine Flynn to learn about the many published planning proposals and goals which were set out from 1943 onwards and then how funding the Reconstruction of BL blitzed cities and housing was continuously undermined
And in secrecy for years and years by a treasury Committee in our second talk we’ve had leis Diaz showing us aund ways in which Architects have designed the approach from pavement to front door the last bit of our journey home and this included practical designerly and some very
Pleasing ideas mostly they’ve been added to or altered by residents for better or worse but the level and quality of design has diminished more recently perhaps because of new regulations Andor different types of developers and landlords so now there is less interest or awareness by developers in Aesthetics
But also in the significance of the journey to and from home for all ages in the household last week we stepped back um and John boutton gave a speedy and detailed history of many examples of different types of council housing and Estates across the UK there were many
Long threads running through his talk like living conditions money the Ambitions of different governments but also some key stops or starts including War and the perceived threat of a workingclass revolution which triggered the change from philanthropic housing endeavors into large-scale developments Innovation and a nationwide government responsibility Yan wster showed us some
Examples in the Netherlands uh in the in the last talk he set this against the background of a long history of City expansion outwards but also of Redevelopment arising from war and from City self-destruction in parts to accommodate New Roads and his examples were infill developments Architects challenging their briefs it seemed and
Developments fitting in with what families wanted subtle designs of more and less public outdoor spaces that you could read and understand the unwritten codes that were also full of interest and variation and flexibility these were established and have been refurbished rather than pulled down within a different system of home
Home ownership and most importantly where rents are fixed and so people can and do grow old there our last talk in this series is from assistant professor Dr Otto Su Smith who will bring us back to the UK and to the new towns and this
Was one of the talks that was part of the November foler Symposium so Oto is a lecturer in architectural history at the University of wari his most recent book is Boom cities architect planners and and the politics of radical urban renewal in 1960s Britain he’s currently researching
And writing the end of urban modernism in the 1970s he is a trustee and chair of the casework committee for the 20th century society and a very active contributor very active and informative contributor to Twitter about places and archives from all over the place so Otto the
Floor is yours thank you thank you very much um uh and uh uh it’s very weird talking into that so so um I I of course if I am talking to myself I wouldn’t know so um you know shout if you can’t hear but um thank you everybody for
Coming um so this talk um grows out of a book chapter a chapter for a book project I’m editing with Simon gum and Peter mandler um about the modern British City it’s going to be a really big book and I’m extremely pleased with the talents we’ve got writing for us one
Of the emerging themes is going to be the way that much of postwar urban history happened in places formed in the 19th century my chapter for the book takes three case studies of urban Landscapes that I found initially discombobulating and in needs some of some kind of historical exeresis
It needs more work to tie these case studies together and I’m presenting the material here as a work in progress and I’m looking for advice and help about how to do this thank you so here we go in 2001 the architect theorist and provocator Cedric price abbreviated the
Entirety of his entirity of historical Urban Development into a diagram showing three eggs traditionally cities have been tightly enclosed within their defensive walls like a boiled egg in its shell industrialization had seen these walls break out with the egg white suburbs escaping from a still yoky City
Center the provocation came with a third egg which has been scrambled a viscous mixture of city and suburb Town and Country bound together by networks of Roads telephone wires and electricity pylons the Victorian City had been created out of the centralizing force of the Railway an industrial revolution
Based on access to raw materials and the need for home and work being close proximity forces which were reversed through the centrifugal forces of electrification de-industrialization suburbanization and automobility Cedric price was an evangelist for this process he was one of the authors of a special issue of new Society named non
Plan which argued that instead of trying to counter spr all it should be embraced as it grew out of people’s aspirations and desires as non plan recognized this had happened despite the fact that it was anathema to most 20th century commentators on cities who instead called for higher density powered as the
Planner William Holford saw it by the utopian urge to reconstruct the core of the old Metropolis to bring order out of disorder to counter sprawl by concentration to create a symbol of efficiency a welfare City in a welfare state end quote CED ch’s provocations give the parameters the issues I want to explore
In this talk firstly I want to track some of the ways in which the distin strict distinction between cat Town and Country were eroded in particular places after 1945 secondly I want to track the way people both celebrated and denigrated this process thirdly I want to keep in sight
The fact that these processes happen in places with existing environmental and Architectural histories I am not like Cedric price an apostle for this history I am more equivocal it would be a mistake to ignore profound changes these shifts have had for the social life of Britain in these years not least the huge
Benefits to Public Health and infant mortality rates that ACR through lower densities but there were winners and losers in this process and this chapter links the scrambling of urban places with the process of de-industrialization a key contributing factor to shifting Urban morphology in many places the three places I have chosen to
Explore these issues Pro Show scrambling happening not just at the Suburban EDG lands of cities but also right in the heart of conations another of Cedric Price’s provocations was proposing the Royal agricultural show as his favorite City this was his ideal a briefly burning City on a tabular Raza created
From nothing and as a femoral as a funfare but British cities haven’t developed like this they are palest of a hypermodern with historically freighted places even though cities have become scrambled this scrambling is overlaid onto already existing PES perhaps Britain’s experience of urban change can best be liken to an
Omelet chunks of the old mixed in with the kind of scrambled mixture Cedric price liked but also defined by policies of Containment even the 1970s New Towns of Milton ke Washington or tford the closest actually existing places in Britain to Cedric Price’s vision of hyper decentralized modern cities these places are overlaying on top of places with existing histories tford is particularly instructed as a grure to the new town
Celebrated on the one hand you have a modern mixture of futuristic shopping centers forward-looking factories and multi-style housing Estates on the other there are the bare bricked industrial ruins the older Villages and towns numerous little pockets of meadow and Woodland and the much bigger areas of mature Parkland and the Wilder wooded
Places of the Ironbridge Gorge tford is a jigsaw of different elements end quot Ironbridge was one of a number of former settlements swallowed up within the Spring New Town of tord which was designated in the 1960s to take overspill population from the West Midlands conation tourists visit Ironbridge for
Its museums and Industrial Heritage sites as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and as a UNESCO world heritage site I suspect many of them are surprised to find these historic industrial attractions embedded within such a lushly Arcadian landscape in which the river 7 carves through steep wooded Hills on which dark reddish brown
Brick buildings precariously perch there isn’t a hint of the satanic here indeed it’s barely Urban although the visit focus of visitors is exclusively on earlier historical sites the landscape they experience is in large part a result of forgotten late 20th century history John Piper and John bman had
Visited the area for the shell guide to shopshire in 1951 and they found what they described as a broken and forlorn landscape of dead cures Branch Railways tileworks and iron foundaries lying among waste heaps now and then left bare for a common Sinister pools of black water end
Quote t for new town would transform this unsightly and dangerous mess into what the Development Corporation Called a Forest City tord was given a landscape plan that harnessed the vigorous forms left by dereliction merging them with massive projects of Earth molding tree planting and new grassland using their own Nursery the
Development Corporation planted in excess of 5 million trees resulting in approximately 80 square meters of wood land for every single resident of the new city tailford healed but did not erase the industrial paths there places resonant with industrial Heritage within the designation such as Ironbridge and C Brookdale were restored and celebrated
As an integral part of the new town project Telford is an odd place to visit it is spread out T dependent and has so little Urban grain it makes earlier New Towns like har or stevenage feel like Paris or Rome Telford gave many thousands of
People a decent place to live and was an astonishingly ambitious and ecologically sophisticated response to deindustrializing Landscapes but these achievements are forgotten because they are largely invisible you can’t see the new town for the trees there is or was until recently an exception to the relative invisibility of the profound late 20th century
Changes to the Shure landscape this was Ironbridge B power station which went online in 1969 with its four great 375 ft High cooling towers grouped into a gentle sequence running alongside the Contours of the wooded Hillside that rises up from the river 7 Ironbridge be was really big the cooling towers of Ironbridge
Right is higher than the cross smou in the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral the Spire at Salsbury is only 29t higher than the Ironbridge cooling towers here is the Sim scaled chimney at dra compared with yorkminster an invidious comparison as it turned out as the acid rain caused by
These power stations would wreck the Min minster’s external sculpture placed on a map of London a 2,000 megawatt Power Station would stretch from hi High Park corner to watero station despite the enormous scale of the concrete of the cooling tower they are only seven the concrete is only
7even in thick like an eggshell it is the shape which gives its strength Ironbridge B was one of 10 large set philosophy power stations that started Construction in 1960 to 1963 nicknamed The Hinton Heavies after the chairman of the Central electricity board Christopher Hinton Raina banam described The Hinton
Heavies as less of brick Cathedrals than concrete bunkers comparing them to the power stations of just a few decades previously such as jles Gilbert Scots bafy power station which could almost be swallowed whole by a single 1960s cooling tower these 1960s power stations share an aesthetic of Stark concrete monumentalism with other massive
Building projects this period from tower blocks to shopping centers to new universities Percy Thomas parip with a consultant Architects at Ironbridge B and their clipon cathedral in Bristol shows that something of this aesthetic of bloody-minded a land affected ecclesiology just as much as electricity production these power stations were
Perhaps the key monuments of the neophilia of the early 1960s when both both the conservative and labor parties appropriated the rhetoric of architectural modernism as part of their efforts to present themselves as capable of refashioning Britain among along new modern lines through a re-emphasis on Keynesian government stimulus the technocratic scientism of
The period is manifested in the Sleep control room of Ironbridge B the electricity produced by The Hinton Heavies would literally fuel the outward signs of AFS that were transforming British social life in this tar period Illuminating television and powering washing machines the 1957 electricity act had
Made it a statutary duty for the central electricity generating board to minimize the impact of power stations on the surrounding environment the so-called immunity cor whether or not you see an abstractly humanoid presence and cooling towers there is definitely something elementally graceful about the way that they make heavy concrete visually light
Through a tender hyperboloid curve beautiful on their own terms or not it took the projects landscape architect Kenneth Bo much Ingenuity to integrate these gigantic forms into the surrounding landscape so that they almost appear to grow naturally out of the hillside Mo’s approach to this seemingly impossible task was heavily influenced
By the advice set out in Sylvia Crow’s romantically written 1958 book the landscape of Power Cooling Towers were one of a number of revolutionary news shapes necessitated by mass electrification whose scale is Cosmic rather than terrestrial and the idea which its appearance should Express is the harnessing of universal forces to
The service of the earth these shapes are unlike any previous man-made conru their scale and lines of construction link them with the mind and force of the universes and not at all with the human body end quote she advised that it was imposs as it was impossible to conceal
Them it was best to inv divorce them from any surrounding humanizing detail so that it could become enveloped by the surrounding Countryside thereby becoming as impersonal as Hills at Ironbridge B the smaller scale and ilary buildings were therefore screened by trees and new Hills created out of excess oil Eat Your Heart Out
Capability Brown the Cuda Arch at Ironbridge B was the subdued odka colors coloring with the cooling towers concrete the initial plan was to color the towers of Cary green so that they would be camoufl amongst the surrounding bant Hillside boo repeatedly repeated mly had the Eureka moment whilst looking at the
Site from a top the nearby wrecking Hill when he noticed the ferous color of a recently plowed field the pallet makes me think of John ruskin’s argument his Proto eological 1858 lecture the work of iron in nature art and policy that so much of the beauty of English landscape and building
Was due to the presence in their composition of iron Ocha the color also hints that the fiery glob industry was depicted in paintings of the gorge in its late 18th century Heyday why was Ironbridge bu built in a structured Gorge for the very same reason that this
Area was a heart of the Industrial Revolution access to water and access to coal Coal to power the generator and water to cool the process each cooling tower handled 400 million gallons of water an hour it was hoped that the Hinton haries would revive an alien coal
Industry there is an irony here though as electricity was a fundamental cause of Britain’s de-industrialization and the resulting Geographic social polarization as it made Britain’s industrial heartlands increasingly irrelevant as jobs and prosperity went South with the pylons Co electricity with two industries that had been nationalized after the second world war meaning that
Ironbridge B would be at the center of the political upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s as a photograph of a woman eating by candlelight during a 1972 blackout illustrates Ironbridge B was intimately tied to its landscape but it was built during a period where architecture was becoming increasingly divorced from its environment
Electricity meant that buildings could have deeper plans because of electric lighting and heating or cooling could be achieved by artificial means prefabricated Building Systems broke the intimate relationship between a location and its building that had been celebrated by Ruskin and those influenced by him from Philip web Alec clipon
Taylor Ironbridge B was demolished in December 2019 when detonated cooling towers make a final little dance looking for a moment like fluttering fabric as they collapse into themselves emitting a mighty wave of dust changes in the way electricity is produced mean that all power stations are currently on the way
Out buildings crew meaning over the course of their lifespan what in the 1960s could be construed as a symbol of spreading prosperity and Home Comfort has become come a signal to the pracy of that era perhaps we should simply celebrate the passing of these megalithic monuments to a polluting and energy guzzling
Path as Marina Warner argued cooling towers symbolize heedless overflowing consumption with an ironic economy of form even in the 1970s the landscape architect Brenda Colin thought that there might be something ecologically suspect about finding Beauty in a cooling tower but as she argued those of us who have
Come to appreciate the remarkable beauty of these new forms and their dramatic sculptural quality remember that art has been inspired by battle scenes by Air Raids and by Raman flam all these like the sculpture of new technology May appeal to the eye if not to the mind the dispence the power station
Ironbridge is particularly poent this is a place that through an active program of conservation succeeded in transforming a deric landscape of Industry into a landscape of Tourism and Heritage although not from the 20th century historic England’s advice the date has been that cooling towers are not distinctive enough to deserve
Protection and now for my second section this section explores the St hilder’s area of middlesbor a place I visited for the first time in Spring 2022 whose Urban fabric I found extremely confusing North Yorkshire is one of the last was one of is one of the last
Counties of the buildings of England to have been revised though has now come out so I was armed only with the 1966 peva which advised I start my perambulations in the marketplace of the originally laid out town north of the station what I found there was bizarre the Old Town Hall of 1846
Survives but it is deric and shut up all around is Wasteland it is a deeply disconcerting place I have since discovered that I was as often traveling in the footsteps of another fenar Owen hle who fittingly described the lonely 1840s Town Hall amongst huge yawning open scrub land
Looking out toward cooling towers short of doubling for a post-apocalyptic film set it’s hard to see what exactly this place is becoming what exactly is being done here what the purpose of the clearance of its population quote the architectural critic Ian Nan has a quote I aspire to that whereas
People normally go to town centers to shop or to have a meal I go there to read them like a detective novel to try and unravel what has gone wrong what has gone right how the shape is end quote St hilders was a crime scene who was the
Murderer I had four witnesses an historian a painter a sociologist and an architect planner I started my investigation with a chapter on Middlesboro in Ace of Brigg’s 1963 book Victorian City this is a brav of History writing which uses the booster High rhetoric of Victorian pmic to convey the sheer
Excitement of a place which in 1829 had a population of only 40 people and by 1901 had grown to over 19,000 Brigg’s book is written in declared opposition to Lewis mord’s characterization of insenser industrial towns and he wanted the reader to share in the Vitality of these places that excited contemporaries
Gladston famously described Middlesboro as that infant Hercules Briggs describes the forces that created this concatenation of people first the arrival of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1830 secondly the discovery of iron ore in the Cleveland Hills and thirdly the need for workers to live in close proximity to their
Work photographs and hilders in the 19th century capture something of the quality that led Briggs to describe middlesbor as the British Ballarat but as Briggs explains St hilders wasn’t just the wild west but was a paternalistically planned area writing that it is a tragedy that in an
Age of deliberate New Town building this fascinating example of 19th century town planning has been almost destroyed in recent years in his introduction RS defines the period covered by Victorian cities as being as between the coming of the Railway and the coming of the automobile where the railway had led to
The concentration of urban populations the automobiles scattered the cities pushing them further and further away from their mid Victorian uh centers to new suburbs 1963 when Victorian cities was published was the year that symbolically traffic accidents over to tuberculosis as the as the biggest cause of
Death it was also the year of Colin Buchanan’s report traffic in towns and Briggs specifically asked whether his own generation might be able to match the confidence of the Victorian Railway Builders when integrating motorways into cities it is perhaps also suggested the 20th century forces that 1963 is also
The year that Briggs himself a classic hugarian scholarship boy from Keithley moved from Civic Northern leads University to the modern Southern University of susset my second witness uh is the painter John Piper who visited middlesbor in 1946 which through his eyes was still essentially the Victorian City although
He advised that it was to Atmosphere rather than architecture that the student of the 19th century should visit this smoke pickled place as the founder with John bman of the shell guides hyper was an early Enthusiast for the Victorian and at Middlesboro he was especially keen on the
Pubs the rise of the gy palace coincided with the rise of middle and its pubs deserve a monograph he wrote It’s still to be written he recommended a tourist to Middlesboro walk along the slag tips as these were the only land mass above 16 or 20t above sea level he wrote beyond
The foreground of gray and red OAS flag and Beyond the broken Port Clarence Works lies middlesbor again in its Brown Haze with blacken St Hilda’s Spire Victorian towers and cupulas and the handsome transportal Bridge making the Horizon more prickly than it already is with its chimneys and B furnaces and Cy gear
He painted the the scene Piper also visited St hilders his description of it matches own haes of 70 years later for post-apocalyptic Pros today the square of St hilders is one of the most industrial Town sites it is deserted shops are boarded up many houses windowless many Lots vacant dust
Swirls in the wind past the unpainted house fronts it looks as if a plague has visited it this is not the effect of depression or of war and bombs Middlesboro has been little bomb but the result of the rapid and uncontrollable growth of the place which induced the
Running up of subsidiary rows of houses in parallel streets between the original ones so that the whole District developed into an uninhabitable slum and has now ceased to be a center of population quot my third witness was sociologist Ruth glass who published her study of middlesbor social background to a plan in
1946 she agreed with Piper and Briggs that the central fact of the town and of its problem was its 19th century development but not only are middleb problems now all intertwined but they all derived from one common cause 19th century Le Fair uncontrolled development has caused all the cumulative maladjustments it has continually
Widened the social cleavages within the town it cannot be allowed to persist St hilders was at the butt of this process hemmed in on the North by the iron Master’s District the dots and the river teas the town was spred Southward the most prosperous the more prosperous family was the farther out
Did it move away from the original center of the town the poor people were left there on either side of the Railway living in rows and rows of little brown streets in Cottages which were cheaply and hastily built by the Jerry Builders of the last century while Suburbia spread out the Old Town
Deteriorated so that so that by now most of it is a blighted area and urgently in need of reconstruction she nevertheless contrasted the sociability of the slums with that of the spacious and Barren suburbs which she described as shapeless disjointed and frigid Ruth glass’s work was done as part of a
Wartime plan by the architect planner Max L this plan brought together an astonishing range of multi-disciplinary expertise a collection of simitar Minds in lot sprays women including Justin Blanco white jacn twit and Mary Crowley later Med a veritable roster of the first generation of trained female AR
Whove been chronicled by Lyn wal and darling my witness here is going to be the architect planner Jessica Albury who did the survey and planning of some hilders as well as the section on housing in an unpublished short autobiography auy describes the experience as a turning point in my life
Both as an exercise in Democratic consultation and for the Insight I obtained into the nature of the industrial nor and the history of the steel industry she explained that the broken windows slatless roofs and empty Builders a plain called to Sea on every side of the small Enclave
Formed by the residential area of St hilders have spread the activities of the heavy steel industry steel Works blast furnes furnaces railway lines dots the air is heavily polluted by smoke at a concentration of over 450 t tons per square mile perom 98% of the population wanted to
Move to another house 60% wanted to live amongst new neighbors it had already suffered massive population decline from 12,400 people in the 1931 census to an estimated 6,500 postwar although still at a net residential desert 230 person the AC with 83% of houses without a bar there
Was only 0.5 Acres of open space per thousand person health statistics especially impant mortality rates were the worst in the town auy concluded that a quote it is certain that the whole neighborhood is in such a state of dilapidation that only entire clearance and rebuilding in a single operation will enable the
Rehabilitation to take place between 19 55 in 1985 um one and a half million houses in Britain were demolished through St clearance measures displacing around 366 million people the Victorian Rose of workingclass housing which had been the focus of enormous levels of State intervention throughout the middle years
Of the 20th century the symbol of everything that political progressives were fighting against has since gained a nostalgic SE Sheen as sites of traditional close-knit Community which had been destroyed through slam clearance celebrated from sociology to soap operas the archive is silent on such issues in middlesbor but in St hildas
The public health benefit of clearance seemed incontrovertible Eric Christopher dower chief medical officer wrote of the houses in the compulsory purchase area they are in my judgment unfit for human habilitation habitation utterly incapable of being rendered so fit at reasonable cost and I am of the opinion that the most expedient way of
Dealing with a house in this area is that the demolition of the lot with a view to possible Redevelopment of the site when demolition had started the burrow engineer advised that nothing should be salvaged from the houses and all the woodwork burned it is far from
Being a matter of Burman or lice but lice alone there are bugs and there is woodworm and one simply does not want any of that wood moved about or take and taken possibly into other houses to start the whole business up again when we are by slum clearance attempting to
Stamp that sort of thing out auy proposed a small community of 2,250 people on the site there is no room here for a Garden City she wrote but while maintaining the spacious character of the original pan it will be possible by the provision of three story
Blocks of flats for two person and some threers families together with hostiles for single families end quote now this was the moment of surprise in my research au’s neighborhood plan more or less came to pass although 9/10 of the demolition happened after 1958 one of the very few photographs I
Can find of the scheme shows a classic pedestrian Precinct with a Victorian Town Hall turned into a Health Clinic underneath my feet in the Wasteland that hiton hilders had become were buried two victims the Victorian City that i’ had been searching for and a postwar cityscape that had vanished Without a
Trace talk about the brief life of social democracy the 1980s saw some of its own attempts at regeneration of an area it saw as already suffering severe social and environmental problems including the buildings of building of houses for sale these were completed as late as 1987 but they too have
Disappeared there was also a scheme which converted what were described as a series of typical but highly unpopular balcony access Flats by giving them a more homely image through pitch roofs and vernacular stylings and changing the landscape to create defensible space with communal spaces between blocks attractively landscaped and closed off
Was K the sa all of this is also gone the building of the a66 flyover in 1986 further isolated St hilders from the rest of the Town North middles bront including St hilders was rebounded middle Haven in 1986 following the 1980 closure of the nearby
Dots I think clearance can be tied to a moment in the late 1990s when Middlesboro was attempting to attract private investment for property development although Will ot’s grandiloquently iconic middle Haven plan the nearby Dot site uh came to nothing a vica who left the area in 1995
Which she described then as a thriving Vibrant Community with some pride returned to find it cleared in 2000 it happened over a short period of Time 5 years that’s all when I came back I couldn’t believe it the decay of St hilders has not been over decad has been
Swifter and more devastating for it there is a current plan for the site pushed for by the boish mayor of Middlesboro Andy Preston who told the guardian recently when it comes to places like middlesbor with Decades of Master plans they’ve all got one thing in common they never
Happen St Hilda’s is an extreme petri dish of urban change a grim cycle of architectural Harry K the layers of change in St Helens mat comfortably onto the way we commonly periodize change in the postwar period not least in urban history to remve from a Social Democratic to a neoliberal
Poity the post 1945 and hilders created by experts and borne aoft by modernism certainly looks like the welfare state in concrete m mb’s botched attempts to pitch for ethereal Global development Capital to C compensate for a devastated industrial sector also looks a lot like neoliberalism I don’t want to totally
Discount this social democracy to neoliberalism line as a meta narrative especially as Middlesboro was clearly at the sharp end of a post 1979 political settlement but the case study I think also points to another meta narrative for understanding historical chame since 1945 the long unraveling of Victorian Urban
Structures all of my Witnesses agreed that the overriding facts of middlesbury In the postwar period were the Aftershock of its 19th century history one last vision of St hilders is the astonishing bwood model of the area made recently by am historian and model maker Steve Walla it is based on
Victorian Maps but with its Bunting and Morris miners appears to be set in a prelapsarian and post-war period which of course never existed the utopian imaginary of mixing Urban and Countryside that underlay so many of the attempts to reform the dense Victorian City from ebener Howard onward
Ironically has ended up here with a different mergin of Nature and the urban A Wasteland no wonder perhaps that we long for the Victorian City case number three de-industrialization has been posited as the key meta narrative for understanding postwar British history but it was a process that can be tracked
Not just in the economic data of job losses and closing factories but as a process which inscribed itself onto Landscapes a 1961 photograph of the euphoniously named atoria Hall in stoon Trent which had been the home of the celebrated 18th century Potter jiah Wedgewood shows the house belor amongst
The Shelton Iron and Steel works with the gigantic handy deep pit slag looming behind as perner wrote from the site from his house Wedgewood could look across landscape to the canal inspired by him and The Works built by him now that view is all desolation for pevner Stoke on Trent was an urban
Tragedy here is the seat of a National Industry here is the 14th largest city in England and what is it mean little towns hoplessly connected Now by factories by streets of Slammy Cottages or by better suburban houses here is no Center to the whole not even an attempt at
One Stoke on Trent has long been a city which mix the urban and the rural in disconcerting ways it is a polycentric City being composed of six towns rather than the five towns immortalized by the novelist Arnold Bennett although as the potteries its most famous industry is
Ceramics the reason for this form is that five of the six towns follow the thin line of the staish of Co SE mined in the great pits at chatley Whitfield snade Norton racetrack Hanley deep and Florence cies for every ton of clay needed by Wedgewood he needed 10 tons of
Coal the poet Charles Tomlinson was born in 1927 in ston Trent and grew up overlooking aoral and his attempt to capture the genius lokai of the place stressed its formlessness it straggles are Haggard Valley lets through discouraged greenness by Ash chips or where the street giv out in cindry in between the
Hills swell Upland free of it to where behind the whole vapory patchfield Battlefield the cows stand steaming in an aid Wind the strangeness of this landscape was perhaps best captured by Leonard Griffith Brammer into war bins which show a now largely lost landscape of tightly knit towns Rising like Islands from desolate wastelands and peopled by Lowes craft Pickers under heavily polluted Skies smudgy depicted ramma was particularly good at
Recording the strange shapes of bottle smoking kills like so many monstrous bottles at its peak just before the second world war 2,000 bottle pills stood dominating the landscape today there are only 47 WG hoskin’s guy book The East Midlands written for the about Britain series provocatively josed AA shots of
Stoke and Oxford and although the comparison is meant by Hoskins the disadvantage Stope it suggests the industrial Sublimity of this Urban landscape had more of this landscape been preserved the potteries would have been in a better position to make a Heritage asset of its industrial history nevertheless even in a place
Where considerable built fabric survives such as at the beautiful spod work famous for producing iconic blue like China which only ceased production in 2008 the buildings are now empty and deteriorating a 2011 local master plan a manance of Spode Works were used to house market style retailing with the
Atmosphere of a Bazaar a museum artist Studios Galleries and creative workspaces the model cited for such generation a Neil’s yard in Cent Garden in Camden LW the reinterpretation of the value of Victorian buildings from a slum into a commodity is a remarkable change of the last 50 years but in a country with
Growing Regional po social polarization location is immensely important by all these processes laid out this is as true for the everyday Terrace house as for Grand factories Victorian or Edwardian houses were being sold for increasing amounts of money in Hackney or Campell well while structurally distinguishable teres were being demolished as
Unsellable in places like stoon Trent through the housing market renewal addition which R from 2002 to 2011 Arnold Bennett described Stoke Smoky atmosphere as transforming ugliness into a beauty transcending The Works of Architects in time the smoke has gone with the kills thanks in large plot to the Clean Air
Act in 195 6 and the implementation of smoke control zones of 1959 1972 Margaret drael in her 1975 biography of Arnold Bennett reminisced about returning to Sheffield where she spent her childhood I was expecting to look out of the window and see those Soul destroying Grim industrial perspectives but in fact
I looked out the Sun was shining the hillsides were glittering Green Fields ringed The Horizon it was all bright and sparkling and I felt as if I malign the place completely in my memory a similar change has of course overtaken sto on Trent buram no longer appears from the height
Of snake green to lie in a heavy pool of smoke an amate photographer and historian of sto explained that he had to wait until the weights week in 1953 to capture this view of Victoria as it was invisible the rest of the year like much of the landscape of stok on
Trent The View that PNA looked at took in from atoria hall now a Best Western hotel has totally transformed the city retains the feeling of sudden J’s position though of two sudden contrast between the urban running out into awkward Greenery and or dereliction during the 1970s the slag
Would become the centerpiece of the Forest Park the Landscape Architects here mold rather than flattened the flag heaps of stoke and aimed for an ecologically Rich stretch of landscaped Countryside with the life cycles and sight of sounds and sights and smells of the countryside in 1978 Bill morland’s
Portrait the poies could describe the changes happening to sto on Trent with excitement the most obvious change in the landscape he wrote is in the landscape he work M holes are now fields and ornamental Lakes pit heaps have vanished there is no longer a pool of
Smoke over The Valleys a brave new face is beginning to smile through the moonscape of the Past end quot stoon Tren has the most Green Space per inhabitant of any British city that was not a new town it is it is often scruffy and un scruffy and unmanicured urban
Countryside the Wedgewood Factory had already moved out to Suburban biston in 1939 although parts of the Iron Works continued to operate until 2000 atoria was the site of the second Garden festival in 1986 an attempt by the then conservative government to harness private development to reclaim DK land for the
Property Market the garden festival’s Landscapes of model Gardens Cascades and rockeries were shortlived and much of roria is now a retail Park of large anonomous sheds as Matthew Rice describes it the area was subsequently turned into to a new I SW to replace the industrial the old industrial one the worst sort of
Retail part with supermarkets and a multiplex cinema all placed within a formalist plan designed for car exis only and so with more buildings more more roads than buildings Stoke I’m afraid has often listed feelings of Despair when Richmond C cman visited Minister of Housing and local government in
1966 he he wrote here is this huge huge Gastly combination of Five Towns what sense is there in talking about rurban renewal here other towns have a shape a center some place where renewal can start perhaps University if one spent Millions on this gasty collection of slag Heats pools of water old potteries
Deserted coal mines there would be nothing to show the money SED price who this chapter started with was from Stone a town just to the south of potteries so he knew the landscape intimately his grandfather ran a firm that created dies for the pottery industry he was also disparaging a bit writing that as far as the physical environment goes it is a disaster area largely unchanged and uncared for since
The 1960 the 19th century but with his Pottery think belt scheme of 1966 to 7 he imagined a new kind of Civic mobile University geared towards lifelong learning grafted onto this deric landscape in Price’s imagination Stokes deric Acres wouldn’t be returned to some preap area in urbanity indeed he was
Explicit in war in wanting to avoid any idea of Ideal towns for civic design a photo montage used to illustrate the scheme provocatively shows his lowrise conglomeration of lightweight housing units plac amongst the Wasteland of Hanley the snade tip Rising behind the housing units proposed by its price with aggressive disrespect for
Conventional primness would be named sprawl battery capsule and crate and were especially designed for sighting on the subsidence prone ground the planners and architects of the 1960s were often criticized for giving up on tradition price a fanatic neopil attack them from the opposite end seeing the architectural production of
The period as little better than the Middle Ages with electricity is my conclusion pottery’s Sy belt never materialized although it was prophetic about the need to find new identities for industrial communities price was also surely right that much of this new Urban for form would emerge out of the carpass of the
Old we tend to tell the history of postwar Britain from a very limited range of places whose modernity is palpable London a limited number of inner city areas the New Towns Blitz centry and large cities such as Manchester Birmingham lead Sheffield glasow and Liverpool most Urban places in Britain
Don’t look like Park Hill or the barin or Milton keing or Cal we need postwar Urban histories of interia Chesterfield crew Darby Dudley folston Grimsby Harley pool Keithley Newport Paisley Port Talbert reading scarra scumthorp swinden tadcaster torb Watford Wigan and Reon all of these towns are 19th century
Places which obviously also have a late 20th century history 20th century British history Urban history uh 20 Century British history didn’t just happen um in places that were new and modern but as the geographer Doran Massie recognized I quote amid the Ridley Scott images of world city the writing about skyscraper
Fortresses the bodri visions of hyperspace most people actually live in places like hon for West Brom much life for many people even in the heart of the first world still consist of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes thank you very
Much are you is anybody still there I’m here I’m here AO um I’m just recuperating from that incredible talk which was stuffed with fascinating and stimulating stuff I’m also shocked at the fashions that um shown on your um pictur of The Stoke garden festival which of course was very much part of my
Early adult life did I look like that at that age sorry sorry if I was over rude about it I love that picture with the um the weird scale of the Cy winding gear behind it very um if only they’d work with what was there oh well was wonderful idea they
Were I mean I do admire the land used Consultants plan for the and they have um to keep the winding gear and they say it can be could have been like Stokes Eiffel power which is very good but sadly do didn’t happen the world of L missed opportunities um we have some questions
For you if I may um Annabelle D is more of a comment but I’d like to turn it into a question she says the often overlooked fatri Booth worked alongside Kenneth booth on the landscape of iron Ironbridge memo we need to raise her profile is that something otter you were
Aware of or is she so buried that it didn’t come through in your research search uh please give me yeah please give me that um I didn’t know that oh um I’m very um and and that’s um I didn’t wish to embarrassing do do you want do you want to say anything about
That no no I didn’t mean to embarrass you either certainly but I it was an opportunity I’ll go away no no don’t go but but yes it was an opportunity for fer than um um any in any way criticis I mean I I do I mean sort of it’s inut
Because you um it’s sh you know that profession I think you know is the um the ambition of them in the you know to to Really sort these things out and it’s you know and um it’s I mean there are other people working on this um as well as me
It’s it’s a profession which um give scope for women to really make a political difference and and the way they transform um it from you know building Gardens um for the wealth into something absolutely at the heart of economic regeneration and a political project I don’t I I don’t need to tell anybody
Here that but I me it’s it’s it’s it’s a terrific story so well there may be sorry to interrupt Helen there may be um papers of hers in the at the archive in M okay will you will you will yes I’m I’m on it good man thank
You um a question from me I’m afraid can I take you back to tford I’ve I’ve driven on the motorway past tford so many times ironically on my way to rexam um and I have never been there isn’t that terrible admission much the same way that I’ve never been to
Middlesburg but been through it on the train a few times anyway um you suggest that arbridge b was intimately tied to its landscape do you think that tford Forest City harnessing its derel industrial landscape is equally closely tied and as a r that are the modern residents aware of the
Landscape which their new town replaced I think I mean it’s it’s an odd it’s a very odd place to visit um and you know I I was there visiting um you know in Ironbridge and um I I I haven’t really pled I I don’t drive and it’s not an easy place to get
Around um and I I was there and there was something called the silk in way um and I was oh there silk oh I’m in a new town that’s what that’s why this place is so so odd um uh and you know really is it really is formalistic the original plan it was
Going to have the population of um Milton ke but it’s lar you know it didn’t it didn’t make that population and it it spread out and and curious but it was it was I don’t know how I don’t know um and I talked to a lot of people there and one
Of the things about you know that that kind of because it was early Mining and they didn’t really know you know when they came in it was extremely dangerous um someone I I they talked about the their um was digging in the garden and you know you know the Spade just disappeared because
You know and they didn’t know where the mines were and there were problems with subsidence and there strange pools of water and it was it was and also it was it was really horrible I mean it was you know I think that the post-apocalyptic um uh so the you know the achievement of
Of um um the Development Corporation there I think is I’ve got a I’ve got a piece coming out on it which um it hasn’t really been it hasn’t really been it’s not one of the ones which is written about but I I I think that element of um the new town
Project not just as um about dispersal but as for for economic regeneration um is um uh something that might be um might be uh uh you know inspirational um all of those Mary New Towns remain amongst the past growing economic areas in Britain it looks like a success
Although it’s it’s very difficult to get your get your teeth into yes I can believe that indeed sorry I’m actually I’m not on top of I I’ve been it’s got fabulous archival records um and you know I think the the development corporations often were um were superb record Keepers but I I
Don’t have a sense of who the people really were who the you know they’re not um so if Annabelle or anybody can help me with that kind of you know peopling that story um I mean of course you know the landscape is I think about 5% of
What they have to um spend um is is on landscape so it’s a small part of the economic success is about is about um is about uh other kinds of infrastructure and uh uh you know they have an active process of of um you know um Regional
Boost boosting but um I I think it’s I think it’s a wonderful model can can I just follow up on one thing very quickly then the the new TS as record Keepers were they keeping records of where they were going or where they had or where the site had
Come from no I I don’t I mean it I’m just you know I think it’s it’s 180 boxes um the rosbury archive I’ve done I’ve done um you know I think I I think a lot of the work you know so middles spra I went to the
Papers there and it’s very you know they don’t operate in a operate in a very different way a local Authority okay thank you I mean I I I I I I I’m sure it’s going to skewer um the way that we tell Urban histories so you know I mean the frustration of um
My my my days both in um uh both in Stoke or middlesbor archives um and you know decisions are made I I think I mean that might may be a response to the Democratic deficit of a um Development Corporation but they they you know they’re acting I mean also that you know
They have to they have to um justify themselves to central government um it’s it’s a totally different thing to um the often uh uh you know often big decisions which you can you know the evidence is there when you walk around and you try and find evidence for it
It’s a a single a single um sentence in the minute book um yeah yeah thank you um Mike says early industry of Ironbridge and cdale later spread much more wide widely across what became Telford the Glenwood iron works at kley much further north is just one example of Iron Works several
Of which were still in operation as the new town developed two of the sorry my computer’s just lost me the information two of the deep pit coal mines were still in operation into the 1970s the iron works at forse West I hope I pronounced that right west of Dy
Were famed to it will be informative to consider how the Landscaping of the new town did or did not affect areas such as these the Town Park contains mine waste tips that have been left and planted over the Telford Development Corporation celebrated a former M own Isaiah Jones
Who had been their Deputy chairman by placing Isaiah’s Stone on a retained pit Heap overlooking the emerging New Town in other areas the industrial landscape was flattened to provide space for housing and Industry what scope do you envisage for a closer study of the extent which the new landscape ah here’s
An interesting word uh are you there Mike can you just translate the rein re bit at the I didn’t finish I’m so sorry would you like to finish sound like it sounds like Mike knows more about this than I do so so let him let there’s always one in the audience
Isn’t there I’m just a bit of background is um I worked for the Development Corporation from 1972 to 1981 um when I I arrived to work in the Social Development Department running their a research group um there were short of space so I shared an office with the chief landscape architect Dave
Wasle as they were drawing the um plan for Forest City and the whole of the landscape team were collaborating to to draw that plan um but I do think it’s interesting to examine the extent to which landscape hid the industrial history or at points actually um highlighted it and
I think probably both those things are present but I just wonder whether You’ explored in that kind of Direction in in that I think my main point is is not all about cbrt Dale and arbridge um yeah certainly it’s industry spread o over three quarters of the area um and
Um some of it is large scale and much much later um in fact surface um opencast coal mining in just west of the city center in the 1970s um so you know there’s several industrial histories and and the landscape probably treated differently in each of those areas sorry I’m I’m say
Let’s um let’s have a chat about this um some you’re a useful Source um that’s fantastic I should very pleased to very pleased to meet you um I think you know there’s this moment I don’t know you know maybe you were there but there’s this moment where the landscape team
From Milton keing comes to tford and they’re just like wow this is so great up here you’ve got so much more potential and I mean that’s that’s sort of I me I’ll I’ll see I’ve got um a piece coming out about the Leisure potential o of that kind of you know I
Think you know that moment in the 1970s that that that’s one of the things that’s coming that is sort of you know firing an idea of potential that we’re going to we’re entering what Michael D called the the age of leisure and you know this would um you you know that you’d work
With what was there um and you and these places which um uh are being reinterpreted um and they um you know and T is incredibly ambitious and I do it’s very it’s I don’t know whether it’s it’s very funny when Milton ke comes and they’re just
Like w you’re so lucky you’ve got this abandoned pit you know and that is a reinterpretation of course the the story is going on of the um birth of industrial Heritage at the same at the same moment um so so so it’s an inspiring place and it’s nice to nice to meet a
Veteran be pleased to talk more Helen could I just make a different point about the earlier Point Auto made about um The Archives of tford um I think the the main reason the archives are so good is that our registry um of shared filing was run by a trained librarian and and a
Trained archist rather than administrators so they ran it as a potential archive and one of them then subsequently work for the Shure archives um so um that is probably the main reason the ariv so so good but it’s sort of true of other development corporations but um you can feel that
It’s not been it’s not been um it’s not been fully cataloged yet but I I can I can I can you know um any um um anyone looking for um a PhD subject you know I mean it’s it’s a it’s a marvelous thing it is so yeah The Unsung unsung um Heroes
So whoever was putting it you know my my my my than Mike thank you so much for that that was brilliant thank you for um unmasking and talking to us um will you send me an email Mike um I put the we can we can do
The dating agency bit yeah you just let me have your email address and I’ll if you put it on the chat maybe that’s really helpful thank you yeah I always think of Milton ke to extend the egg um metaphor is a bit like spaghetti carbonara or is that a really
Unfortunate um parallel anyway moving swiftly on jinnie says and I think this could be another really interesting Conta my partner is originally from kids Grove just north of stokol Trent so I’ve become familiar with the area over the 13 years or so I’ve been visiting regularly there’s been a notable
Deterioration in the Town Center in Hanley it’s become like a ghost town so it it seems sorry can I just readjust my set go to town my impression is that big out of town retail Parks may be to blame for a city with a series of town centers I’ve been told Hanley is
Especially Hanley especially used to be very different it seems such a shame because I can see it could be a place with much to offer surrounded by some lovely country side and canals any thoughts I mean I I realized I was giving that and exp you know Stoke
Really doesn’t need someone to say oh what a but and what should Come maybe didn’t come across is that I just I I absolutely adore it there um I I’ve sort of I’ve really fallen for it it’s got I’ve been spending quite a bit of time there and I find it sort of I find the I I find it’s just disconcerting this
Very you know very exciting and the fact that there are moments of beauty and some wonderful buildings there um and it’s sort of unknown and then just the depth of that industrial history and these and and that that that is you know um it’s I find it very exciting um I can
Tell I’ve been teaching this course um called uh architecture and urbanism in the Midlands um for my um and my history of art um third years I took to took to spoke on Trent and i i i i s of I think I I think I may may may have
Convinced some to share my excitement for it but it’s a tough cell um and it it um uh and they continue to um each time I you know that the um I I I I wish preservation um was um had been uh we’ve just got a beautiful 60s Library um up
The 20th century Society um which um uh is has been shut down and I think is on the way out unless we can put a um listing thing in and it has had a random ey and I think that that sort of thing happens quite a lot um and so it’s a
Tough place to it’s a tough place about but um I I hope it wasn’t just I I don’t um I don’t want my I don’t want my talk just to be you know um that kind of Rich of cossman idea that it should be back
Reged it’s got It’s got a lot to say for it yeah thank you for that um Helen asks were development corporations funded better than local authorities and had legal responsib and had legal responsibilities for archiving project documentation sorry on I hope I’ve read that appropriately oh that’s very yeah yeah Yes actually I
Mean Mike’s answer to that I thought was actually was really helpful and um uh uh that and thank you Tim that’s a good that that’s a good answer and actually there was a but people people are going to begin to you there’s a lot of very good historical work coming out that um
At the moment and I I I think it’s not although Ted as far as I feel um are you know T’s going to be my one at the moment but I mean that there are other people working on all sorts of you know those terrific work on lots of them and including
Um brilliant work on the Scottish New Towns um and I I think at some you know at some point there’s going to be a uh you know it’s going to be unbalanced because it’s it’s it’s a very small um uh it’s you know an unusual part of Urban
Development did um sorry I think we’ve also had the were development corporations funded better than local authorities have we been there yet I think that was the one we just had yes that’s fine and then um Tim’s comment for archiving a new town C record management PhD by David Robert Briggs is
That any relation to historian ASA Briggs I don’t know Tim do you want to tell us or is is is that irrelevance in tonight’s talk probably is um jinny says um thanks for coming back Jun I agree with a lot of what you say Otto my own feelings about Stoke are very
Mixed and I think that is our last question can I just perhaps again from the L SC per if you ask one more is both Stoke and Telford are constructed on Industrial former industrial Landscapes how much how different are the resulting New Towns how much is due to the differences
Or the similarities in their industry of the past and how much is due to differences in um development corporations planners and so forth I mean I I you know there were a lot of constraints in t they had this thing called the measles map about you
Know about and um there were places you couldn’t you know you couldn’t build um uh and I you know I think that that that’s pushing that’s pushing it and and certainly you know this of co under is why um Stoke is dispersed Um but but but I suppose you know I mean my larger sort of uh uh uh push for here is that you know I mean this is true but you know this is you know 20th century Urban history happens in places with existing environmental histories um and you can’t tell it that’s what’s
That’s what’s excited about it and I think so you know so much of our you know of especially history has talked about in places that are you know completely new and um uh what I’m what what I’m excited about at the moment is the you know the that feeling of
Paleness um yeah absolutely yeah thank you very much jiny has also said thank you so much for fascinating talk and I think we would all say the same Annabelle are you there can I pass this back to you I am indeed thank you thank you Otto so much that was really
Brilliant I think and what’s really exciting is that um we’ve got Richard Fenley who was part of the land use consultant team at Stoke who’s given us a talk but he’s available to you know he was part of that original group and also you’re taking their
Archives which um I I’ve used a bit am I right oh right uh I don’t know there was a sorry I’m not sure how much say about this there were there there was some um slowness of acceptance of their archive at uh by okay I I I mean I’ve been through it
It’s it’s an amazing thing and they were doing you because they were consultants for the cold boardin things yes oh fantastic oh brilliant well if you can let Merl know how wonderful it is I need they need an academic rubber stamp to get it through and the other
Person is Alan Simpson who was landscape architect at tford I don’t know if you’ve spoken to him or not no I haven’t I think we need to do a whole big session on Telford I think and I think that would be fantastic and I think each of these talks then has has spun
Out tentacles to other things which is just so brilliant so Otto thank you for opening our eyes and our hearts thank you I’ve really enjoyed it that’s great that’s great thank you everybody