Passing down the A5 today I recalled it's ten years since I started this thread on HJ following demolition of the first of the 800foot masts at Rugby Radio:
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=23472
What landmarks have gone (or appeared) since?
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 17 Jun 14 at 19:16
|
You mentioned the cooling towers looming at Tinsley viaduct in that thread, now gone.
On the same stretch, there was to the immediate west/south of the M1 what we used to call the "big firework". A tallish thin chimney with flames and a sulphurous smell coming out of the top. I guessed at it being Orgreave coking plant, but I don't know whether it was or not. The firework display stopped long before your post in 2004, before in fact I moved south in '93, but when I was travelling between Yorkshire and London a lot in the late 80s it was a welcome harbinger of home.
Last edited by: Manatee on Tue 17 Jun 14 at 20:00
|
Now you mention it I remember that too. Flamestack like that of an oil refinery at the north end of Tinsley viaduct?
I'd place Orgreave further south, nearer to junction 33 and Rotherham but the site mentioned was certainly something to do with extracting tar type products from coal. I've an idea my Dad, who was in the dyes/chemicals trade, knew something of it but he's no longer around to ask.
|
I seem to recall two smelly spots south of Tinsley.
One was the Orgreave coking plant west of the M1 just south of the junction with the M18 and the other, I think, was a smokeless fuels plant a little bit further south and to the east of the M1.
I can't remember anywhere smelly north of Tinsley unless the Izal loo-roll factory at Chapeltown had a test facility ;-)
|
>> I can't remember anywhere smelly north of Tinsley unless the Izal loo-roll factory at Chapeltown
>> had a test facility ;-)
You may not be that far off the mark. Izal was but one product of a firm with multiple fingers in the coal, iron and chemical industries:
www.gracesguide.co.uk/Newton,_Chambers_and_Co
|
There used to be, in the fifties, an enormously tall TV and telephone mast on North Hessary Tor on Dartmoor. Just nearby is a vast, deep quarry dug by French Napoleonic PoWs to build from granite the immense pile of Princetown Prison - 'The Moor' to generations of miscreants - in which those poor Frogs were then incarcerated.
The mast may have gone by now, but it would take some pretty serious seismic activity to make the quarry disappear. It's a sinister place, with deep black water in the bottom.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 17 Jun 14 at 21:48
|
The mast is still there AC but now used for VHF radio. TV moved to other sites, better situated to provide coverage on higher frequencies, when transition to UHF/625lines and colour took place on the seventies.
www.thebigtower.com/live/NHT/Index.htm
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 17 Jun 14 at 21:54
|
|
I've heard rumours that the six pepperpot cooling towers of Didcot Power Station may not be with us much longer. As a native of the Vale of the White Horse, I think of them as my Stonehenge. (And yes, I do see the archaeological irony in that statement.)
|
The chimneys at Stewartby brickworks. www.urbanrealm.com/blogs/index.php/2010/09/30/stewartby-the-world-s-largest-brickworks?blog=16
Would have been visible on the A1 Black Cat - M1 J13 link road.
I understand the remaining few have a preservation order.
|
>> I've heard rumours that the six pepperpot cooling towers of Didcot Power Station may not
>> be with us much longer.
>>
Tis a fact
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-27979230
|
>> I've heard rumours that the six pepperpot cooling towers of Didcot Power Station may not
>> be with us much longer.
I watched 3 of them come down at 05:01 Sunday morning. It was a weird experience. I guess I was a couple of miles away (as the crow flies). The noise from the explosion didn't occur until they were half way down. The landscape looks odd now that 3 of them are missing.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-28508730
Last edited by: VxFan on Mon 28 Jul 14 at 01:37
|
I knew they were coming down Yesterday, but then I found out it was at 5:00am in the morning. A time chosen to keep the tourists down* it worked with me as I gave it a miss.
Quite a landmark, has been a featured backdrop in several of my train videos.
*and minimise disruption on the GWR
|
>> I knew they were coming down Yesterday, but then I found out it was at
>> 5:00am in the morning.
I was travelling back from Birmingham at silly o'clock. As I got off the A34 at Milton I saw that it was 04:20 and Jack FM had announced they were coming down at 04:30. Then 04:30 came and went, followed by a further announcement it would now be 05:00. Not much point finishing my journey home and missing it, so found a nearby viewing point and waited.
|
>> >> I've heard rumours that the six pepperpot cooling towers of Didcot Power Station may
>> not
>> >> be with us much longer.
>>
>> I watched 3 of them come down at 05:01 Sunday morning.
We were thinking of going over from Reading, but I was worried all the roads would be jammed. So we watched the live internet stream, and actually the running social media commentary alongside the pictures was quite entertaining.
Then I saw reports next day of 'hundreds' turning up to watch ie. hardly anyone at all. Should have gone.
|
North Hessary Tor certainly had an analogue 625 line transmitter, but only a low powered relay transmitter serving a very small local area. Blue Streak transposers I think. So should have low powered digital transmitters too.
I had to explain this several times to locals in my job who mistakenly pointed their TV aerial at the mast.
|
How about the old British Cellophane works beside the M5 at Bridgwater? Not so much for the spectacle as the smell. The MD once told me the main component of the smell - released by the breakdown of eucalyptus leaves IIRC - was so odiferous that one part in 10 million was detectable to the human nose.
Cellophane must have been about the last 'natural' packaging material - valuable because unlike plastic it retained its shape when twisted. I understand that even Werther's Original sweeties - the firm's last big-name customer - are now wrapped in plastic.
When I passed the former site the other day I was amazed to see 'Smellophane' replaced by the biggest supermarket distribution depot I've ever come across - Morrisons I think - painted 40 shades of green and looking as though it was built of Lego.
|
>>Morrisons I think -<<
Still as inefficient though as Sittingbourne, Livingston, Wakefield and Gadbrooke!
Pat
|
My pal works for them (not at Bridgwater) and he doesn't have a good word for them either. Give a dog a bad name eh?
Incidentally, I've long regarded Stonehenge as Britain's most over-rated landmark. Mainly since it used to be on my 'patch'. Some years ago we took SWMBO's Californian step-mother to see it, at her request. After she looked at it she said 'Gee, it looks like something from Lilliput Lane!'
Last edited by: Mike Hannon on Thu 19 Jun 14 at 15:25
|
|
Agreed, Mike. But White Horse Hill is fantastic - just not visible from any major road.
|
The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor are far more impressive at 3.30 am on midsummers morning...and where I shall be on Saturday:)
Pat
|
>> The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor are far more impressive at 3.30 am on midsummers morning...and
>> where I shall be on Saturday:)
>>
>> Pat
>>
Why?
|
>> >> The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor are far more impressive at 3.30 am on midsummers
>> morning...and
>> >> where I shall be on Saturday:)
>> >>
>> >> Pat
>> >>
>>
>> Why?
Because it be ye zummer zolstice?
|
>>
>> Because it be ye zummer zolstice?
>>
Not at 03:30 it isn't.
10:51 it is.
|
>> >>
>> >> Because it be ye zummer zolstice?
>> >>
>>
>> Not at 03:30 it isn't.
>>
>> 10:51 it is.
>>
And where is Zero to confirm these facts??
|
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Because it be ye zummer zolstice?
>> >> >>
>> >>
>> >> Not at 03:30 it isn't.
>> >>
>> >> 10:51 it is.
>> >>
>> And where is Zero to confirm these facts??
>>
A little way down on the right hand side.
www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/uk/london
Although they say it's 11:51, not 10:51.
|
>> The Hurlers on Bodmin Moor are far more impressive at 3.30 am on midsummers morning...
Were you there last year?
www.ianfoster.com/fozlogs-20130623.htm
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Thu 19 Jun 14 at 20:58
|
Yes we were, CG and at daybreak it was indeed very foggy and wet.
Pat
|
When travelling in a car, it's difficult to be able to pinpoint where a smell is coming from, because you may have passed the origin before the odour is properly detected. But the flame coming out of the tall thin chimney I am 95% sure was situated northwest of the dome of Meadowhall; somewhere like Concord Park or Bellhouse Road.
That area of Sheffield/Rotherham was very, very, industrial. It's always puzzled me how all that lot could be razed to the ground and blithely replaced just by shops.. :-/
|
>..somewhere like Concord Park or Bellhouse Road.
This one?
tinyurl.com/nn2ohn2
|
No, not that one Kevin. It was much further away from the motorway - like about 1/3 mile.
But anyway - coincidentally, an item on the news last night made me laugh a great deal: Apparently Sheffield council have finally given allowance for a large new IKEA store to be built on the site of a demolished old factory, near to Meadowhall and Sheffield Arena - but get this: There is continuing backlash from parts of the public, objecting to it being built, on the grounds of it causing increased air pollution and reducing people's life-expectancy!!
I nearly fell off my chair. The current public must have no memory of what it was like in that valley 35 years ago - I can only assume that all the parents and grandparents must have died before they were 50, from the incredible pollution back then!
|
>No, not that one Kevin. It was much further away from the motorway - like about 1/3 mile.
I have no idea where it could be then.
>The current public must have no memory of what it was like in that valley 35 years ago -
If they knew what it was like 35 years ago they wouldn't live anywhere near the place. I can remember my dad driving through Tinsley, I think it was Shepcote Lane, when I was a kid and they were tapping one of the furnaces. The yellowy brown smoke was so thick that visibility was probably no more than 1 or 200yds. That pollution hasn't disappeared, it's just soaked into the soil.
No doubt though that their objections will be used by the nutters wanting to put a 50mph limit on the M1.
|
|
There appear to be two silos appearing just off the M40 near Cherwell Valley, and the incinerator(?) nearby.
|
|
I used to live near or regularly pass an industrial bread factory, Hovis perhaps at that time, I think in or near Chiswick. It put out a strong but not unpleasant odour of fermenting yeast.
|
|
Banbury on the M40. I used to be able to tell whether I was going south or north by whether I got the smell of coffee first, or crisps.
|
|
Biking in the New Forest today it struck me I couldn't see Sway Tower but it's still apparently extant.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 22 Jun 14 at 23:57
|
|
The Burton on Trent breweries smell nice of a hot summer's day...Pity about the end products being diluted water..
|
>> I used to live near or regularly pass an industrial bread factory, Hovis perhaps at
>> that time, I think in or near Chiswick. It put out a strong but not
>> unpleasant odour of fermenting yeast.
>>
Fullers brewery on the A4 ?
|
>> Fullers brewery on the A4
You could easily be right hk. I lived very close to the A4 just opposite that brewery.
Worked as a sprayer's mate in a factory making metal advertising stands just opposite the brewery entrance in the little street there that leads down to the river and Chiswick Mall. It was a very prole job, unhealthy with the fumes from the enamel-baking ovens. They gave one a daily pint of milk supposedly to 'absorb the fumes'. I think they were supposed to by law.
I learned a bit about welding and industrial silk screen printing there. Only stayed a couple of months though. Jobs were easy to get fifty years ago.
|
news today in my area..seems theres a lot of frackable gas under one of leicestershires local parks, bradgate park to be exact, bloke on the telly reckons theres tonnes of the stuff
hope the polititions dont give the go ahead to extract it... its on the site where lady jane grey used to hang out
|
>> its on the site
>> where lady jane grey used to hang out
I don't suppose she'll be worried about it.
|
>> >> its on the site
>> >> where lady jane grey used to hang out
>>
>> I don't suppose she'll be worried about it.
>>
i aint bothered that much , bradgate park is very nice though..some of the rock found in the area is supposed to be some of the oldest in the world ..according to sir david attenborror
he should know
|
|
I still miss the old Guiness factory in Park Royal, NW10. It was a fine piece of architecture by any standard, never mind for a brewery. And there would often be cows grazing on the field in front, which was a rare sight in the area! The smell was pleasant and the end product wasn't bad (although not as good as proper Irish Guiness, of course).
|
I still miss the Firestone factory facade on the A4 at Brentford, part of the golden mile of Art Deco buildings.
The isolated remains of the Minimax factory on the Staines Road near Hatton Cross
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_Limited.
And many local landmarks - Gasometers are also being sold for scrsp.
|
|
Eastbourne pier has just burned down. Sad to see another pier go.
|
End of a long day and I missed the word 'pier' in the first sentence.
Is there another category of structure that suffers such a high rate of loss to fire as piers? Wicker men, I suppose, before our contributors on the Celtic fringes feel left out.
|
|
reminds me of the bradford fire.. all that old timber , it doesnt surprise me though , no one killed here but a shame all the same
|
>> Eastbourne pier has just burned down. Sad to see another pier go.
>>
Just watched the BBC news. It would seem that only one building on the pier at the landward end was burned out.
The bulk of the pier seems to be intact.
|
>> The bulk of the pier seems to be intact.
'Firefighters save two thirds of structure'
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-28579265
|
Disappearing Landmarks - Manatee
