Tag: paint

Lumsdale & Matlock

Lumsdale & Matlock: There are quite a few places I’ve been to which claim to be where the industrial revolution started, but Lumsdale near Matlock where I went for a walk with Linda on Wednesday 23 October 2019 perhaps has a better claim than most apart from the nearby Arkwright mill in Cromford built in 1771, the first modern factory.

Water from the Bentley Brook powered the early days of the industrial revolution

Lumsdale is a steeply sloping valley with a small stream the Bentley Brook tumbling down it, apparently never running dry. It housed industrial mills from the 17th century on and is a site of national archaeological and historic importance. Among the industries that worked there were lead, textile, paint and timber.

The mills at Lumsdale were on a smaller scale than Arkwright’s Cromford Mill and are now only ruins – I think the last closed in 1927.

The area is now owned by the Arkwright Society and can be explored on a permissive footpath. Parts have been fenced off since my visit for safety reasons and I think some of my pictures were taken in these. But it remains an area where you need to take great care near steep drops, especially if like me you sometime suffer from a little vertigo.

A large single stone bleaching vessel

Although there is little or no parking in the area there have always been quite a few visitor in my several visits to the area. In 2014 it became a scheduled Ancient Monument.

I played a little with various shutter speeds by decided I like it best with those that more or less stopped movement rather than blurred it
The Lower Pond built in the 1850s has been restored several times, most recently in 2014
This was the site of the oldest mill in Lumsdale, a former lead smelting mill which was converted to a bone mill
around 1600. Bones were heated and then crushed to be used as pigments. The mill only closed in 1920.

Linda and I were in Matlock to look after grandchildren and walked up from Matlock after taking them to school. After exploring the valley we walked across to the top of Matlock for an unexciting pub lunch and then walked on to the top of Matlock Bank.

Former tram depot
The hill drops steeply

We walked around a little at the top of the Bank then came down the steep hill to the bridge over the Derwent. In 1893 when Matlock was a popular spa town a cable-hauled tramway was built to take people up and down the 300ft hill. The fare was 2d up and 1d down. It felt a little mean to me charging for taking people down as I think their weight would actually be helping to pull people up. But the tramway closed in 1927, being replaced by a bus service. So far I’ve always walked up, but usually feel by the time I near the top I should have taken a bus.

And back down to the River Derwent. I think we remembered to collect the kids from school.

More on My London Dairy at Lumsdale & Matlock.

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Hull Colour 2

A look at a few more of my colour pictures from Hull in the 1970s.

Paint, Hull 70shull077
Paint, Hull 1970s

I made a number of exposures of this wall, which I think was possibly at one of the dry docks on Dock Office Row, though my memory may be at fault. I often walked up High St from Clarence St next to Drypool Bridge and then on to Wincolmlee, sometimes continuing on up to Bankside or Air St, where I could walk west and across towards my parents-in-law’s house just off Chanterlands Ave north.

I was attracted by the colour but also by the mix of the accidental and deliberate in the markings on the wall. Like quite of few of the other images, time has added its mark to this picture, with some patches of blue which I haven’t entirely managed to retouch where mould has attacked the dyes.

Hull 70shull083
Hull 1970s – a distant view of Saltend

I can’t recall at all taking this picture, and another also taken from a similarly rural viewpoint with the chemical works in the distance. From the view I think it is taken from somewhere on the west edge of Hedon, perhaps on a walk from Hull to Paull.

But when or wherever it was made, its an image I like for its contrast, both visually and between the agricultural and industrial.

Weighton Lock, Broomfleet, 72-80-Hull-005
Weighton Lock, Broomfleet, 1970s

In contrast I remember our family walk which took us to Weighton Lock well. If you have travelled my rail from Selby or Doncaster to Hull, your train will have sped through Broomfleet, and you may just have seen a station there.

The man in the ticket office at Hull Paragon station seemed surprised when we asked for tickets to Broomfleet, but trains do stop there. Now you have a choice of the 07:19 or the 16:21 – but then there were rather more though I think we did have to tell the guard we wanted to stop there – and to hold our our hands for the returning train.

The lock is where the Market Weighton Canal joins the River Humber. Opened in 1782, the canal was both a navigable waterway and a drainage ditch. The upper section was closed around 1900 and the lower few miles to the lock abandoned in 1971. The Market Weighton Civic Trust managed to save the lock by getting it listed as an ancient monument, and it was repaired and reopened although there is no right to navigation around six of its original nine and a half miles remain navigable.

A few other pictures in the album are also from trips we made from Hull, including to Flamborough.

Guildhall Rd, Hull 72-80-Hull-008
Guildhall Rd, Hull, 1970s

Until ‘The Dock’ was opened in 1778, ships coming to Hull moored the the ‘Old Harbour’ in the River Hull, where staithes still run from the High St to the river. The dock was the largest dock in the UK when it was built, and soon became known as the ‘Old Dock’, but was renamed Queen’s Dock in honour of the visit to Hull by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1854.

By the 1920s it was redundant, with docks on the Humber – Victoria Dock, Albert Dock, Alexandra Dock, Riverside Quay and King George Dock – forming the port of Hull, and it finally closed in 1930. The city bought it and filled it in to create Queen’s Gardens. Filling it took four years – one year longer than its construction and provided some employment during a period of recession.

I’m not sure exactly where these former warehouses on the south side of Queens Dock (Queens Gardens) in Guildhall Road were, but from the street sign I think they were just to the west of Quay St and have since been demolished.

River Hull, Hull 72-80-Hull-011
River Hull, Hull from North Bridge

I added the following text to a black and white image on my Hull photos web site taken from just a foot or two to the left of this image:

Peeling paint on a wall advertises the coal and sand wharf belonging to ‘Henry’, which I think may be Henry Mead & Co at 15 Lime Street, which was wound up in 1973. On the west bank of the Hull are a long line of wharves and buildings on Wincolmlee, with the towering silos of R&W Paul (now Maizecor) in the distance. A single vessel is visible moored at one of the Lime St wharves.
 
Floods from the Hull, mainly because of a tides coming up from the Humber, were fairly frequent before the tidal barrier was built, because the corporation failed to get wharf owners to maintain adequate flood defences. A number of derelict properties made their job more difficult. More recent floods have been because of excessive rainfall in the Hull valley.

Apart from the Maizecor silo, none of the buildings visible in this slide are still standing.