Industry's toxicity is not new

Environmental degradation caused by industry is not new.  The patch of grey in the centre of this photograph - looking rather like a man's bald-spot - is a 'toxic tip', where the hillside is bare of vegetation.  It has been devastated for 100 years.

The patch lies just below the tiny adit (i.e. entrance to underground workings) of the old 'Dutchman's Mine', on Ecton Hill, where copper was mined up to the end of the nineteenth century.  Basically, as the spill came up from the deep mine, the miners chucked what they didn't want out of the entrance, where it then just accumulated on the slope.  The toxic minerals poisoned the surrounding few acres - as you can see.

I gathered these facts from a fabulous book of walks called 'In The Footsteps of Our Ancestors - Heritage Walks' by John Barnett, which is a terrific guide to the hidden history of the White Peak area. Definitely recommended.

Sewage in blue

It's not often that one is drawn to a sewage plant, but, in the early hour after dawn - tinged with blue, the Brancote-Tixall Sewage Works had a stillness all its own.

Dominated by beer

If ever a town was dominated by one industry, it's Burton by beer.  And if ever a town's beer industry was dominated by one brewer, it's Coors.

The American firm originally came to Burton to take over all of the Bass Beer firm's works - but, oddly, another firm actually walked off with the 'Bass' name.  So poor old Coors had to change all the branding in the town.  As you can see.

Once was employment

Pretty grim, isn't it?  Another example of 'ruin pornography' I suppose.

This photo was taken in the Stoke-on-Trent district of Middleport, an industrial area of former potteries which is extremely run-down. 
Strangely enough, a nearby working pottery, Burleigh, makes a virtue of this dire situation - describing itself as authentically Victorian - and so attracting tourists!

Massive - and abandoned

These massive walls at Froghall stand almost alone in the midst of a forested valley.  One wonders at first if they are the remains of a castle.

However, it's clear that they are built on to the side of a hillside - so castle they are not.

They actually are kilns - the doorways being where the raw material was loaded ready for firing. The raw material in this instance was limestone, quarried nearby, to make lime (for agriculture mostly).

It turns out this abandoned area - now a beauty spot - was a thriving industrial centre in the nineteenth century.   Ozymandias would have appreciated the irony.

'Ruin porn' in Stoke on Trent

I was reading in a newspaper about the photographers that travel to Detroit in America. They go there to photograph dereliction, because that once-great city is in decline and the scenes of abandoned factories, hopeless streets and decaying architecture make for striking visuals.
The article described this kind of photography as 'ruin porn', making the point that the photos are (paradoxically) attractive as well as disturbing.

Of course, in Staffordshire, you have something similar: poor Stoke-on-Trent offers many such photo-opportunities. It makes one grieve to see how sorry parts of it look.

I mean - whatever happened to this industrial park, rather grandiosely named the 'Lord Nelson Park', which can be found on the outskirts of Hanley?

This post was featured on the City Daily Portal Rust & Ruins theme